* Custom NEHGS Reports

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woodr2011
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Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by woodr2011 »

Greetings, everyone:

I am giving very strong consideration to transitioning to FH v7 after using TMG for about 25 years. Has anyone created a a custom report for ancestors and descendants in the NEHGS journal style? If not, could I employ someone here who has the necessary programming prowess to create one for me or as a plugin that would be available to everyone? I would appreciate feedback.

Many thanks,

Ryan Dariush Wood
Last edited by tatewise on 25 Oct 2021 17:40, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Added NEHGS to Subject
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by tatewise »

Sorry, but I am not familiar with the features of NEHGS journal style reports.

How far do the standard Ancestor and Descendant reports stray from the NEHGS journal style?

What are the key features that would satisfy your requirements?

I read somewhere that RootsMagic (RM) offers suitable reports, so one option would be to export FH to RM when such reports are needed. The 'Export Gedcom File' and several other plugins provide reliable ways to export to RM.
Last edited by tatewise on 25 Oct 2021 17:41, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Added NEHGS to Subject
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

Mike, the NEHGS report is a de facto standard -- you'll find some useful links here: https://www.americanancestors.org/brows ... guidelines
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by tatewise »

Helen, thank you for that link, which I had found earlier, but I must be overlooking something.
I cannot see where an NEHGS report standard is formally defined. What am I missing?
I've downloaded the Word template and read the advice and the only format definitions I can find are shown below.

At first sight, a Descendant Outline report with Child Order numbering is getting close, and with suitable citation footnote and bibliography formatting, may be acceptable.

NEHGStemplate.pmg.png
NEHGStemplate.pmg.png (81.5 KiB) Viewed 3928 times
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

There's more guidance about content here: https://www.americanancestors.org/educa ... publishing
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=15254&p=84815#p84815 is part of a thread where we touched on this style of report before (just parking this here for reference).
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by tatewise »

That adds very little (unless I buy a book) apart from specifying the facts to include and their order.

There seems to be flexibility in whether 2 or 3 generations are included in a 'family sketch'.

A 2 or 3 generation Descendant Outline report with Child Order numbering, and facts on separate lines is very similar.
The font for names, the numbers for children, and the order of the facts are not as specified, but it is close:

DescendantOutlineReport.png
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

I thought the facts/order was pretty fundamental :?

Plus the video on numbering. (which is probably going to be the hardest thing to sort and probably necessitate a custom report via a report plugin).
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by tatewise »

I tend to agree. I did say that the Descendant Outline report was very similar, not identical.
Although the NEHGS website does not mention the type or order of facts at all.

It depends on whether being exactly the same as NEHGS format is crucial to the OP or not.

We await a reply from Ryan who has posted NEHGS-style journal report for ancestors & descendants (19912) in the New Wish List Requests forum instead of engaging in this discussion of options.
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

Mike, given that Ryan is a newcomer and very likely in a time zone some hours later than ours, it doesn't seem unreasonable that he hasn't joined in yet. Nor is the wish list request a mortal sin :D
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

PS I suspect Ryan may have not asked to be notified of replies, if he is used to environments where it happens by default.
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by woodr2011 »

tatewise wrote: 25 Oct 2021 18:35 Helen, thank you for that link, which I had found earlier, but I must be overlooking something.
I cannot see where an NEHGS report standard is formally defined. What am I missing?
I've downloaded the Word template and read the advice and the only format definitions I can find are shown below.

At first sight, a Descendant Outline report with Child Order numbering is getting close, and with suitable citation footnote and bibliography formatting, may be acceptable.


NEHGStemplate.pmg.png
That is a much closer approximation, yes. I would like to have the option of positioning a general note about the person's biography beneath all of the birth, death, and burial information as a separate paragraph rather than clumped in with it, however.
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

Do you care about the strict numbering style?
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by woodr2011 »

ColeValleyGirl wrote: 26 Oct 2021 17:08 Do you care about the strict numbering style?
I am not married to it, but it would be preferred.
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by tatewise »

Refer back to the screenshot posted yesterday and the Report Options ~ Main tab has several options for adding Notes of different types, which can add any descriptive biographical text you like.

Are you concerned about the order of the Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Death, and Burial facts?

Note that there are also other Numbering options to experiment with.
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

Re numbering, current FH reports don't have the options to (1) only number children who had offspring; and (2) include a generation number next to the name.
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by woodr2011 »

tatewise wrote: 26 Oct 2021 18:03 Refer back to the screenshot posted yesterday and the Report Options ~ Main tab has several options for adding Notes of different types, which can add any descriptive biographical text you like.

