Custom source template to include the web tag/web link from Citation Details

RootsMagic
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Is it possible to include the web tag/web link from Citation Details into the footnote by creating a custom source template??

If so, please explain exactly what the sentence template language for the web tag is (Rootsmagic 10)

Thanks!

2

I think this is a case where the answer is no and yes.

The no part is that there is no way in the sentence template language for sources to pick up a URL from Web tag.

The yes part is that there is nothing to prevent you from entering the URL twice - once into the Web tag field, and a second time into another field in the source template where the URL will become a part of the footnote sentence. If the source template you are using doesn’t include such a field, you can make a copy of the source template and add such a field. But you really can add as much data as you want into any source template field that you think of as only containing one piece of data.

1 Like
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Jerry, thanks so much for your response and explanation. I am wanting to put the webtag in the footnote for existing FindaGrave citations (and new FAG citations as created). So could I create a new source template with a new field for the webtage and then merge the existing FAG into the new source? But the bigger question is would I have to manually enter the webtag into both fields or could RM or SQL copy the existing webtag into the new field? Does this make sense? In other words, I need to do this retroactively and don’t want to have to edit every FAG citation and copy and paste the webtag. There are almost 5000 of them.

Thanks

4

That makes it very difficult. I can’t think of a way to do this from within the RM user interface. To avoid 5000 manual updates, I think it would have to be done from outside of the RM user interface using an SQLite script. Doing so is neither supported nor recommended by RM.

Let me backup and look at the bigger picture. Even though it flies in the face of authorities such as Evidence Explained, I’m not fond of long and complicated footnotes with clickable URL’s that take you very precisely to a record within a Web site. I think they look very unprofessional in printed reports, which are not clickable anyway. And I have no confidence in the long term validity of such URL’s in an ever changing Internet. Plus, I don’t like to think of sites such as Find A Grave as sources, anyway. It’s more like they are repositories, and in the case of Find A Grave the real source is the grave marker.

In that light, my footnotes for Find A Grave look something like the following. There is no detailed URL, but I still think the footnote includes all relevant information required to find the information again. I like to include the viewing date for fear that a site I view will later disappear or that even if the site remains, the data will disappear from the site. If I visit the grave site myself, the date is the date I visited the grave site and took the photo.

Grave marker: Howard Eugene Adams and Dimples Marie Adams; Springfield Cemetery, Coushatta, Red River Parish, Louisiana; viewed 12 June 2014 at www.findagrave.com by Jerry Bryan.

One datum I have not been included is the Find A Grave ID. I probably should include it. Indeed, I have seen sample Find A Grave footnotes posted by other RM users that give little more than Find A Grave and the ID. In theory, that should be enough. But my grave marker footnotes are the same whether I visit the grave site myself or use a Web site instead. The focus is always on the grave marker, not on the Website or a URL.

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I’m giving up on this. I totally agree with you about the reasons for it not being a good idea in the first place. Its just that my cousin/editor of the book we are working on has been hand typing the FAG memorial # in each footnote (she didn’t even realize I the link was in the citation details. She is a bit older and was a certified genealogist but is not computer - or RM - savvy at all. I thought maybe if the link could be copied or moved to the footnote it would save her time having to look each one up - or maybe she would just leave it as the link. But it sounds like she’ll just have to do it the old fashioned way! She wasn’t even complaining about it, I just thought I could try to make it easier for her.

Thanks once again for your help!

Jaime