Hopefully I can word this question correctly to get across my meaning. I’m coming from TMG and after setting up the source, I normally enter my CD with a little more information than just page number (ie. for a good). I would say something in the CD like: page 163, showing Thomas Martin’s 1714 birth in Caroline (King William) County, Virginia and death 1792 in Albemarle County, Virginia. 1st question: TMG doesn’t ask for a Citation Name, so I’m a little iffy on how to name this citation. I don’t think a name with too much detail is good to use. What is the best way to name it? 2nd question: I see where to put the page number. But where to I put the rest of the detail so that it shows in the footnote? 3rd question: Where do the Research Notes, Detail Comments, etc show in the output? I know the the Source ref# and Citation Ref # don’t output, my info only, but what and where where does everything else output. I’m attaching an image of this particular footnote hoping someone can explain where everything goes. Thanks.
Someone else can explain better – but there are difference with Templated sources, FreeForm, and others.
I might be wrong but the screenshot looks to me like FreeForm
Which source template are you using? I can probably explain, but it will make a lot more sense if I know which source template you are using.
No it is a template, “Book, Basic Format”. Does that help?
In this case, I used “Book, Basic format” as the source type. Assuming that is the template.
Well, that particular template does not have the field you are looking for, the place to put the additional comments beyond the page number.
Just copy that template, edit the copy, add another citation field, named for example- CitationDetail. Now create a source with that new template. You’ll have a place to put that extra info. Of course, you’ll have to fix the sentence template so that is is actually used to generate the Footnote etc.
I used to do what you want to do when I was using TMG. I find these days, that I don’t actually want to print that extra info in my footnote (in your example- what the citation shows). I put that stuff in the citation comment (in the GUI, it’s labeled Detail comment).
Thanks Richard. I’m pretty adept at editing templates and sentences, so I shouldn’t have too much trouble. I understand what you are saying, just have not done this sort of stuff in RM yet. Actually haven’t really moved over yet. Trying to get familiar enough to move my entire database in the best way possible. I started a mini database to work on a brick wall. Thought that would help me transition by adding sources, media, etc. just like my main database. Does the Detail Comment print? Or is it just for the users information? GUI? What is that stand for?
There are a number of issues that I had to deal with in the TMG => RM migration.
I made a list, if I can find it. Interested?
Now that I know which template you are using, I think I understand what you are trying to accomplish. One way is the previously mentioned suggestion to copy some of RM’s source templates and add fields that you feel are missing.
But if understand your original question correctly, you were asking about where Research Notes, Detail Comments, etc show in the output? Well, they are not a part of the sentence for the citation and they are not a part of the footnote. Rather, there are report options to include them or not in addition to the footnotes. There is no source template field or source template options for this feature. You just turn Research Notes and Detail Comments on for any particular report at the time you run the report or your turn them off for any particular report at the time you run the report. They can be turned on and off separately. If you turn them on, they are printed at the bottom of each page as a part of footnotes or else they are printed at the end of the report as a part of endnotes.
Yes, Richard. I’m very interested! I don’t have a real large database, only about 10K, but somewhat customized. I’m a splitter when it comes to sourcing and I’m worried about that. Thank you.
Thanks Jerry. That explains a lot. I haven’t worked with reports yet. Looks like I need to start. What about best practices for naming the citation details? How detailed do I need to get? I get naming my sources to make them easier to find (I use a prefix designating types), but struggling with best way to name CDs.
I’m also a source splitter. For source splitters, I think the name of citation details in RM9 is almost meaningless. That’s because for a source splitter, the master source and the citation details are pretty much the exact same concept and in practice the citation details are completely null. That would mean that the citation name field should just be completely blank. But I don’t like the way RM9’s screens look when the citation name field is blank., so I make the citation details name pretty much the same as the source name field. Well, all my source names begin with an * so all my citation details names are the same as the source names except that they start with an !
Being a source splitter flies in the face of the feature that’s new in RM8 and RM9 called reusable citations. I think in general I would recommend that users who are new to genealogy and who are new to RM9 not be source splitters. The RM9 screens dealing with sources and citations are very antagonistic to source splitting and the screens are very much easier to work with if they are used as they are designed to be used - namely, for source lumping.
However, users coming new to RM9 are most often not new to genealogy and they probably are coming to RM9 with their source splitting vs. lumping habits well established. It can be hard to change those habits and even more importantly it can be hard to change decades of old data. I came to RM8/9 after decades of using RM1 through RM7 plus using a product called Family Origins before that, and Family Origins was from the same author as RM.
I became a source splitter because I was tired of entering the exact same citation multiple places, discovering a typo or other error in the citations, and then needing to chase down each of the identical citations and fixing each one of them. It wasn’t because of any deep philosophical belief in source splitting being more “correct” than source lumping. But now with RM9, I’m finding it difficult to go back to being a source lumper, even though RM9 is designed for source lumping and even though it is very hard to use with source splitting. There are two reasons.
The first reason is simply that I have a gazillion existing sources and citations that I would need to convert to source lumping. I have the programming skills to write scripts to make such changes directly in the RM database so that I wouldn’t have to spend thousands of hours editing them all by hand. There are some RM users who have already done the same thing and some of the needed scripts already exist. But I have discovered a deeper issue.
