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General => Technical Help => Family History Programs, Tree Organisation, Presentation => Topic started by: JAKnighton on Sunday 01 January 17 21:30 GMT (UK)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 ;)
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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
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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. :-\
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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.
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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 :D
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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 ;)
I completely agree this is one feature I have been thinking of for a while and would be so useful - having it slightly greyed out in comparison to relatives that have sources against them and have been confirmed.
Another one for me would be to have a checklist / to-do list of sources. I know ancestry nicely link sources into the tree but would like others to have this feature - for example I could print a family group report and would put a checklist next to them for birth, marriage, death record sources etc.
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davidft and mikechristopher, regarding “Speculative” people:
The program I use (MacFamilyTree) has a system that may partly answer your request. You can put different “Labels” on people and then use “Smart Filters” to produce a list of like people, which can be printed out if you wish. (Probably other programs have similar “workarounds” like this hidden amongst their features.)
Example: The standard label options are: Important; Incomplete: Noteworthy; and Private. You can also make up your own. So could label a number of people “Speculative”. Then if you wanted to see a list of those people you can create a “Smart Filter” that filters out all other people except those labelled “Speculative”. (The “Smart Filters” have other purposes - this is just one use to which they can be put.) The Person List also has options for including things like birth and death dates, birth and death places, ages and Kekule numbers.
I use the above system for labelling and listing people I haven’t finished documenting - e.g. sources and citations, place coordinates, media items. When I do complete them I remove their label and - in theory! - reduce my list of incompletes.
But these are all only in the editing pages, so you can’t for example distinguish a “Speculative” person in the family tree charts or in reports. The only thing I can think of to achieve that would be to give them distinguishing additions to their names, e.g. naming a speculative Dougal McGregor as ?Dougal McGregor or some such.
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One feature I would like to see is the ability to easily distinguish between confirmed ancestors and speculative ones.
I would say for that...when you type in the name, put John (possible/spec) Smith i.e. when you do your 'view' of 'Index of Individuals' you will be able to tell they are only possibles?
I can do that on FTM if I wish to.
Annie
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Surely everyone's tree has lots of "possible ancestors"? The commercial software providers are missing a trick here.
Most FH programs (more or less) stick to the gedcom standard which doesn't allow for 'possible ancestors'. Most programs will allow you to use custom tags however so you could mark all your 'possibles' in that way. The problem with doing that is forgetting or deleting a tag means that person becomes a part of your accepted tree.
I put unverified information about possible ancestors into a note of the nearest related individual headed by a comment. For example, I have a supposedly well researched line of ancestors going back to 16xx but I've never had time to follow it up, so all of that information is stored in my ggggf's notes under the heading 'possible ancestors, information from...' or something like that. Works for me and hopefully its meaning will be clear to anyone who inherits my data.
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Decided finally to invest in a proper FT Program but couldn't decide which one. I've tried one or two in the past, however always returned to paper methods and USB's. After reading your comments I'm inclined to agree with MacGroger Reply no. 2. Am I expecting too much for a simple FH program for a Windows 7 PC?
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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.
Totally agree Jomot .... a man named Wildey from NZ saw the value in having a 'Marriage Witness Index' (MWI) a few years ago ..... I was a follower and a contributor along with a fellow Keith Flinders from NZ and we conjointly tried to invoke interest in a number of areas but there was little or no interest.
I tried on rootschat but it didn't get off the ground.
I see that someone is moving in this direction so you could try here;
http://www.genealogybuff.com/misc/ukmarwit/ukwitlnd2.htm
I think an MWI on rootschat is long overdue.
Joe
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As a newbie, I'm months late to this party but maybe I can still contribute. Back in the stone age of computer software, I used to develop some of it. As a ICT-dinosaur and amateur genealogist, Mikechristopher's great question resonated with me.
Back in the stone age of ICT we used to develop 'relational databases'. That meant that the 'data records' were separate from the many and various 'interrelationships' that could exist between these data records. Updating data records would't change the interrelationships. Adding or updating interrelationships wouldn't change the data records. Users were 'presented' with the data and interrelationships that were relevant to their queries.
