Family Historian User Group

I am strongly considering a move from RM7 to FH7 rather than RM7 to RM8. I have run a couple of "trial" Gedcom transfers which for the most part went very well. The main problems were/are self inflicted. I use lots of custom facts/events which would have to be cleaned up and it highlighted some broken media links.

One question for my situation is the ability to create layered citations. My ancestors were farmers and homesteaded their way across the US and did a significant amount of land speculation along the way. As a result I have over 300 land deeds that need to be cited and most are from local jurisdictions. Some of the images/records were found on FamilySearch, some were emailed to me from local registry office and some I have obtained on personal visits. For the most part, the images found online are not located within a collection, but rather in a catalog of digital images. I determined the best way to approach this would be with what Elizabeth Mills in Evidence Explained called a "layered citation" with the first layer being the the local deed record and the second where I viewed/obtained the image. A third layer would be any notation, if needed. Under this approach I am able to lump citations - under a source like ABC County, FS images or ABC County, Clerk email. The data entry changing for each record/citation is the volume, page, party of interest, access date, film numbers and annotation. A typical citation for images obtained via Family Search is:
Footnote:
Buena Vista County, Iowa, Deed Record vol. 9: 602, Hannah Aherin to Charles Porath, 1 March 1902; digital images, FamilySearch (https:/familysearch.org/search/catalog : downloaded 27 January 2021) > digital film 8586492 >image 182 of 949; imaged from FHL film 1428891, item 1 microfilmed by the Genealogical Society at the Buena Vista Co. Courthouse in Storm Lake, Iowa on 28 June 1985; Hannah Aherin is noted as single.

Short Footnote:
Buena Vista County, Iowa, Deed vol. 9: 602.

Bibliography:
Iowa. Buena Vista County. Deed Record. Courthouse, Storm Lake, Iowa. Digital File 8586492, FamilySearch. https:familysearch.org : 2021.

To generate these in RM7, I created custom templates - which I knew could be a problem with a Gedcom file. Surprisingly, the few I included in the transfer test, all the information came over. Unfortunately, all the source information was entered in title field and the entire footnote was in the title field of the citation.

I have taken the same "layered citation" strategy with other local records and news paper clippings. I wanted to see what the RM8 upgrade was going to look like before I spent a great deal of time entering records so changing to fit FH7 would not be a tremendous "do-over", but I would like to get a better idea about FH7's capabilities in case I have to re-think my strategy.

I have spent some time studying citation and sources in the knowledge base, but getting up to speed with the different terminology and UI is time consuming so thought a question here might be a bit faster. Any feedback is gratefully accepted.

Found my answer - was able to dig through the knowledge base and get to the detailed pages on generating custom templates. There is lots of valuable info there - just a matter of getting up the learning curve to find it. (Although I found lots of information "I didn't know-I didn't know" along the way.

Glad you found the info you need. This knowledge base and user group is truly amazing, isn't it?

I made the decision to be 100% free-form with my sources in my desktop genealogy program, owing to the severe limitations of GEDCOM, so am unable to be of any assistance with that, but it does seem like the capabilities to re-build what you may have had in RM are there.

One of the things I have considered is to continue to use the custom templates in RM7 to generate a citation and then cut and paste them into free form citations in FH7.

I am trying to get a feel for how much re-work may be required with a move from RM to FH and am looking at facts. In RM, there is only a fact field, and the fact can be anything true user wants it to be, an event, an attribute, a world event, etc. I used a number of custom facts in RM and it appears they were all imported as attributes. Having read through several threads, the knowledge base and FH guides, some would be attributes but most would be events. For example I have a significant number of a customized fact called “land purchase” and these came over as attributes. As I have looked through this and tried to consider how I might use the FH feature, it has lead to a number of questions:
First, (and most important), I would like to know how current FH users utilize the event/attribute feature, the advantages/disadvantages and the potential impact for reports and uploads to websites?
I could not find a way to change a fact type from an attribute to an event on the fact tab or through Tools>Fact Types>edit selected fact. On the edits screen there appears to be a pull-down menu on Fact Type, but the filed is unchangeable. Am I missing something? Or is there a plug-in that helps with this?
Other than having the “value field” for attributes, is there some other distinction in how FH handles events vs attributes?

Curt

Your last sentence just about sums it up. The 'value field' is the only significant difference.