When I first became a source splitter in RM, as a part of that project I developed source templates of my own design, rather than using RM’s source templates which are all based on source lumping principles. And I discovered much to my surprise that for the first time in my life I actually seemed to understand how sources and citations are supposed to work. They went from being a mystery to me to being fairly simple. The root of the problem is that for source lumping to work, footnote/endnote sentence have to have a left part and a right part with the left part being the master source information and the right part being the citation details information. Somehow or other, a lot of the information in the various left parts and right parts seemed backwards to me in RM’s source templates that were designed for source lumping. And for a lot of them, the left parts and right parts actually are backwards. If you try to map the master source information to the SOUR tag in GEDCOM and the right part to the PAGE tag in GEDCOM, then the footnote/endnote information becomes impossibly mangled.
So even if I use the assistance of scripts to convert my old sources and citations, I can’t figure out how to adapt my templates to deal with the left part and right part of footnote/endnote sentences. My templates have no left part and right part. They only have one part. And I understand them. I’m still debating what to do about my sources and citations in RM9. So far, I’m leaving them as completely split. And I’m adapting my workflows in using RM9 the best I can to try to minimize the aggravation associated with being a source splitter in a piece of software that is designed for source lumping.
Aside from the antagonism towards source splitting, I think RM8 and RM9’s new reusable citation feature is pretty well done. However, it has a couple of little gotchas. One of them of the gotchas is that suppose you don’t use it and suppose you just make each citation a separate citation, even if the separate citations are identical. In that case, duplicate endnotes are not merged as they should be. For that reason, you pretty much have to use the reusable citation feature if you care at all about endnotes in reports. But then if you are using reusable citations, there are certain citations that can be imported directly from Ancestry using RM’s TreeShare feature that are identical except for having a different media file or a different Webtag. RM8 and RM9 do not take differences in media files or WebTags into account when it is deciding which citations are idential or not. This seems to be by design rather than being a bug. But if so, then I think it’s a terrible design flaw.
Well, Jerry, you pretty much hit all my concerns! I’ve been using TMG for 20+ years. I started with PAF then moved to a program called Generations by Sierra (mainly because it was the best for sourcing and documenting at the time). When they were sold and abandonded, I moved to TMG. I became a pretty severe splitter after the 1st year or two. I’m not familiar enough with RM yet to know how they will handle my thousands of sources. I’ve been told that when I import my database the sources will come over as free form.
As to one of my original questions: I do not want my Citation Detail to just be a page # for a book, for example, with no explanation as to how that page supports the fact/event I’m attempting to document. Maybe it will become more clear later.
I don’t really want, or plan, to change from a splitter to a lumper. I’m sorry to hear that RM doesn’t play well with us. Splitting makes it easier for me to search for my documentation and tends to clarify things for me. With TMG I can select to reuse any of the previous 15 sources and along with the source comes the most recently attached CD. Then I just have to edit the CD for the current fact being documented. I think this is why the naming of the CD really threw me. I don’t see a use for naming the CD. Sources, yes, but not CD. And that is a shame as it could save a lot of typing. Maybe I just need to work with it more. I wasn’t aware of the issues with report endnotes.
I guess I’m just going to have to dive in, import my DB and see what happens. I like to get my head wrapped around things before I jump in, but this may be an exception. Thanks for your thoughts on this.
Hi Kaye, My tuppence worth. If I’m reading your OP correctly…
1/ I would be inclined to use a Citation Name of ‘1714 birth TM’.
2/ I have several reusable master source templates (don’t we all??): one would be copied and renamed for a specific Person Fact. Using your example, I guess the authors, publishers, 1st edition etc type stuff would be added in the ‘fixed’ part of the copied source, which would then appear something like the Footnote, Short Footnote and Bibliography in your screenshot.
I try to put Research Note and Detail Comments type details into Fact Items, Notes for that specific Person Fact, e.g. your Source text. I should add, I have - in no way - been consistent in this!! The idea is that text is available to view on the person screen without delving into Sources.
Struggling to recall if there’s been a debate about GEDCOM issues re import/export of Research Notes etc. Maybe thinking of Citation, Quality entries…
Post 6; if you haven’t already found out: GUI = Graphical User Interface.
Your tmg sources will import using the same source templates they used in tmg. Import does a good job of preserving your tmg sources.
Citation names are also autogenerated. If the names to that are auto produced are not good enough, if say that your source templates needs a bit of work.
If your splitting, I don’t think the citation name will ever be an issue. For my split as sources, I just name them all “-”.
I do both splitting and lumping. Works fine.
Good to know Richard. Over the 20+ years of use, my TMG is pretty customized. Lots of roles, customized templates, sentences, etc. I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and do an import to see what happens. New question: Do sort dates import nicely?
Am very interested in any notes you have on moving from TMG to RM. Anything is appreciated and I’m sure will be useful.
Kaye
Two documents prepared by RM folks on moving from TMG in case you haven’t found them.
Thanks BobC. Yes I do have those two docs. I’ve been going over them. If you have anything ideas/suggestions, I’m open to learning from your experience.
K
I’m not a TMG user, just been with RM and its predecessor Family Origins since DOS days.
RM import of TMG project
Father and mother tags and their citations are merged into a new ChildParent tag. (I have a script to remove duplicate citations)
Married name imports as an alternate name but with no name-type set.
No automated method exists to make fix.
Custom templates did not transfer correctly until I made a change in TMG before import. This varies with TMG database. Do a trial import and check whether yours works.
Multi-line text in Source fields in TMG are preserved but RM expects them to be single line. So these should be fixed.
Don’t remember how sort date were handled on transfer.