Are you concerned about the order of the Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Death, and Burial facts?

Note that there are also other Numbering options to experiment with.
I would like to have the birth, baptism, marriage, death, and burial facts appear in that order with the biographical note one space beneath. Is there a specific type of note that is formatted to appear in that position?
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by tatewise »

It is interesting that you prefer the facts listed in chronological order, as that is different to the NEHGS standard.
So if a strict NEHGS report were designed the fact order would be Birth, Baptism, Death, Burial, and Marriage.

The attached screenshot shows two kinds of Notes below the facts.
The options, underlined in orange, are Record Notes and Shared Notes, and either can be ticked.
Both those types of Notes can be managed on the Notes tab of the Property Box of each Individual.
They can be embellished with word-processor rich text style fonts, bold, italic, indents, lists, tables, etc...

Record Notes are Local to the Individual and in the screenshot starts "Anthony could never be persuaded to work in an office."
As an example, this note has been indented to align with the facts.

Shared Notes are in a separate Note Record and linked to multiple records. In the screenshot, they start "The Munro family comes from Scotland." and appear under both Anthony Edward MUNRO and his son Ian Stephen MUNRO.

In the screenshot, the D'Aboville Numbering is applied, which although different to NEHGS numbering does give each person a different number.

DescendantOutlineReportNotes.png
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by woodr2011 »

That would appear to be the program's nearest and best approximation to what I am looking for, yes. It isn't anything that I can't live with by any means. Thank you, Tate :)
Last edited by tatewise on 27 Oct 2021 16:26, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Removed quote as not necessary in this context
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

So, when looking to generate a custom report the developers can:
  • Ignore the fact order specified by NEHGS
  • Ignore the numbering scheme specified by the NEHSG
That means no custom report development is required.
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by tatewise »

The NEHGS reports also specify that the names of people should be in SMALL CAPS font, with smaller point size for children, which the FH reports cannot mimic.
However, Ryan has not mentioned that as a problem.

The format of Citation Footnotes and Bibliography has also not been discussed.
It is probably possible to achieve something close to NEHGS format but I'm not certain what that is.
Last edited by tatewise on 27 Oct 2021 19:56, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by thejerrybryan »

I'm not sure where best to post this question, but this seems like a reasonable place because it has to do with NEHGS reports. The most important thing I do with my genealogy data is to produce printed reports on paper in sort of a book format for family reunions. My preferred format is Descendant Narrative reports. I presently use RootsMagic to produce such reports using the NEHGS style. I have also used the NGSQ style with RootsMagic. The two styles are almost identical.

I can't find anything in FH that produces reports in either of these styles. I'm going to include a link to a sample report that is what I need. I have tried using FH's Descendant Reports and I have run into the following problems.
  • Both NEHGS style reports and NGSQ style reports include a set of parent and their children as a family unit. Both styles carry a child forward to the next generation only if the child has a spouse or children of their own or both. FH's Descendant Narrative reports seem always to carry each child forward to the next generation. Doing so produces a lot of extra paper.
  • I use RootsMagic's sentence templates to start the sentence for each event such as Birth, Marriage, Death etc. on a new line. It produces an effect that is similar to making a List format report, except that as a Descendant Narrative report all sentences are included, including Witness sentences. I have found warnings in these forums against using such thing as <br> in FH's sentence templates. I have not yet tested in FH to see how much of a problem such formatting might really be in practice.
  • I very much like separate indexes for People and for Places. I very much prefer the People index to group people by surname. I very much prefer the Place index to group places hierarch ally. FH's index doesn't seem to support these features.
So I guess my question is the following. How close can I come using FH to producing a Descendant Narrative that meets my needs?

Here's the link to my sample report produced by RootsMagic: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gsz1fzukx5ckj ... t.rtf?dl=0
Last edited by tatewise on 06 Jul 2022 09:21, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Corrected NEGSH to NEHGS
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Re: Custom NEHGS Reports

Post by tatewise »

  • I think your first problem is resolved by the Report > Options > Main tab One Section Per Descendant setting.
    Try clearing the tick from that option. The Help explains how it works.
    *
  • Regarding your second point, please identify the warnings against using <br> and <para> that may now be resolved.
    See the FHUG Knowledge Base article Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates under Tabulated Facts.
    The ideas there can be combined with the original Sentence Template format to give something similar to your request.
    *
  • I don't think there is a solution to your Index request.
To go any further than the above options would need changes implemented by CP or a Report Plugin created by a user.

Alternatively, use the Export Gedcom File plugin to export your Project to RootsMagic and continue to use its Reports.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry
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