The same principle is true today for almost all genealogy websites/software. We can update the data for a 'person' without changing family relationships. We can also change the relationships without changing the 'person' data. The main limitation of popular websites and offline-software is that the choice of relationships is limited to the obvious family ones: father, mother, spouse, child. Technically it would be a no-brainer to add data and relationships such as 'possible birth-date, possible death-date, possible father, possible mother, possible child, possible marriage, possible residence', etc. I suspect that the decision to limit the options is more driven by marketing (to beginners) than by a lack of technical capabilities.
Mikechristopher's question helped me to look into the difference between 'person-based' record-keeping' and 'evidence-based' record-keeping. Ideally, these are not mutually exclusive. Popular websites/off-line software does however tend toward 'person-based' record keeping.
Like McGroger, I also use family tree offline (synched with Ancestry online). I like his tips and I intend to use these!
I'm a relative newbie but it seems to me that everyone has to figure out how best to keep track of 'people facts', 'source documents' and (possible) 'relationships' separately. I googled 'genealogy separate people relationships sources' and found software I'd never heard of before!
Mike
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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.
Totally agree Jomot .... a man named Wildey from NZ saw the value in having a 'Marriage Witness Index' (MWI) a few years ago ..... I was a follower and a contributor along with a fellow Keith Flinders from NZ and we conjointly tried to invoke interest in a number of areas but there was little or no interest.
I tried on rootschat but it didn't get off the ground.
I see that someone is moving in this direction so you could try here;
http://www.genealogybuff.com/misc/ukmarwit/ukwitlnd2.htm
I think an MWI on rootschat is long overdue.
Joe
This can be done in Family Historian
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Interesting comments Mike, but are you really such a dinosaur? Wouldn't relational databases be more bronze-age than stone-age?
I think I have, perhaps by accident, adopted a kind of hybrid approach in that I use both a family history programme (off-line) and a collection of databases which store sources of information and 'things to do'.
The family history programme is essentially a front-end which makes it easy manage and display the 'person' data, and I use it mainly because my technical skills aren't up to developing similar functionality. The programme is old (obsolete) but I use it because it has functionality to import and export data in a way which is convenient. It also automatically assigns each individual a reference number which is my unique identifier in the external databases I have built.
These external databases are my records management, so contain things like census records (per household/year), BMD records, Baptisms, Marriages and Deaths. When a new dataset becomes available I just build a new database, or a new table in an existing one, to contain the new data. For example, the census database will contain one record per household per census year, with each individual per household having a separate record linked to that household. One field in the individual's record contains the unique reference number for that person in the family history programme.
That way I can produce a report showing all the records of the various different types I have for a particular individual - I can also identify if a particular record type is missing for them (e.g. which people do I still need to find on the 1939 Register?) Likewise, I can identify if there are other people in a household who I've not investigated and have a look at them if I've got nothing else to do.
The final element is my 'things to do' database. I keep track of each individual's records and if there are missing bits of information to look for. Within this database I have notes of when I've last looked for missing data and any clues I've found. It is also a store of future things I need to do, so for example if information is needed from a particular record office this will be recorded. Then when I'm planning a trip to that record office I can simply extract all the 'jobs' that I can do while I'm there.
The bit I'm happiest with is that because the data is all linked (in the way I want it to be) I can print a list of jobs to do which also contains relevant facts about the person. So for example if I'm looking for a particuar census record for a person I'll have with me the places of residence and occupations of the person in previous and subsequent years.
So yes, I was frustrated at the limitations of the then available family history software and have ended up with a hybrid approach of person and records-based data.
My biggest grumble with the family history programme I use is similar to the 'speculative people' one davidft raises. For some people who are very distantly related I may know who their parents are, but I don't want to add the parents individually to the database as they are so remotely related to me. It would be nice to attach a 'fact' to the individual to detail the parent(s) name(s) which the programme would interpret as being separate individuals when necessary or useful (e.g. searching for someone). I have a workaround of entering the parent's names into an unused text field (Occupation) but this only works as a note rather than having any functionality.
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It would be nice to attach a 'fact' to the individual to detail the parent(s) name(s) which the programme would interpret as being separate individuals when necessary or useful (e.g. searching for someone). I have a workaround of entering the parent's names into an unused text field (Occupation) but this only works as a note rather than having any functionality.
