* Burial date anomaly in Focus window?

[jclifford]

If there is a burial date but no death date for a person, the burial date is shown for the main individual at the top of the window and for all his children further down but not (in between) for the individual and his spouse. Is there a reason for this?

[tatewise]

I cannot see the problem, as Burial details appear in all three places.

Unless you have a Death Event with no Date, and a Burial Event with a Date, in which case I see what you mean. I think the explanation is that the top box, and Child entry, only show Dates, so they display the best Date available, whereas the central box shows Date & Place & Age and so displays the most significant Event recorded from Death/Cremation/Burial.

So, either delete the Death Event or give it a Date such as Before date or an Approx date.

Strangely, if there is a Cremation Event with Date it does NOT appear in the top box, but does in the centre and for a Child.

FocusBurial.PNG (120.76 KiB) Viewed 12712 times

[Keithj]

As Mike says. I work on the basis that a burial is not going to be more than 4 weeks after the death/cremation unless there are very specific reasons. In the absence of other information, I put circa and the burial year as the year of death. I've not had any problems with that (so far).

[jclifford]

The problem for me is that I am mainly researching the 16/17th centuries when there are few birth or death dates recorded, only christening and burials.

So i am looking at a screen on which the biggest boxes are the individual in Focus and his/her spouse and in these boxes it shows me their christening dates but no indication of when they died/were buried. I know that i can see one of these dates at the top of the window and the other somewhere else after a few clicks, but it just seems perverse that FH shows in the window the burial dates for everyone else on the screen (parents and children) but not for the main couple in Focus.

So I wonder whether this is a glitch in the programme or whether i have failed to find a setting which can correct the problem.

[tatewise]

I thought I had explained how the display is derived, and how to get what you want to see.
What part of my reply do you not understand?
If you check my screenshot it does show Burial Date in central main box.

[jclifford]

I have just looked more closely at the screen shot in Mike's response to my original question. In my case (using FH6) the "Buried 2014" text would not be there, so it looks as though I have missed a setting somewhere.

[tatewise]

What is shown there?
If "Death" with no further details, then you have entered a Death Event with no details, so delete that Death Event as I suggested.

[jclifford]

Mike, I understood your reply but it seemed not relevant because I generally do not have deaths recorded (as explained previously),

If you could point me to some instructions for how to attach screenshots to posts, I will try to send an example of the problem.

As far as I can see there are no relevant options in the Preferences dialogue for the Focus Window.

I do have undated death events which I think resullt from importing the Dead/Living flag from another genealogy programme, but presumably you also have a death event for the person who was buried in 2014?

[jclifford]

So the only way round is to delete the death event from several thousand records?

[NickiP]

I think you've hit the nail on the head with your comment about blank death events, that would cause the different view in the middle view of the focus middle.

Perhaps to clarify what Mike has said in images, this is what happens.

If you see below, in a similar scenario to what I suspect you have, I don't have a death date but have a burial date entered:


While the parents show burial dates in the son's focus window, if I swap to their focus window the middle view shows that they died in a different parish.


This is normal behaviour for Family Historian. As Mike has said, in the focus window view the death event without a date will take precedence over a burial event with a date.

If I add a blank death event with no details to the original individual, then this is what shows in the focus window then:


I sometimes find I've got that problem with both birth/baptism and death/burial entries where I've inadvertently at some point entered the baptism or burial event in the birth/death event and then just deleted the details instead of removing the event itself. The effect is the same whether done this way or having imported blank events.

Unfortunately the only way to fix the problem is to remove the blank events.

Mike, could spin your magic and create a plugin that would remove empty death events automatically?

[tatewise]

In answer to jclifford's points:

To attach screenshots use the Upload attachment tab below the message entry box, use Browse and Add the file, then the Place inline option.

Agreed, "there are no relevant options in the Preferences dialogue for the Focus Window".

No, I do NOT "have a death event for the person who was buried in 2014".

You say you "generally do not have deaths recorded" but also need "to delete the death event from several thousand records", which appear to contradict each other.

With a simply Fact Query it is very easy to list all the Death Events that have no details, and delete them all in one go. Is that what you want to do?

Having said all that, I have reviewed how the Focus Window boxes handle Birth, Baptism & Christening events.
If the Birth event exists but has no Date and no Place then it is never shown, and any Baptism or Christening events are shown in all boxes instead.
It seems to me that similar rules should be applied to Death, Burial & Cremation events, such that if a Death event exists but has no Date and no Place and no Age, then it is never shown, and any Burial or Cremation events are shown in all boxes instead.
This inconsistency should be reported to Calico Pie via support@family-historian.co.uk.

[NickiP]

In answer to jclifford's points:

Having said all that, I have reviewed how the Focus Window boxes handle Birth, Baptism & Christening events.
If the Birth event exists but has no Date and no Place then it is never shown,

I agree it doesn't show on the Focus Window, but it does show in Narrative Reports when it says "was born".

[tatewise]

Agreed, but so does evey Fact, with or without any details, providing there is a Sentence Template defined for the Fact. I don't see how that impacts the Focus Window.

Note that the Birth Event can have other fields, such as Address, or Age, or Note, but still won't appear in Focus Window, and will appear in Reports.

[jclifford]

We seem to be getting somewhere now. Thank you Mike for suggesting a Fact Query.

I think that Mike and I have been misunderstanding each other because I have been using Legacy and TNG which both have an event for a recorded and sourced death and a separate Dead/Living flag based often on a calculation or assumption but not a source. I assume that this is for reasons of privacy in the internet era.

