* Can Census Local Note include ALL Names and Relationships?

[LeslieP]

I have just about come around to agreeing that each individual should have their own Census Fact rather than using a shared event with the HOH as the principal (something I've done from day 1 with TMG starting in a prior century).

I'm quite interested in using AS to help me re-do all of my census processing, it's an amazing tool, with one current problem - I can't figure out a way to get the list of all household members and their relationships to show up in the local note.

I want the local note to show the whole household, so there is a visible connection of the household at "fact note level" and not buried in the source text. Right now, with shared facts and defined roles, at least the whole household shows up together in the main part of the person's information (on my TNG website). It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.

screenshot_20230313_233917.png (31.09 KiB) Viewed 1022 times

I suppose my ideal would be to be able to manually edit the "default" local note, content that would be on every census event created, then the census template options could add the individual fields for the specific person at the end or at the beginning.

Anyway, thought I'd ask if it were possible to at least get a local note with all members of the household. That would be a great addition.

[tatewise]

Instead of duplicating the list of household members in the local Note of every Census event have you considered using the floating Citation Window?
That window can remain open and automatically displays the Source record and Citation fields associated with the currently chosen fact, etc.
So for a Census event, it can display the Text From Source census grid created from AS that lists the household.

The 'trick' is to customise the Citation Window so that it displays the Text From Source field on the main Citation tab to avoid switching to the Text From Source tab.
To do that, use the cog Menu in the Citation Window and select Customize Citation Window...
Select the Text From Source from Available Items on the left and add > to Selected Items on the right.
It is possible to use the View/Edit... button to increase the number of lines displayed or make them variable.

[harold]

Given that you are showing a screenshot of the Census event on a TNG person page I assume you are trying to resolve an issue with how the census information is displayed in TNG. TNG buries the source text in the source detail on a separate page reached from a link in the source citations section on the person page. You are correct that in order to display the source text on the person pages in the census section, you would need to move/copy that source text into the note for the census event. That would ensure it displays where you want it, but as far as I know, it is not readily done in either AS, FH or TNG without extra programming to move the data.

Another option you might look at, is moving the source text from the source level to the citation level. That way TNG would display it on the person page in the source-citation section, but not in the Census Section (and not on the source details page). That would, however, mean you may be effectively adopting a Method 2 (lumping) source citation strategy. FH does not have the concept of a "citation record" and instead copies repeated citation data to each event or fact where it is linked. This dictates that your source text is copied multiple times through your data. TNG will clean up most of that repetition on import. But, this method still makes it difficult and tedious to manage and update your citations within FH.

Unless someone else has a solution that was the only way I could find to do it. For now, I just gave in and went with Method 1. I am learning to live with having the source text buried in the details rather than displayed on the TNG person page as I would have liked.

[LeslieP]

What I'm looking for is a way to enter the data once (using AS) and then have it viewable by others (TNG) in a way that provides them maximum information with minimum effort.

I've been interested to see if using AS could benefit me, as I do my census work and clean up what I have. Initially I assumed no, since I use shared facts and AS doesn't do that. But there's a LOT of timesaving work that AS does, it's an amazing product, and I'd love to "take advantage".

I'm willing to undertake the project to change from shared events to individual, but not at the expense of me and others being able to see the whole household easily. That's why I wanted to see if AS could create a local note that shows all of the household members in it when it does its magic of creating all of the census, occupation, and appearance type events.

I learned database rationalization at about the same time as I learned what DOS was, and TMG with its shared facts came into my life not long after, so it's always been more comfortable to me to create one census item for each household and link people to it. People being "in the same household" is a very important part, to me, of finding and understanding the familial connections.

Every approach has its pros and cons.

I appreciate everyone's time, and will continue with censuses the way I'm doing them now, and probably use AS for other document types.

[tatewise]

It would not be difficult to write a Plugin that copied the Source record Text From Source field household table to the local Note of each cited Census event (conditionally on that table not already existing there).

If it was something that users want for exporting to TNG (or other GEDCOM destinations) then I might be persuaded to add a similar feature to my Export Gedcom File plugin.

[harold]

That could be made to work but there might be some wrinkles to iron out. Presumably the text would only be copied to a note for a census event and not to any other event which might cite the same source.

There is also the question of multiple census events. I have a handful of cases where the same person was recorded more than once in the same census. They seem to be "legitimate" cases where the person was enumerated in their normal place of residence (most likely reported by other family members) as well as in a temporary place of residence (for reasons of employment). I always record both and I am not sure if any extra processing would be needed to handle cases like that.

[tatewise]

As I said, the copying would only apply to Census events where it has not already been copied.
It would also be reasonable to only apply to the first Source Citation against the Census event.

In your case of multiple enumerations presumably at different addresses then surely you must have two Census events to record the two different Places/Addresses. So the two different Census events would get the two different household lists in their two local Note fields. So no special processing is needed.
If you have only one Census event with two Source Citations then only the first one would have its household copied.

[harold]

That sounds good. Better to ask the seemingly dumb questions early rather than later.

[LeslieP]

Gracious offer. As always Mike, you go above and beyond the call of duty. For me though, I wouldn't want any major rewriting done in the export. I'm trying desperately to simplify and streamline, and to be satisfied with "good enough" on a lot of things so that I can spend time consolidating research rather than tweaking configuration and display. The less customization and difference between FH and whatever methods I use to publish the better. For now I'm sticking with the shared event strategy and not using AS for Censuses.

[tatewise]

Leslie, have you checked how TNG handles shared Fact Witnesses?
It is rather different from the way all other products that support shared Fact Witnesses handle them.
i.e. Family Historian, Family Tree Analyzer, GedSite, Heredis, Legacy, My Family Tree, and RootsMagic
The TNG method is not to everyone's liking.
See the very long TNG and FH event witnesses standoff (15833) posting on the subject and how other users cope with the transfer from FH to TNG.

[LeslieP]

There are many things about TNG that are not to my liking, but for now it's "good enough" as a public view of my data. That thread with the back and forth about witnesses was kind of crazy, I read it a while back and just decided to move on to another topic. Yikes.

I think now that GEDCOM 7 accepts ASSO as a level 2 tag, and both TNG and FH support GEDCOM 7 - Simon Orde even being part of the contributor taskforce - it's only a matter of time before things improve. (yes, could be years, I know).

[tatewise]

You are correct about GEDCOM 7 but I have reported to CP that FH currently does not use the ASSO tag instead of the _SHAR tag when exporting GEDCOM 7 and when importing GEDCOM 7 it treats ASSO as an invalid tag!

[tatewise]

The Export Gedcom File plugin Version 5.3 Date 21 Mar 2023 now in the Plugin Store has a new option to copy Source Citation Text from Source field to the associated Census event local Note field as requsted.

See the Other Options tab, Census Event %d CENS: tick option Copy T f S to Note bottom left.