Family Historian User Group

AS - what a brilliant bit of software!! I've been entering all my info directly into FH but, because I may go weeks between making entries, I've noticed occasionally that I've not maintained a standard method of entry. AS will ensure that all my entries are consistent. Thank you, Nick! [smile]

One question: whilst I understand that Title Templates can be changed via the Options menu pages, I'm also aware that the defaults are usually a good idea to start with. With that in mind, I'm wondering if there's any particular reasoning behind the standard Templates.

For example: the default Marriage Template is {SOURCETYPE}{PLACE}{ADDR}{DATE}{KEYPERSON}&{SPOUSE}. I would have thought that names and date would go before place and date, bearing in mind that they're more specific to the entry, so {SOURCETYPE}{KEYPERSON}&{SPOUSE}{DATE}{PLACE}{ADDR}.

It probably doesn't matter in the great scheme of things, but I'm curious to know the reasoning behind the defaults before I go changing things. A little knowledge can be very dangerous and can result in a lot of renaming of files if I get it wrong!

ID:6848

It is partly down to your own preference, and maybe Nick likes the default.

The Ancestral Sources Tutorials do suggest Source Title Templates more along the lines you propose.

Thanks for your kind words about Ancestral Sources.

The titles for all the source types are designed to categorise when the sources are presented sorted in title order. So for census entries the sort order is:
All census entries
in a particular year
in a particular place

For Marriages the year isn't so relevant so I go for:
All Marriage Entries
in a particular place

Personally I don't look through my list of sources to find information about people. If I need to know where Joe Bloggs got married I search for Joe Bloggs and click on his marriage event. So I don't really see any benefit of having the name of people within the title before the place. I do however frequently find it useful to see the list of baptisms or marriages that have taken place in a particular church. This could of course be done using queries or plug-ins but for me looking down a list of sources can be easier and doesn't need any thought.

It is like a hierarchy that becomes more specific as the title continues so:
Marriage first (to distinguish from other source types)
Place (so you get a subset of marriages in that place)
Date (so you get a set of marriages that happened in that place on that date)
People (so you focus on a particular couple who married in that place on that date).

I hope this makes sense. I do of course understand that people will often want to do things their own way which is why I spend such a lot of time building in options, title templates, auto-text templates, etc.

Many thanks for the replies.

I noticed that the hierarchy became more specific as the title continues, and thought that was probably the thinking behind it. I also accept that there's probably little need to scroll through file names when search and query facilities are available.

For me personally, I'm in the process of standardising my entries, which means renaming some images. Placing the names first will help me to easily check on which images I've renamed and which I haven't.

As you both say, it's really down to personal preference, and it's a well-planned piece of software that enables those choices to be made. [grin]