* V6 Two-way Witness Links

[tatewise]

There are a growing number of scenarios where users wish to identify Witness Individuals and the Facts they witnessed.

Currently only Narrative Reports include details the Facts that a Witness witnessed.

No other Reports include those details.
A Query cannot conveniently list those details and a Plugin is needed as defined in Witness reporting (11976).
A Diagram cannot include those details as identified in Witnesses in Diagrams (12280).

Witness entries are currently one-way links akin to Associated Person links.
FH must compile the reverse links to display the Witness Facts with a blue arrow, but FH is keeping them to itself!

Many other relationships have two-way links, e.g. Family <> Husband, Family <> Wife, Family <> Child.
So it is easy to find Parent, Spouse, and Child Individuals and so on along the family tree.

It would be so useful for Witnesses to have two-way links with Data Refs such as below.
e.g.
%INDI._SHAR[1].INDI>BIRT[1]._SHAR[2]% = 2nd Witness to another Individual's Birth Event
%INDI._SHAR[2].INDI>RESI[3]._SHAR[3]% = 3rd Witness to another Individual's 3rd Residence Attribute
%INDI._SHAR[3].INDI>CENS[2]._SHAR[1]% = 1st Witness to another Individual's 2nd Census Event

They do NOT have to exist in the GEDCOM, only temporarily within FH.
Then they can easily be used in Queries and Diagrams and to some extent in most Reports.

[jimlad68]

......Currently only Narrative Reports include details the Facts that a Witness witnessed.
No other Reports include those details............

Any news, or has anyone any other workarounds for this.

After years of avoiding Witnesses with TMG, I have started to consider them in FH as the excellent Export Gedcom File plugin will at least make them portable.

I suppose I could use narrative reports instead of Individual and Family sheet, and admittedly the narrative report with sentences is much more flexible.

The other option is to use what I suspect is standard Gedcom Custom Events as in Ancestral Sources, the downside being no link with the original fact, unless I added an Association. I feel experiments coming on.

[tatewise]

No developments regarding Witness links.

Regarding your comment that Custom Facts have no link with the original Fact, the link will be via citations of the same Source record. I believe those citations are set-up by AS. They use the same concept as Census Events (and Birth and Occupation facts) for Individuals of one household are linked via a common Source record for the Census household.

[jimlad68]

Mike, good point re the "common" source record with method 1. The difference being that most census detail are of already "connected" individuals, but of course not always.

I was almost ready to jump to Witnesses, now I am tempted back to simple Gedcom Custom Facts with shared sources, just have to think of an easy way to make the shared source obvious and easy to spot in printed reports. I can already do a query to show all facts/individuals associated with a source.

Life is just one big compromise!