Custom Source Templates

RootsMagic
,
1

I have created a custom source template (for a census) and one of the fields I have added is of Type “Place”. When I come to fill in the details using this new template and go to my “Place” filed it allows me to enter any place I like (just as a normal text field), what I was expecting is that it would offer me a drop down of all the places I have in my RootsMagic8 database.

Is there something else I need to do to this field in the template or am I just mis-understanding how these fields work? If I set a field up to be of type “Date” and then enter “21 6 1921” it converts it into the correct date format which is what I would expect.

Any help on this would be much appreciated.

2

I confirm your comments:
No dropdown
No auto expand
Plus - these ‘places’ added to custom templates do not appear on the Places tab.

So, yes this custom field behaves, mostly, as a text entry. RM7 is similar. Same behaviour on MacOS and Win11. You can use [Place:First] etc so partial functionality.

Dave

3

Thank you for your response, whilst we are on the topic of custom source template, within my template I have the following in the Bibliography Template:

“On [Date] [Name] was [Age] old and living at [Address],[RegistrationSubDistrict]. <%He|She> is described as [Status] and <%his|her> occupation was: [Occupation].”

The idea being that it will take the sex of the person to who this source is attached and correctly identify them as male or female and use the appropriate text. It doesn’t appear to work and always defaults to the male wording. I don’t understand what I am doing wrong or is this another issue with RM8?

4

It appears to me that you are trying to combine Source Template Language and Sentence Template Language. In looking at the Source Template Language in the wiki, it does not appear that it supports what you are trying to do. I suggest that you raise a support ticket at support.rootsmagic.com and let them give a definitive answer.

5

Seems like an entirely inappropriate sentence for the Bibliography which is supposed to be a list of the sources cited in the report.

6

Good point - I’m possibly not using the bibliography correctly, maybe it should go in the “Short Footnote”, but I thought I should still be able to do something like that.

I’ll contact Support and see what they say.

8

Try this in a test template: <?[Gender]|<He was [Name]>|<She was [Name]>> or <%He|She>
In a Source Template then He always has a value so that’s what you get and She will be ignored. Sentence and Source templates have different behaviours. Using a variable [Gender] or similar gives you the choice - value or no value. In the above any value = Male, no value = Female. Others may contribute more elegant solutions but for a Source Template keep it simple!