Connection port failure bug and features requests

RootsMagic
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1

Good morning, people!

Support

I am a registered customer of RootsMagic and own a RootsMagic licence. Therefore, I can report the connection port failure bug.

In the other topic, I was running RootsMagic with Wine on Linux, and I put a screenshot showing that, when I tried to log in to FamilySearch, any browser can not connect to RootsMagic 9.1.2 and 9.1.3 to send the authorization code, and the port that it tries to use is in the URL. But I could log in to Ancestry.
RootsMagic 9.1.2 and RootsMagic 9.1.3 report that they can open that port, and suggest that I have to verify my firewall settings.

Observe that, on RootsMagic 9.1.1, I could connect log in to FamilySearch and any browser could connect to this software to send the authorization code.

I verified the firewalls and no local ports are blocked. I suspect that RootsMagic 9.1.2 stopped working after RootsMagic developers repaired a log on problem for macOS, where RootsMagic 9 also runs in a sort of bottle provided by the RootsMagic developers.

I think it is possible that RootsMagic 9 for macOS is much bigger than the Windows version, and macOS users have also reported that RootsMagic 9 for macOS does not look like a genuine macOS program, but more like a Windows program running on a built-in emulator. It is why I always received the repetitive error dialogues as I commented on other topics.

Features request

  • Allow us to customise the installation path even if RootsMagic is already installed before, for example, we want to install different versions of RootsMagic – 9.1.1 and 9.1.3 for some reason of functionalities, for example, logging in to FamilySearch on Linux works only on 9.1.1. But they should share the same settings and the same licence.

  • Allow us to customise manually the ancestor and descendant charts, maybe templates, for example, changing .b and .d to birth and death icons. We want to add the custom reports to the charts, for example, ancestries and citizenship/nationalities.

  • Allow us to edit manually person’s relationship as you can not report or set the foster, half and step relationships. For example, I would like to set manually my father’s second wife as stepmother, and my grandfather’s second wife as step-grandmother, and his children as step-uncle and step-aunt, their biological son as half-uncle. My maternal grandmother’s second husband is not only my granduncle, but also my step-grandfather because he is the brother of my biological grandfather, so I want to edit as “granduncle and step-grandfather”. My great-grandparents also are my godparents.

  • Opt for the XZ format with the command with a parameter pxz -9 -c for backup as rmbackup, or you decide to opt for xz -c or zstd -19 -c. See the compression comparison table of a RootsMagic Tree file with 64 MiB (67 MB) because I observed that you compressed my file to 27M, but there are other compressions that reduce more to less than 20M:

    Algorithm Time
    (Minute
    and second)    		 Size Command
    none 0.00 64M tar -cf
    bzip2 0.07 25M bzip2 -c
    bzip2_pbzip2 0.01 25M pbzip2 -c
    gzip 0.04 28M gzip -c
    gzip_pigz 0.00 28M pigz -c
    lzip_plzip 0.10 18M plzip -c
    lzip_plzip_9 0.53 17M plzip -9 -c
    lz4 0.00 37M lz4 -c
    lz4_12 0.10 33M lz4 -12 -c
    lzip 0.37 17M lzip -c
    xz 0.36 17M xz -c
    xz_pxz 0.16 18M pxz -c
    xz_pxz_9 0.40 16M pxz -9 -c
    zstd 0.00 27M zstd -c
    zstd_19 0.36 21M zstd -19 -c

    If you want to test the compressions of the files with different sizes, you can get the Bash/Shell Script code:

    #!/usr/bin/env bash

# The file to compress
FILE_TO_COMPRESS="file.rmtree"

declare -A commands
commands=(
		["gzip"]="gzip -c"
		["gzip_pigz"]="pigz -c"
		["bzip2"]="bzip2 -c"
		["lz4"]="lz4 -c"
		["lz4_12"]="lz4 -12 -c"
		["lzip"]="lzip -c"
		["lzip_plzip"]="plzip -c"
		["lzip_plzip_9"]="plzip -9 -c"
		["xz"]="xz -c"
		["xz_pxz"]="pxz -c"
		["xz_pxz_9"]="pxz -9 -c"
		["zstd"]="zstd -c"
		["zstd_19"]="zstd -19 -c"
)

# The compression comparison table in Markdown format
echo "| Algorithm | Time | Size | Command |" > results.md
echo "| --- | --- | --- | --- |" >> results.md

# Handle the 'none' case separately
start=$(date +%s.%N)
tar -cf "${FILE_TO_COMPRESS}.none" "$FILE_TO_COMPRESS" > /dev/null 2>&1
end=$(date +%s.%N)
time=$(echo "scale=9; ($end - $start) / 60" | bc)
size=$(du -sh "${FILE_TO_COMPRESS}.none" | cut -f1)
echo "| none | $time | $size | tar -cf |" >> results.md

# Handle the 'bzip2_pbzip2' case separately
start=$(date +%s.%N)
pbzip2 -c < "$FILE_TO_COMPRESS" > "${FILE_TO_COMPRESS}.bzip2_pbzip2" 2>&1
end=$(date +%s.%N)
time=$(echo "scale=9; ($end - $start) / 60" | bc)
size=$(du -sh "${FILE_TO_COMPRESS}.bzip2_pbzip2" | cut -f1)
echo "| bzip2_pbzip2 | $time | $size | pbzip2 -c |" >> results.md

# Compress the file with each command and record the results
for algorithm in "${!commands[@]}"; do
		command=${commands[$algorithm]}
		start=$(date +%s.%N)
		$command $FILE_TO_COMPRESS > "${FILE_TO_COMPRESS}.${algorithm}" 2>&1
		end=$(date +%s.%N)
		time=$(echo "scale=9; ($end - $start) / 60" | bc)
		size=$(du -sh "${FILE_TO_COMPRESS}.${algorithm}" | cut -f1)
		echo "| $algorithm | $time | $size | $command |" >> results.md
done

  • Please add the support for the emoji fonts, mainly the flags for your software because I would like to insert the flag emoji for ancestries and citizenship/nationalities`. Observe that only Windows does not support the flag emoji, while Linux and macOS support. Therefore, allow us to set the emoji font fallback to the open-source OpenMoji and Twemoji fonts.

  • Make a few old versions of RootsMagic 9 available on RootsMagic download page because not all Linux and macOS succeed in logging in to FamilySearch on the newest versions of RootsMagic.

1 Like
2

Good morning, Mr @kbens0n, Mrs @rzamor1, Mr @thejerrybryan, and Mr @TomH!

Please, I apologise Mr Benson, Mr Bryan, Mr Holden, and Mrs Zamora for pinging the Messrs and the Mistress, but I am trying to drive the attention of the Messrs and the Mistress to my topic, as I received no answer.

3

The proper place to request assistance or formally request new features is to RootsMagic through support. The address is here: RootsMagic Support

4

Also note that Rootsmagic is not supported on operating systems other than Windows or MacOS, so they are likely to respond to your connection problems.

5

@kfunk, do you mean likely or unlikely?

6

I have no expertise in running RM on Linux. And has already been mentioned, it’s not an environment that’s supported by RM itself.

7

The only RM Inc employee among those you addressed is Renée Zamora. The rest of us are users.

It is confusing when you pitch multiple feature requests and throw in issues about an unsupported OS. Better to pitch one at a time so that the discussion is focussed and it is easy for readers to express support with a simple Like.

8

I am sorry, I meant ‘unlikely’.

9

RM does not have any plans to create a Linux version of our program. We won’t add older updates to the download page. We want users to stay current.