BUG? nbsp;Individual Report: nbsp;Source Notes

Mark_H · Post by **Mark_H** » 12 Sep 2003 10:19

When printing Individual Reports, the sources section at the foot of the page do not include the 'Text From Source' or 'Notes' fields, even those these options are selected in the report options.

Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

Many thanks,

Mark.

ID:108

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 12 Sep 2003 12:05

I think it is a terminology problem. Both sources and citations can have text from source and notes and sources can have them. The ones that print on the reports are the citation fields and not the source fields. You can print Source text fields on the Source Reports. I normally print just the titles on the main report and create a separate appendix with the Source Reports.

Mark_H · Post by **Mark_H** » 12 Sep 2003 12:57

Jane,

Thanks for the reply. Looks like I need to clarify. I am trying to get the Citation text/notes to appear under the 'Sources' section of the report. I have 'Show Source Citations' checked and in the 'Source Citation information to include' I have 'Text From Source' and 'Notes' checked, yet the text from these fields is not appearing in the report, whereas all the citation's other fields are.

Thanks,

Mark

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 12 Sep 2003 15:30

I have tried it again and as long as I put the text in the citation and not in the source it appears OK for me. Please can I confirm the text you want to show is on the citation and not on the source.

Mark_H · Post by **Mark_H** » 12 Sep 2003 15:35

Jane,

OK, I've caught up with you (at last!) and now see the distinction between text in the citation or text in the source. I can see that if I add text to the citation it will indeed print.

Knowing that, but currently having my text in the SOURCE notes, is there any way to get them to print from there, or should I move all text I want to see printed into the citation notes fields?

Thanks for your patience,

Mark

Post by **SimonOrde** » 16 Sep 2003 13:50

Jane asked me to have a look at this one, and comment.

I would suggest that you need to look at your notes and ask yourself: Is this information about the SOURCE, or is it about the CITATION to the Source? Every citation (reference) to a source requires _some_ information about the source. But if you provide a lot, you risk getting an awful lot of repetition.

I would recommend moving notes only if they really are relevant to a particular citation, and not to the source as a whole. Otherwise I'd leave them.

To take an example: Suppose you have a source such as, say, a birth certificate. You might be able to use that source to get or confirm a good number of items of information about a person's name, birth date and place, parents names, father's occuption, etc. Each item of information will typically be given a source citation that links it back to the source record (the birth certificate). Would you really want all the information stored about the birth certificate itself to be repeated for every single source citation to it? Suppose there were a dozen citations of the same source in one person's record (not unusual) and suppose your notes about the source ran to 2 pages, this would mean that those 2 pages were repeated 12 times for that report if you included them. Surely a better option would be to include brief notes with source citations when and only when some note about that particular citation is needed for whatever reason. Include much fuller notes about the source itself in the source record. These longer notes would not be listed with each source citation, but could be included in a separate source report, avoiding unnecessary and potentially lengthy repetition.

Eventually we plan to support 'books' which would allow you to package these reports nicely together.

Having said this, I appreciate that everyone has their own way of working, so we try to be flexible and accommodating. Would you like me to add the option to include Source Notes to the Wish List?

Mark_H · Post by **Mark_H** » 16 Sep 2003 14:02

Simon,

Thanks for the throurough reply.

I originally failed to understand the distinction between citation notes and source notes.

At this point I no longer have a need to print source notes for citations, so I'll leave the decision whether to implement such functionality to you

I'm sure there are others areas which are more important.

Love the software, BTW. Have tried a few of the leading packages and this is by far my favourite... keep up the good work!!

Mark

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