Family Historian is based on the pre-internet GEDCOM standard where there is a single tag DEAT. So the Gedcom files which I have exported from Legacy have "1 DEAT Y" for a person who is Dead but has no Death event and "1 DEAT" followed by "2 Date etc" and 2 SOUR etc" for those who have a Death event. Family Historian imports both as a Death Fact.

So it is true that my data file has very few records with a recorded death event but Legacy has given all my records a Dead flag based on their date of christening or other information. And then Family Historian has given them all a Death Fact, mostly without a date or source, which Family Historian has imported without distinguishing between those with a Y and the others.

I will report the situation to Calico Pie as Mike suggests.

[tatewise]

You are on the right track, but misunderstand the GEDCOM created by Legacy and imported to FH.

The only way Legacy can represent the Dead flag in GEDCOM is to use the 1 DEAT event tag with no subsidiary details, for which GEDCOM requires the Y to be added to prevent the event tag being discarded due to lack of details. This nuance of GEDCOM is often misunderstood.

FH then correctly imports the 1 DEAT Y as a Death Event with no details.

The how_to:import_from_legacy|> Import from Legacy article may offer other tips.

BTW: FH similarly has Living and Private flags for privacy, but uses a different 'dialect' of GEDCOM to represent them.

That was not the problem to report to Calio Pie, but the inconsistent way in which Death without details is shown on the Focus Window compared with Birth without details.

[jclifford]

Mike, thank you for the explanation re DEAT Y inGedcom.

I did report the Focus window inconsistency to Calico Pie (by copying your explanation of it) but I also mentioned the Gedcom situation as well because I don't think I agree with you that " importing the 1 DEAT Y as a Death Event with no details" is correct.

if there are no verifiable details I don't think it should rank as an Event or Fact; perhaps FH should add it as a note or simply ignore it.

And thank you for drawing my attention to the Living Flag. I have discovered how to set or delete it but have not been able to locate it showing in the property box of the individual.

[jclifford]

P.S. I have now found the flag an the All tab.

Thanks also for the link to the Knowledgs base article.

[tatewise]

I am afraid you are incorrect regarding your interpretation of 1 DEAT Y, and FH has no alternative than to create a Death Event, because that is the glossary:gedcom|> GEDCOM Standard 5.5 specification on Page 4:

The meaning of a GEDCOM tag without a value on its line depends on its subordinate context for any assertions intended by the researcher. For example, in an event structure, a subordinate DATE and/or PLACe value imply that an event happened. However, a subordinate NOTE or SOURce context by themselves do not imply that the event took place. For a researcher to indicate that an event took place without knowing a date or a place requires that a Y(es) value be added to the event tag line. Using this convention protects GEDCOM processors which may remove (prune) lines that have no value and also no subordinate lines. A N(o) value must not be used on an event tag line to assert that the event never happened. This requires the definition of a different tag.

It is simply unfortunate that some features in some products cannot migrate via GEDCOM without some mutual agreement. But without GEDCOM there would be very little opportunity to migrate at all.

BTW: Flags can be made more visible on Customised tabs or in the Records Window.

[NickiP]

Agreed, but so does evey Fact, with or without any details, providing there is a Sentence Template defined for the Fact. I don't see how that impacts the Focus Window.

Note that the Birth Event can have other fields, such as Address, or Age, or Note, but still won't appear in Focus Window, and will appear in Reports.

My point was that if blank facts exist, they do appear in the Narrative Reports. Therefore, its advisable to remove them as they affect things other than what just appears in the Focus Window and there is no way around it as its not an anomoly with FH, but how the program works.

[jclifford]

I think that FH could interpret the GEDCOM DEAT Y tag by turning OFF the Living flag but not creating a Fact. This would be more useful (to me! and probably others) and is not an incorrect interpretation of the GEDCOM. TNG also uses GEDCOMs and they interpret it as "DIED Yes date unknown".

Incidentally I think that a flag whose default state is Living is much safer from a privacy point of view than the FH one seems to be.

[tatewise]

jclifford: I think we will have to agree to disagree about 1 DEAT Y. FH offers plenty of tools to adjust imported GEDCOM to suit most user needs. You can choose whatever Flags you like in FH and assign them to any Individual records.

NickiP: But 'blank fact' has different interpretations in different contexts. In the Focus Window it is only relevant to BIRTh and DEATh with no DATE, AGE, or PLACe field, whereas in Narrative Reports it is relevant to all Facts with no subsidiary fields, which in FH V6 can be tested and the Sentence excluded, so there is a workaround.

[stewartrb]

I was with Legacy for a time.

And my data has thousands of blank Death facts now. No date, place, cause, note, source. Just a helpful "He died." from the automatic sentence creation.

One such individual is the son, who I know by name only, of an Armenian General who died in 385.

That he's dead is obvious. But I wouldn't have added the fact myself to clarify. (He is not the Highlander.)

Curiously, whatever software added these to my database did not add a matching blank Birth fact. Everyone dies. But not everyone is born I guess.

Is there an easy "Blank Fact Scrubber" plug-in perhaps? I don't see one in the Plugin Store using "blank" as a search.

[tatewise]

It is quite easy to create a Fact Query to detect blank empty Facts and delete them via the Result Set.

Install the ATTACHMENTS All Empty Facts Query, and run it, then in the Result Set select any Facts in the left-hand column and hit the Delete key. You will be warned before confirming with OK.

[ATTACHMENT now deleted as in FHUG Downloads]

[stewartrb]

Thank you.

[BillH]

Mike,

I ran this query and found some empties, but also found one that isn't really empty. It is a marriage with the date set as: "14 MAR Year Unknown". That is the only field filled in for the marriage.

Bill