I use Family Historian. To get around this and to make narrative reports a little more informative, I have amended the default Birth and Baptism sentence templates to include a section for Parents of a non-blood related tree. This then appears similar to the sentences for a blood relative in the report. The amended Baptism sentence template reads:
{individual}<, {=GetLabelledText(%FACT.NOTE2%,"Parents:")},> was <{=GetLabelledText(%FACT.NOTE2%,"Type:")}> baptised {date} at {_place}<. {=GetLabelledText(%FACT.NOTE2%,"Note:")}>
with the following in the fact note section of the attached example for the husband of Elizabeth Collett is a blood relative - Parents: son of Richard and Mary RAGG.
The only difference in the display of parentage in the narrative report between the two individuals is the fact I don't have any dates for Richard and Mary Ragg, but these could be manually entered easily enough into the note section if known. Although they won't appear in the people index for the tree, they could be found by the find functionality.
While I could choose to use the Family Historian v6 Witness functionality to do the same and amend the fact and sentence templates accordingly, I have chosen not to and even then they wouldn't appear in the person index as they do not have individual person records which is what I wanted to avoid as the trees are large enough anyway.
Edit - I appreciate that the sentence template won't mean much to anyone who doesn't use such functionality, but for anyone that does it is an example of what can be achieve in Family Historian.
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Interesting comments Mike, but are you really such a dinosaur? Wouldn't relational databases be more bronze-age than stone-age?
I think I have, perhaps by accident, adopted a kind of hybrid approach in that I use both a family history programme (off-line) and a collection of databases which store sources of information and 'things to do'.
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Hi Nick,
Thanks for your detailed reply - I've learnt lot from it! I've been developing a family tree on and off for about 5 years but I'm only just learning about some of the pitfalls and the discipline required to avoid these. A 'hybrid solution' definitely seems the best way to go! At the moment, this seems the only way to take control of record-keeping and the integrity of both factual data and relationship data.
Your reply - along with other posts I've read - has really changed my perspective on the practice of genealogy. Especially on record-keeping, workflow, websites and tools.
Like many beginners, I started out using one of the big websites (in my case Ancestry). I soon discovered that reviewing and applying plausible 'hints' had compromised my data in a big way! I went back and re-checked all the main links in the tree. Around the same time, I discovered that other websites provided data that Ancestry didn't bring to the surface. So I concluded that I at least needed a 'hybrid' set of sources.
A few days ago I discovered (via a Dutch genealogy forum) http://www.tamurajones.net (http://www.tamurajones.net) and Tamura's 2012 posts on data consistency checking. I found out that while some websites and programs do this, many don't. So my conclusion was: I need to 'own' my data and use various tools and websites that help me store research, check and present this data (a hybrid solution).
Ancestry is now my main 'presentation tool' and one of multiple websites for research. I've been using FTM (in synch with Ancestry) to provide additional tools. But I discovered that other software such as 'RootsMagic' and MyHeritage's 'Family Tree Builder'' are better at checking for inconsistencies in the data.
My personal 'hybrid solution' will undoubtedly evolve much as yours has. But the principles of separating factual data en relationship data from each other and both from specific 'applications' used to be the theory and I'm finding out that this is good practice too. ;)
And you're right Nick, compared to the pioneers of computing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pioneers_in_computer_science (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pioneers_in_computer_science)) I arrived in 1976 (with punched cards, paper-tape and computers that took up a whole room) pretty late on the scene. Still, it amazes me how relatively primitive the IT-world looked in the decennia leading up to the current one. I guess that will continue for some time to come!
Regards,
Mike
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I absolutely agree with the idea of 'owing' your data Mike. I am gobsmacked at the way people trade their privacy for convenience and upload their life (even 'intimate' pictures) onto the data storage systems of corporations whose T&C's clearly state that whatever you upload becomes the property of the corporation who can use the data for whatever purpose they like.
A discussion about FTM on Rootschat right now also illustrates the risks/costs of conveninece. And something which is offered today as a 'free' service may well cost you dearly in future. But everybody is entitled to make their own chioce. :)
One of the interesting aspects of data structures in family history - which also touches on PaulStaffs comments and the discussion about 'possible relations' - are the limitations imposed by the gedcom structure. Although people think of gedcom files as a means of transferring data, they are in some ways databases in their own right. I think it would be feasible to build a family history database front end which used nothing but a gedcom file for data storage.
