* Avoiding repeated pictures of Places in Reports

[AdrianBruce]

For all sorts of reasons, I am only just slowly converting to use Place Records instead of Note Records that refer to places. And today was the first time that I considered using Media linked to places via the Place Record. The attraction of this is that Narrative Reports have the option to show a picture linked to a place and at one touch every report that mentions Crewe, say, could include a picture of Crewe against each person having a fact placed there.

The problem that I foresee is - what happens when I use the same media item linked to a place record, that is also directly linked to a fact? For instance, I have someone educated at Wolverhampton Orphan Asylum and also resident in Wolverhampton. I deliberately linked the same media item to both the educated-event and the Wolverhampton place record. The result, when showing pictures for places in his narrative report, was that the picture of the Orphan Asylum appeared twice in his narrative report. (As I feared - it was, after all, exactly why I did the double link).

Q1 - Am I missing anything to suppress the double appearance against a single person? (I don't mind the same image appearing once against multiple people in the same, multi-person narrative report, say).

Q2 - Assuming I can't suppress such double appearances, is it "best practice" to use a fairly neutral picture for a place record, one which would not be expected to appear directly against an event? So no churches, etc. (I'd give the media record for places a distinctive name and hope I didn't load the same image twice).

[tatewise]

For the image against the Fact, use Edit and tick Exclude from Reports.

[AdrianBruce]

Thanks Mike - well, it's better than no option at all - it just means I have to do it against every entry where I find duplication.

I suspect I should try to ensure there's no duplication to start with, then use your suggestion for the small number of places where for some reason, I've got into a knot with the images.

[tatewise]

Adrian, on reflection I would class that problem as a fault, and should be reported to Calico Pie.

Compare it with repeated Citations of the same Source where only one copy is reported.

I think there should be Report Options to eliminate repeated Media images, either per Record or per Report.

There is a Report > Options > Pictures tab setting for 'Other' Picture Types to control images from Facts and Places, but does not really solve your problem, without excluding images you may wish to include.

[Frankie1966]

I think there should be Report Options to eliminate repeated Media images, either per Record or per Report.

I agree.

[AdrianBruce]

I'm trying to work out what constitutes repetition - and I'm struggling a bit.

Some basic points - if I put a media image against a place record, then it appears in a narrative report if any fact uses this place - but, as far as I can see, it appears (from this cause) once and once only per report.

(It's at least arguable that I'd expect to see it once per person-with-facts-there per report, i.e. it under-cooks it here!)

If I then link the same media record to different facts appearing in that report, the image appears once per linked fact as well as its appearance due to the use of that place in facts.

Bear in mind that the link of the media record to each fact could have different "note-as-caption" etc values and the link of the media record to the place record can have yet another value to "note-as-caption", as well as "Link to Detail" (not sure what use that is here?).

So, the question arises - what constitutes repetition here? Especially given that each use could have a different note-as-caption value...

I think that if I have put 3 links of St. Matthew's church (say) against 3 different facts (baptism, marriage, burial, say) then the program has to honour that triple link and show the image 3 times - especially if the 3 links have event specific captions. (And FH does indeed, behave like this).

This then just leaves the issue of whether it should also show the image linked to the place-record if the same image appears elsewhere linked to a fact. And right now, I think that in contradiction of my original concern, it has to, because the caption could well be different. Not merely that but, given that the place-linked image appears once per report (rather than once per individual), the current place-linked image might be some pages from the equivalent fact-linked image, leaving a big hole, as it were, in the display of the images if the repetition were removed.

One could argue that repetition is not just seeing the same media image again, but is actually same image, same caption, etc, same frame, etc. Only if all these are the same, then suppress the repeats - but frankly this is such a pain to work out (what else is in that "etc."?) that I am inclined to withdraw my original suggestion for suppression of repetition and say that if I am daft enough to have linked the same image in multiple ways, then I deserve the repeats. Bear in mind that I didn't find this repetition for any good real-world reason - I simply put my software tester's hat on and did it to see what would happen.

[tatewise]

First a clarification, which many users misunderstand, of the difference between Record and Report in published Reports.
Take for example an Individual Summary Report :-
If you select ONE Individual Record then there is only ONE Record in the Report, regardless of how many Individuals appear as Spouses and Children, and thus the Place Media will appear only ONCE.
But if you select say FIVE Individual Records then there are FIVE Records in the Report, and the Place Media will appear up to FIVE times.

Referring to my analogy with Source Citations, FH compares all the Citation subsidiary fields such as Entry Date, Assessment, Where within Source, Text From Source, Note and offers options for repeats.
See Report > Options > Sources near the top left Combine Identical Citations for Same Source and Use "Ibid." for Repeated Citations to Same Source.
Note that top right there are options to include Sources per Record or per Report as defined by me above.

So FH could compare Media Caption text and Link to Face/Details frames, and offer similar options to give the user the choice to include or exclude identical repeats per Record or per Report as defined by me above.
Here I am not just talking about Fact and Place media but ANY Media, so there may need to be more options to cope with all the possibilities.