* Wish List - Minister (or Registrar)

[ChrisRead]

I was pondering the Further Info tab in particular the Minister (or Registrar) field.

I have always entered this where the information is available, with name and role (Vicar, Rector, Curate etc.) as documented, but not really thought about what happens to it. In practice it is simply placed in the auto-text as-is, and that's it.

What would be nice is if the field was more like the Association field, so you could put a name in or select an individual and a role. This could then be added to the Witnesses to the event like others are. I fully appreciate that I could simply use the Association field, but it's slightly irksome to have to enter the same information twice.

This is not exactly a major issue, more of a finessing of the input. You have more than enough on your plate with the current release, but thought I'd drop it in there anyway.

[NickWalker]

Hi Chris

Sorry I did spot this when you posted it but forgot to reply.... I think AS already does what you've asked for here although it's possible that Autotext templates may need to be edited to do exactly what you want.

If, for example, you choose the baptism source and choose the 'Parish Registers 1813-' template and rather than fill in the Minister box, choose Minister from the Associated Individuals list then the name you choose here gets filled in to the 'By whom the ceremony was performed' column. Actually the template adds an extra carriage return which isn't required so I will update that in the next update.

Nick

[ChrisRead]

Yeah, as indicated in my post, I knew it could be done via the associated people input as well as the explicit input. I think I'd got blinkered by the MINISTER keyword and it being used in the templates. It would be a case of abandoning the use of the Minister field and just using associated people, which didn't sit well with me. The other thing I realise is that it would need checks for each type of minister in the list in order to be able to include what they were for the purpose of the autotext (e.g. Name, Curate) as well as how they would be made a witness type internally. If that makes sense.

While on the subject, where can I change the associated person list order? I practically always want Witness, and its at the bottom of the list. I've lost count of how many times I have to delete bestmen and re-enter as witness.

[tatewise]

Chris, see Marriage Witnesses (18014) that discusses the same objective for the associated person list order.
If you choose to use _Witnesses then beware of the later caveat:
You must then use Tools > Autotext Template Editor... and select each Template in turn, in which the script must be changed from ASSOCLIST[Witnesses] to ASSOCLIST[_Witnesses] wherever necessary.

[NickWalker]

Yeah, as indicated in my post, I knew it could be done via the associated people input as well as the explicit input. I think I'd got blinkered by the MINISTER keyword and it being used in the templates. It would be a case of abandoning the use of the Minister field and just using associated people, which didn't sit well with me. The other thing I realise is that it would need checks for each type of minister in the list in order to be able to include what they were for the purpose of the autotext (e.g. Name, Curate) as well as how they would be made a witness type internally. If that makes sense.

I don't see why not using the minister field would bother you. I very rarely use it (I don't really care who the vicar was) and for most entry types there are multiple boxes that don't get filled in (e.g. I just entered about 50 baptism entries from the 17th and 18th century and none of them had a birth date so the birth date text box stayed empty). Ancestral Sources has two ways to enter ministers - it wouldn't make sense to use both. As you've said you would need to modify your auto-text templates if you want to show the actual 'type' of minister. I've not really looked at the associated individuals part of AS for many years. I wondered if something you could do would be to enter the 'type' of minister into the Minister box and have that transfer into the auto-text together with whoever you have recorded as Minister in the associated individuals. It ought then to be possible (but doesn't currently work - I'll look at that), to have the type of minister as a witness note by using {MINISTER} in the associated individual template.

While on the subject, where can I change the associated person list order? I practically always want Witness, and its at the bottom of the list. I've lost count of how many times I have to delete bestmen and re-enter as witness.

For the next update I'll aim to add something that remembers the last associated individual type that you used for each source type so that it is selected by default. As Mike has indicated this has been raised before, but I can't do everything that anyone suggests straightaway, I have to prioritise and I do fit this in around an extremely full time job and family.

[ChrisRead]

Mike, by the look of Nick's reply, I'll just wait until he ever gets time to do the 'remember last selection' thing to handle the ordering as that is simple and effective from a user perspective. As for the Minister v Association and having read the other thread and the FH aspects, I need to think about what I actually want to do or would prefer to do.

Nick

For the next update I'll aim to add something that remembers the last associated individual type that you used for each source type so that it is selected by default. As Mike has indicated this has been raised before, but I can't do everything that anyone suggests straightaway, I have to prioritise and I do fit this in around an extremely full time job and family.

See above , but also, I appreciate that it takes time and effort to get to doing things around life in general, as I've been there when developing some bit of software or other myself. Any suggestions I make are always for tucking away for future consideration as I have no expectation of seeing them immediately or potentially ever. However, I'm impressed with how often things do get implemented as there's always something you're probably more keen to do first.

[ChrisRead]

As I hope, a final wrap up on my original posting, I thought a bit about what I was probably looking for but with no expectation of it being implemented any time soon or at all.

Basically, if the Minister input field was split to a name and note field (like the association fields), then it would be automatically added to the ASSOCLIST as a standard Minister type, and the note would be used for Curate, Vicar, Rector etc. Maybe even a tick-box so the user can decide if he wants them adding to the ASSOCLIST. The addition would occur at save rather than immediately.

So, save for the future, or discard the idea, as appropriate.

Thanks