* Use of <whole record> and Name source citations

[ColeValleyGirl]

When the support is not implicit, one needs some sort of analysis to make the case. It is for those cases that I "take it offline" and do a proof argument or similar and then reference that in my database.

So you and I work somewhat similarly -- the difference is that I retain all the citations in the database as well as producing a proof argument.

[Gary_G]

Helen;

Yes. That appears to be correct. My real concern with also having citations to indirect sources in the database is that they hamper my ability to clearly see what is firm and what needs work.

[ColeValleyGirl]

My real concern with also having citations to indirect sources in the database is that they hamper my ability to clearly see what is firm and what needs work.

I use a system of research notes (tasks) for that.

[Gary_G]

Helen;

I'm looking forward to exploring what FH7 has in the way of research note and tasks capability. In my previous software, these were difficult to use and poorly explained. That, in turn, drove me to my current approach.

[BillH]

Gary,

I never said you did (notice that I didn't quote what you had said). I was just agreeing with Helen's comment about having multiple citations for things. For me I do that for everything I enter into FH (facts, names, etc.).

Bill

[sbell95]

Yes that's right. You can choose to omit the <whole record> citations but you can't choose to omit the Name citations.

Thank you, Lorna - and everyone else for the interesting discussion and responses to my query. I have also consulted a couple of other forum postings related to this:

• viewtopic.php?f=32&t=17358&p=97161
• viewtopic.php?f=32&t=16763&p=91877

I can see that (as always with FH) there are a variety of different approaches and workflows. I think I will continue using the <whole record> as opposed to Name for my 'existence'/top-level source for each individual. This way I can control whether or not the whole string of source citations are shown in reports against a name. I don't intend to publish reports often, but I find that they are a quick way of sharing information with distant cousins and DNA matches. I have been slowly building my own research notes and narratives for my direct ancestors in FH, and will continue to do so. But it's nice to know that any FH-generated reports will 'look' nice and correctly reflect the sources applicable to each fact.

Gary, I appreciate you posting about things that I have always considered but never voiced myself on this forum (chronic lurker here!). I see now that you have added a post to the wishlist forum, which I support.

One thing I wish FH did is to include hyperlinks between footnotes tags and footnotes themselves. I usually post-process my draft reports in Scrivener and that program can extract and maintain the hyperlinked citations, making revising the final work much less of a task.

I notice in the link that Helen posted, the sources are hyperlinked - but is that related to the software she used to upload her tree?

Ah. I don't use narrative reports -- if I want to write somebody's life story, I'll write it as a blog entry. If I want to write a proof statement, I'll write it in Word (and save it as a PDF to to attach to the relevant person or assertion. The closest I come to publishing a report looks like this, and as it is intended to enable others to use my research, I include everything warts and all.

[Gary_G]

Sarah;

Only Helen can say for sure what she used for her example.
I've not seen FH7 use hyperlinked footnotes in any test I've run on reports that typically contain footnotes.
I asked about it once and was told by an experienced member that it didn't at present.

[tatewise]

I notice in the link that Helen posted, the sources are hyperlinked - but is that related to the software she used to upload her tree?

If you are referring to the https://www.colevalleygirl.co.uk/tree/g1/p6.htm online report page, then that is produced by the FH Publish > Websites & Family Tree CD/DVDs... command to create HTML pages.
In any Report, the Save Report As > Web Page (HTML) option similarly produces HTML reports with hyperlinked citations.
I'm sure that option has been mentioned before.

[ColeValleyGirl]

I notice in the link that Helen posted, the sources are hyperlinked - but is that related to the software she used to upload her tree?

If you are referring to the https://www.colevalleygirl.co.uk/tree/g1/p6.htm online report page, then that is produced by the FH Publish > Websites & Family Tree CD/DVDs... command to create HTML pages.
In any Report, the Save Report As > Web Page (HTML) option similarly produces HTML reports with hyperlinked citations.

No, it isn't Mike. It's a combination of an old version of Gedsite and a lot of Drupal modules. Not for the faint hearted

[tatewise]

Sorry Helen, at first glance it looked rather like the FH-generated web page format.
Nevertheless, the FH commands I mentioned produce similar hyperlinked superscripts to the citation footnotes.

[Gary_G]

Mike;

My point was that the regular reports (not the webpages) don't appear to use hyperlinked footnotes, so they aren't available to be extracted by a post-editing program like Scrivener.

[tatewise]

I agree. I was just explaining the hyperlinks that you and others noticed in Helen's posting.

[Gary_G]

Understood, Mike. Probably shouldn't have mentioned you specifically. Apologies.

The comment was made to avoid any confusion with why the originally mentioned "Wish List" entry was logged.
Sometimes, it's easy for readers to lose track of the original context after an extended discussion.

[sbell95]

My point was that the regular reports (not the webpages) don't appear to use hyperlinked footnotes, so they aren't available to be extracted by a post-editing program like Scrivener.

A related wishlist item which could be expanded to include hyperlinked footnotes when exporting to RTF/HTML: https://www.fhug.org.uk/wishlist/wldisp ... lwlref=539

This is going off topic, but out of curiosity, are there features exclusive to Scrivener that you need to use over those provided in FH? I have dabbled in various 'external' writing programs (Google Docs, Obsidian, Scrivener, etc) but found that it was eventually better to have everything in FH... the rich text editor is not as fully featured as other programs, but I have found that keeping everything in one place is more beneficial.

[tatewise]

A related wishlist item which could be expanded to include hyperlinked footnotes when exporting to RTF/HTML:

Modifying existing Wish List entries is not popular because it arguably negates the existing Votes.

If you think you are going off-topic then please start a new thread.
The two threads can easily cross-refer to each other.