What features do all Family Tree Programs lack?

[JAKnighton]

I have tried many different family tree programs and have found them all to be limiting in some way.

I think the biggest thing is how facts and sources integrate. Ideally, a source in itself should count as a fact.

Insteading of picking out a residence and an occupation from a census as separate facts and then attaching a source citation for the census, a fully customisable census "widget" should be available for each person where the information can be entered and in effect act as its own source.

If you catch my drift?

That's just me rambling though, so feel free to share what you think programs are missing.

[StevieSteve]

I'm not sure I do fully get your drift but think this is similar to what Ancestral Sources for Family Historian does - you enter details from the census and it creates Census and optional birth, occupation etc events (but not residence) for each individual. Also creates a source and citations though.


My wishlist for a FH program would be to have a kind of AI that updated To Do lists so that if I e.g.  entered someone died in a London workhouse it would automatically add it to the things I need to look up at LMA.  I've kind of got my program to do that but it's all a bit too manual.

[McGroger]

An updated gedcom to include media, and mandatory compliance by all programs with that gedcom - to enable seamless transfer between programs.
This will become increasingly important as more programs come and go. How do we leave all our work to our children and grandchildren if they can’t access it? Unless something more permanent comes along, the only real, reliable medium is still paper.

Inbuilt maps to include relevant historical maps. Many of my ‘Places’ are long gone farms in 17/18/19th century Scotland. I attach a media image of an old map to each place to supplement the inbuilt mapping. But this ‘wish’ would probably be too cost prohibitive.

[Jomot]

Possibly already included in one of the programs but I'd love some way to be able to record witnesses to marriages etc, which could then also be searched within the main database. 

[davidft]

One feature I would like to see is the ability to easily distinguish between confirmed ancestors and speculative ones. Many people in their research come across possible ancestors and rather than record them on endless pieces of paper that all too easily get lost it would be good to put them directly on a tree to see where they might fit in.

How I envisage it working is all confirmed ancestors would be in one colour and all speculative ones in another so at a glance you could see where further research was needed.

And if this facility already exists in some FT programmes please break it to me gently and I will go and have a doh!  moment 

[Jebber]

An updated gedcom to include media, and mandatory compliance by all programs with that gedcom - to enable seamless transfer between programs.
This will become increasingly important as more programs come and go.

I agree wholeheartedly.

 With nearly thirty years research,  when I had to change programmes on buying a new laptop with Windows 8,  all vitals transferred smoothly with the gedcom, but took me a year to enter all the facts and notes that didn't correspond, and reattach all the media etc.


Jebber 

[smudwhisk]

I'm not sure I do fully get your drift but think this is similar to what Ancestral Sources for Family Historian does - you enter details from the census and it creates Census and optional birth, occupation etc events (but not residence) for each individual. Also creates a source and citations though.

That's why I don't use Ancestral Sources, I don't want separate occupation "Facts" for Census.  Doesn't read very well in Reports.  I manually add Census Facts, with Sources, in Family Historian and have customised the sentence template so I can use the note section to enter things like occupation and the like.  That way I get one Fact with both residence, occupation and who they were with.  Reads much better in Reports.  It may take longer than using Ancestral Sources, but means I don't have so much editing to do.  In any case I use Census Family Facts for couples who are together on the Census to reduce the repetition in Reports and you can't use these in Ancestral Sources.  Copy and Paste comes in handy when entering the same household across multiple individuals and then only a little editing is needed as long as you create the source and attach media prior to copying.

It is of course very much down to personal preference and how you wish to use and present your research.

One thing I wish it would do is allow you to create sentences that flow from one Fact to another, namely birth and baptism or death and burial, instead of having two separate Sentences.  It would read far better in Reports.  I want to keep separate Facts where I have both the birth and baptism details but it would be so much nicer if the Report sentence read something like Fred Smith was born on a certain date at a certain place and baptised on a certain date at a certain place, rather than two separate sentences.

[clairec666]

One feature I would like to see is the ability to easily distinguish between confirmed ancestors and speculative ones. Many people in their research come across possible ancestors and rather than record them on endless pieces of paper that all too easily get lost it would be good to put them directly on a tree to see where they might fit in.

I've written my own family tree software (not for public use - it only makes sense to me!) and I added this feature a while ago. You can create a "link" between any two people in the tree and give it a description, e.g. "possible father", "uncle", "grandson" etc. When you create a tree diagram, the "possibles and probables" are connected with a dotted line to distinguish them from the "definites".

Surely everyone's tree has lots of "possible ancestors"? The commercial software providers are missing a trick here.

The other feature I use a lot is a text search of each person's "notes" section, and I can use this to draw up a quick "to do" list. E.g. if there's something I need to look up on FindMyPast (I'm not subscribed) I can record this in the notes then look it up at the library.

[DavidG02]

I guess this is pure laziness , but I would like the ability to slide a fact into place. ie using my Family History site I find a link and I then have to manually enter the info. Be much easier to highlight the fact and slide it across windows into my FH program.

Yes laziness