Tools > Fact Types... cannot alter the Fact Type from Attribute to Event or vice versa.
The Change Any Fact Tag plugin can do that, or choose a completely different fact, either standard or custom.
The main 'gotcha' is that when converting an Attribute to an Event any 'value field' is a problem.

Any Custom Fact you choose to keep will need a matching Tools > Fact Types... definition to be created to best use the FH features including their appearance in Reports and Diagrams.

All standard GEDCOM Facts (Events & Attributes), as well as Custom Facts (Events & Attributes), usually migrate to and from other products very well. The primary issue is the 'value field' that some products allow on Custom Events.
The Export Gedcom File plugin is good at producing GEDCOM for other products, not just for Custom Facts but for all the FH custom features not supported by other products, both PC based and online trees.

I use custom Attributes where they should really be Events in order specifically to access the extra field. It makes absolutely no difference in the real world, and is only necessary due to FH employing an unusually strict interpretation of what is in GEDCOM 5.5.1. As you have probably seen, the actual standard is ambiguous, and the FH interpretation is out of line with that of the majority of other apps.

Curt,
In RM-speak, the difference between an event and an attribute is nothing more than whether or not the description field is enabled or not. If there is something in the description field, the FH import will create an attribute, if not, it's an event.

You will end up with events and attributes that have the same name.

Part of the after-import cleanup will involve "merging" these into the same attribute, so that you have the description field available should you choose to use it.

The Change Any Fact Tag plugin is important here. Rename the "land" event to "land old", then run the plugin and change all "land old" to "land", and then they'll be the same attribute-flavored fact.

Thanks all - Your explanation of the correlation of the FH value field to RM description field was very helpful. I used the description field most of the time in RM - mainly as a way to get more info into the fact sentence. Knowing that I will loose the value field in a merge/clean up and that a description field is not available in an event - I think I want rethink, as Marks approach closely matches how I used the description field in RM - I may want to consider converting some of my events to attributes so I have access to the value field. I assume the plugin will work in both directions. Something to think about before I start pulling triggers. One of the wonderful aspects of FH is the flexibility - tough part is figuring out how to use it!!

I was already looking at the need to "re-do" fact sentences because of the single quotes around the value field. As I look at the report functions where the fact sentence is followed immediately by a "fact note" in Narrative Reports. I was playing with the idea of just eliminating the fact sentence (instead of re doing it) and using the note field to create a "fact paragraph" which could be just one sentence or a paragraph. The Shared Notes or Notes Record (something RM does not have) would allow a place to note anything about the individual(s), fact(s) or sources that I did not want to print in reports. Unfortunately, it appears the footnotes are tied to the fact sentence - need to play around with reports a bit more to confirm.
Thanks again,
Curt

cwhermann wrote: ↑

27 Mar 2021 16:53

I was playing with the idea of just eliminating the fact sentence (instead of re doing it) and using the note field to create a "fact paragraph" which could be just one sentence or a paragraph.

A number of FH users do exactly that.

If you make the Sentence Template use {note} then the Note text is included in the Report with the Footnote superscript.
The Report intelligently does NOT duplicate the Note text even if the Inc. Event/Attr Notes option is ticked.

For me, the drawback would be the need to invent a sentence in the Note for EVERY fact!

BTW: You can 'hide' Note text that you want to exclude from the Report by enclosing in [[ privacy brackets ]] that allows labelled Note text to be used for additional data fields, which can be conditionally included in Sentence Templates to add variations to the sentences, etc.

Thanks Helen and Mike. Will add the “how to do it” to my toolbox.
It seamed like I was always having to customize the fact sentences at the person level in RM because I am often dealing with events on rural farms where there is no specific address and the nearest town is often 10-15 miles away and may even be in a different county. I assume FH sentence templates will be a similar challenge.
I also dislike the narrative reports that aren’t too “narrative” and will often read more like a list of facts with a bit of additional info in the note, none of which flows well. Most of the time I was taking the info into a word document to get create a report that flowed better which brings it’s own formatting challenges. Being able to do it all in FH may turn out to be less work in the long run.
Nice to have the flexibility.
Curt

I am definitely making the move. I started in December. It's going to be a lot of work because I am picky about my sentences and citations, and mostly use custom. And it's a learning curve. But the more I learn, the more I like FH. With the help of people here, most any problem I run into I can easily resolve.