RM8 A source has been copied. When pasting it there are two options. 1. Duplicate 2. Paste Copy
Duplicate - The pasted copy points to the original fact the source was copied from and is an exact copy of that source. If you edit it, you are editing the pasted copy and the original.
Paste Copy - The pasted copy points to the fact that it was copied into. Trouble is, I have found that editing the pasted copy also changes the original location. This should not happen. The edit should be unique to the pasted copy. If this is by design - the design is wrong.
Is anyone else experiencing this?
This issue is extremely frustrating.
I am entering facts for a person who was living in the same house for 40 years and was enrolled to vote. The Electoral roll finds her in the same electorate throughout, Only the roll dates change. Each roll has its own URL. So when pasting the source to each electoral roll I want to only change the year and weblink.
I am having to create a new source citation for every year - for this person, 8 in all. And she is only one of several people.
If you change the Master Source fields of any one of the citations of it, all citations are affected.
If you change the Source Details fields of a citation, only the uses of that citation are affected. Pasted copies are unaffected because they are independent citations of the same master source.
My experience is that that Paste/Reuse and Paste/Copy work as designed. If I do a Paste/Copy and then change the copied citation, it does not change the original citation.
I wonder if the problem lies in your initial statement that “A source has been copied”. I’m not clear about your workflow.
When you Paste/Copy, a source has not been copied. Rather, a citation has been copied.
When you Paste/Reuse, a source has not been copied and a citation has not been copied. Rather, a reference to a a citation has been copied. The citation itself has not actually been copied. That’s why changing the pasted citation after Paste/Reuse results in the original citation being changed. It was never copied. It’s just that a new reference to the one and only original citation has been created.
So I’m wondering if what you are changing is actually the source rather than the citation. A change to a source changes the footnote sentence for all citations that use that source, no matter whether the citations are the same or not.
Could you maybe post a screenshot of what you are changing?
Ok Jerry,
A confusion of terms here. Note - the subject person was born in the year 1900
Here is the fact:
In the fact edit panel we get:
This says ‘Sources’ when in fact it’s really ‘Citations’.
Same here:
The above and below is the citation that was copied.
Copy the citation
Move to the next fact:
Click on Sources
Click on paste
Click on ‘Paste copy’
Click on the citation
Change 1960 to 1963
and the webtag to that of the 1963 image
Edited citation for 1963 below
Return to the 1960 fact & click ‘Sources’
Here is the citation
Jerry, while doing this I just spotted what caused the confusion.
When I returned to the 1960 fact and opened the citation it displayed the 1963 edit.
I activated the screen capture and when I returned to RootsMagic the display had changed back to the 1960 version, which it should be.
Initially, RM had retained the last edit until some other action took place.
I guess the moral of the story is - have patience, RM will update the screen when its ready to.
At the end, I still think that the fact edit panel should say “Citations” in place of “Sources” because it is the citation that reveals the source.
I’m a bit pedantic about this because I was an Avionic Technician for 43 years and terminology confusion can cause crashes!!
The name ‘Source’ should not be used unless it displays the name of the source up-front, without opening the citation.
BTW - It’s annoying to have to re-enter the Quality when it is actually the same.
John.
Welcome to the perennial semantic confusion surrounding “source” and “citation” and “master source” and “source details” and, now with RM8, “Paste/Copy, Paste/Reuse”, “uses versus copies” and “Master Citation” (my term for a Citation record used more than once). While family trees are very much about life and death, software developers of such are at zero risk of causing fatalities!
I’m sort of repeating what Tom already said. I think of the RM user interface as being sort of like a Russian novel where the same person may have different names on different pages and it can be terribly difficult to determine which people are which. In RM’s user interface, the biggest terminology confusion issues are with sources and citations. What’s a citation on one screen may be a source on another screen. What’s a footnote on one screen may be a citation on another screen. Citation text is labelled as a research note and a citation comment is just labelled as a citation comment. But there are other terminology confusions in RM than just about sources and citations.
The total rewrite with RM8 provided an opportunity to clean that situation up, and I think it was a missed opportunity. In fairness to RM, I think lots of genealogy software and genealogists and even genealogy in general have the same problem of inconsistent and confusing terminology. For example, everybody thinks they know what the difference is between a source and a citation. But nobody really does, including me. That’s because the software we are all using doesn’t really use the terms in a consistent fashion.
You are correct that there are a number of places in RM8 where there can be a lag between when data is changed and when the new data value shows up on the screen. But of more concern, it seems to me that there is more uncertainty than there needs to be about exactly what actions are required on the part of the user to be assured that newly entered or changed data has actually been written to the database. I felt that the RM7 user interface had this problem to a very minor extent and that the RM8 user interface has made the situation worse rather than better about being fuzzy with respect to when data is actually committed to the database. Things sometimes seem to happen very asynchronously that should be synchronous from the user perspective.
It seems to me that the Quality really does have to be re-entered each time because the same citation can have different quality characteristics each time it is used. A death certificate may have one set of quality characteristics as evidence for a Death fact and a different set of quality characteristics as evidence for a Birth fact.
Thank you Jerry,
I’m with you all the way on what you say, “I think of the RM user interface as being sort of like a Russian novel . . . . .” Hear, Hear. A good analogy. Maybe the RM Developers need someone independent to flush out the inconsistencies. Could you do it?
“everybody thinks they know what the difference is between a source and a citation. But nobody really does, including me.” Yes, me too. Although I think I have a reasonable idea of the difference. The book ‘Getting the most out of RootsMagic7’ page 93 does explain it reasonably well. It would seem that entering a source ‘document’ instantly creates a citation for it, instead of just naming it.
Maybe declaring a Source and creating a Citation should be separate operations. Or, would that be too complicated for most users?
RM developers really need to get rid of the lag and make operations synchronous. The lag has gotten me a few times. Especially as I find that the ‘edit person’ screen occasionally crashes and has to be reopened. I want to report this one but cannot quantify it. Seems to happen without rhyme or reason.
Agreed about the quality, but I would rather have to edit if needed, instead of having to select it again for each instance.
I do find that the book ‘Getting the most out of RootsMagic7’ is still a valuable resource for RM8.
Regards,
John