But as PaulStaffs notes, the inability to include different types of 'relationship' in a gedcom file means that any commercial software has to either stick rigidly to 'relationships' that gedcom can handle, or else renounce the use of gedcom as an import/export facility. It would be a brave commercial software house which advertised its new product as not compatible with the industry standard transfer protocol and in effect locks the user's data into a proprietary format.
Of course the way different software handles the import and export of gedcom does mean that data may be discarded during a transfer, but many users will be blissfully unaware that bits of their precious research are being thrown away, and be quite content that the universality of gedcom has allowed them to transfer their tree from software 'A' to software 'B'.
There are clearly 'politics' involved in the gedcom structure (which I won't go into here!), but until a new gedcom structure is agreed, or someone big goes it alone, then many of the additional features people may want from their family history software simply won't happen. I guess IT dinosaurs could look on it as family history's "640kb conventional memory limit". In the medum-term there will be many incompatible workarounds, in the longer-term people won't even remember what you are talking about ;D
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Again, thanks for helping me along the learning curve, Nick! I'm just finding out more about GEDCOM, genealogical data exchange and some of the pitfalls. I take your point. I'm beginning to see why a desktop-based hybrid solution based is more manageable than trying to keep data fully syncyhed between desktop and multiple web-based trees GEDCOM!
Mike
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Another missing feature, although a bit of a niche one, is something I've also developed my own approach to and call 'Relative Level' or 'RelLevel' for short.
It came about when my ability to regularly visit Kew was coming to an end. I wanted to prioritise who I was going to research while I could still easily access information at TNA.
I have to confess that I regularly add people to my database who are not conventionally related to me. Some people would regard this as a sin, but for both practical and interest reasons I prefer to add people who may not be directly related, but who do have a connection of some kind. For example, I would add the spouse of a cousin, but then also possibly add the parents and siblings of the spouse (depending on circumstances). This particularly applies to some of my Norfolk families where there are multiple connections and I found out quite early on that it saved a lot of time just to add the whole of each family in one go, rather than individually as and when I inevitably found another connection ;D
I've looked, but never found a system which grades or measures the closeness of two people - most family history software seems to limit itself to blood relations and either reports the nature of the relationship (e.g. X cousin Y-times removed) or unhelpfully "Not related".
My rather crude approach (it was done in a hurry) assigns a RelLevel of '1' to blood relations. Those married to a blood relation get a RelLevel of '2'. The parents and siblings of a RelLevel 2 person get a '3', and the people married to a '3' will have a RelLevel of '4'. This repeats adding one to the RelLevel until all people related by blood or marriage or marriage+blood have been assigned a RelLevel. So in effect, all my "Not related" people are graded according to how close they are to being 'conventionally' related. I have written a Visual Basic module within an Access database to do the RelLevel calculations quickly, although not yet 'on the fly'.
I find this RelLevel useful in two ways:
Firstly the original purpose of prioritising my research - when a new dataset comes available I always start by looking for 1's then 2's etc. If I have limited time at an archive I order the jobs I want to do by RelLevel so the most important ones get done first.
Secondly, when adding new people to my tree (database) I use the RelLevel to help decide whether to add the whole family, to only add the parents, or to only record the names of parents in the person's 'notes' field.
As I said, something of a niche requirement! I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has done something similar, or indeed if there is a recognised methodology.
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Family Historian has an add-on which allows you to develop plug-ins in their terminology, using the LUA programming language. Though I haven't used it, it strikes me that you'd be able to create your Relative Level reports with it and give you the capacity to come up with all sorts of new ideas
It's not available in the trial version but the deposited plugins in the store may give you a flavour of the capability http://www.family-historian.co.uk/pluginstore/browse-all-plugins
I suspect that there's a lot of untapped potential in these plugins because of the learning curve in getting to grips with the programming but a bit of focus and effort would probably achieve a lot.
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Thanks StevieSteve. I've had a look at the list of plug-ins and the source code for a few of them - very interesting! Although the existing list doesn't include anything similar to my Relative Level, you are right that Family Historian plug-ins would allow that kind of thing to be done.
It is great to see software that encourages users to develop their own tweaks, and share them, rather than having a rigid 'take it or leave it' approach.