Custom fact for OBit

RootsMagic
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1

I’m wondering if someone has created a custom fact for an OBIT with a sentence. I’m trying to come up with a consistent way to manage OBITs. I’ve been putting them in burial notes, other people put them in person notes, others in death notes, several in MISC.

I’d like a consistent way to manage them that would allow me to turn all on or off for narrative reports. What I’ve been thinking of is publication date in date, city of pub in place, publication name in description and the remaining text in notes. What’s I’m unclear on is hot to construct a sentence that would account for the various components being or not being. Something like:

Published by Richmond Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Virginia on Aug. 15, 2021.
JONES, Mr. Robert “Bob” W., 94, formerly of Richmond, Va., died Thursday, July 29, 2021 in Calistoga, Calif. Beloved husband of Joyce; loving father of Janet Jones and Susan Smith of St. Helena, Calif., Deborah Johnson (Texas) and Barbara Brown (Colorado); brother of Nell Williams (South Carolina) and Richard (Virginia); doting grandpa of four and great-grandpa to five. Bob was a communicant of Grace Episcopal Church in St. Helena, a member of the U.S. Power Squadron and a six decades-long member of Petersburg’s Blandford Masonic Lodge No. 3. There will be a memorial service at Grace Episcopal Church on Tuesday, August 17, 2021 at 11 a.m. PDT. A long illness took him away from this world, but his loving heart and tall tales will be missed by all who knew him.

2

You could do any version on this-- meaning put the person 1st or last or not at all
Published by <[desc]>< [Date]>< [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]> for <[Person]>. And you can put desc, place and date in any order

Only problem would be if you didn’t have the name of the newspaper-- so since I have Published by ( instead of by in the description) with no newspaper name it would say Published by on Dec 17, 1918 Little Rock Arkansas for Mary Smith instead of Published by The Ozark Review on Dec 17, 1918 Little Rock Arkansas for Mary Smith

3

I have long had an Obituary fact. I used to put the text of obituaries in the note for the Death fact. But like you, I like the flexibility of being able to turn the Obituary fact on and off for reports. My Obituary fact mostly serves just to contain the text of of the obituary in the note for the Obituary fact.

I actually enter an intro to the obituary in the Description field and the rest of the text in the note. That allows me to display the intro as a column in People View. The Note field is not supported as a column in People View.

I enter the same citation for the obituary for both the Obituary fact and the Death fact, as well as for other relevant facts which can include Burial and Birth and many others, depending on the content of the obituary.

I don’t think the sentence for my Obituary fact will be of much help to you because I use point form sentences for all my facts. But in case it is of value, here it is. It’s not obvious on the screen, but there is a carriage return at the beginning of the template to force the fact to begin on a new line in a narrative report. The <b> and </b> tags serve to make the enclosed text appear in a bold font. RM doesn’t support a [Note] variable. Instead, notes are included automatically unless they are suppressed for all facts in a report


<b>Obituary:</b>< [Desc]>

A typican obituary might appear something like the following in a narrative report.

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4

Seems to be working so far, do you have any recommendations for how to improve the sentence kness suggested (that I’m using now) to account for missing elements. That’s the part of sentence building I’m struggling with.

5

Here are a couple of ideas.

  • You could leave “Published by” out of the sentence entirely. Then enter it into the Description field of each Obituary fact as needed. That way, the “Published by” text wouldn’t appear when you don’t know the name of the newspaper.
  • You could put the “Published by” text inside the angle brackets so the text doesn’t appear when the Description field is empty, viz. <Published by [Desc]>

I think having everything in the Description field and the Note field without having any fixed text in the template such as “Published by” is the most flexible. For example, I’m more and more seeing obituaries that were only published online such as at a Funeral Home Web site. It’s not that I don’t know the name of the newspaper. Rather, there never was a newspaper.

6

I’ve been considering the funeral home publishing it the “published by”, as publishing online is still publishing. I do need to make things optional, but the primary reason I wanted to have some of the fields separate is to make certain things easier to search.

7

So Jerry-- as I am seeing it from your sentence
Obituary:< [Desc]>
you are adding everything in the description-- date, publisher, page etc and then using a sort date to sort the facts…

and if I wanted a marriage or birth fact like that, I would just change obit to whatever fact I wanted…

So instead of just dumping everything in description, could you also do something like this
Obituary:< [Desc]>< [Date]>< [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]>

8

Well, I’m quoting your whole question, but basically the answer is “yes”.

I’m putting everything about date and publisher and page into description. I’m not using the fact date nor the fact place. It’s too limiting for what I need because there is such a variety of newspaper and online sources. And I do use a sort date to get the Obituary fact where I want it.

I make no claim that’s the only way to do it or the best way to do it. You could probably get it to work with Obituary:< [Desc]>< [Date]>< [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]> as you suggest instead of dumping everything into Description, and it might be better that way.

For example, places entered this way would show up in the Place Index in printed reports, and the way I do it, the places for the newspaper do not show up in the Place Index in printed reports. That’s because the Description field is text, and is not a place But I like to enter the newspaper place the way the newspaper prints it. For example, my local newspapers print their place as Knoxville, Tennessee and they don’t include the county at all. I’ve never seen any newspaper include the county except for county wide news papers who don’t list a city. I enter my real places for my city as Knoxville, Knox County, Tennessee so that it does include the county. And if it’s in Knox County but outside the city limits, I enter a real place as Knox County, Tennessee. But it’s rare for newspapers to print their place that way and I want to print it the way the newspaper prints it.

When you are asking about doing Birth facts and Marriage facts “like that”, I assume you mean point form. If that’s the question, then the answer is yes. Here are my point form sentences for birth and marriage. I don’t use Place Details, but they would be easy to add to my templates.

[Person:Full].
<b>Birth: </b><[Date:Plain]><, [Place:Plain]>.



<b>[Couple:full]</b>. 
<b>Marriage:</b>< [Date:Plain]><, [Place:Plain]>, [Person:full],< age [Person:Age:plain]> to <[Spouse:full]< age [Spouse:Age:plain]>>.

The Birth fact is the only fact where I don’t have a carriage return (or Enter, if you prefer calling it that) at the front of the sentence. That’s because RM’s narrative reports always start a new person in a new paragraph. Also, the Birth fact is the only fact where I use the [Person] variable at all. With point form sentences, it is not needed except for the first sentence and the first sentence for a person is the Birth sentence. It also gets rid of all the questions about printing short forms of names and pronouns as a way to try to make the report read less computer generated than it really is.

My Marriage fact and my Partner fact are the only ones that use the [Couple] variable, for the same reason that the [Person] variable is not needed except for the first individual fact. And Marriage and Partner facts have a double carriage returns because otherwise RM doesn’t add a blank line before it begins to list the couple facts.