RootsMagic (RM11) wonderfully allows for designing own fact types with different roles - however, once I have designed a fact type with several roles, how do I enter information for any other role but the one of the pricipal?
you edit fact – and you can all update the fact sentence.
I would suggest make a list before adding them the order you enter can not be changed /sorted later (at least in current and previous version)
go to List then Fact list then edit Fact
Let’s suppose you are adding roles such as Wife, Son, and Daughter to the Census fact.
Are you asking how add the roles and create sentences for the roles? Or are you assuming that the roles and their sentences have been creates successfully and now you are asking how to create a Census fact for the head of household and then to add the roles to the other family members who were enumerated in the same census?
I have successfully defined a fact type and added several roles, but then, how do I enter the date for the roles? The only role I seem to be able to feed with data is the principle.
With one exception, there is no “data for the roles”. That’s because the data for the role events such as the date and place is the same as is the data for principal event. The roles also inherit any links to media files and any citations that belong to the principal event. That’s one of the big advantage of sharing roles. The exception is that there is a note for the role events that is separate from the note for the principal event.
The missing action that you are looking for is that you need to share the principal event. When you share the principal event, you select the person or person’s with home to share the role and you choose which role.
Here is the basic setup that it sounds like you have already figured out. If you are sharing the Census fact, you have to add roles to it such a Wife, Son, Daughter, and possibly several others. You only have to do that once, and then you can use the roles over and over again for hundreds or thousands of people. I personally would probably delete the Witness role. It’s already there for a lot of RM’s facts, but I find in confusing for facts such as Census. I think the term “witness” really only applies to things such as witnesses to will or to a deed. I have not shown how to set up the sentence for the role. Let us know if you need help with that.
Then, you add the Census fact to head of household, viz.
Finally (and this is the action you are missing so far), you share the Census fact. You can click on it’s share icon in the left panel or click on the Share option in the right panel.
As far as the sharing, you can share with the head of household’s wife, son, and daughter as a single share operation, or you can do it as three separate share operations. But if you do it as a single share operation, all three people receiving the share will have the same role. So you have to go back and change the role. If you do the sharing as three separate share operations, you can provide the proper role from the get go. Which process is easier and less clicking is a very personal decision.
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agreed sometimes I do all daughters & all sons in separate steps it depends on how many of each usually. I do not think most people cause but the ID assigned will be in order you entered them. But since you are likely viewing them by role it should not matter to most people
Imagine my surprise when I read this post! I have been adding a separate census fact for all the members of each census separately for all these years! What an amazing revelation.
So I tried this out and it sure works slick like butter. It did however bring me to another problem, and that is sentence templates. I saw immediately that there was not a sentence template so I went to the original father and opened his fact for the census I used as my example and hit the “Customize” tool for his census fact, I then highlighted and used ; Ctrl V to copy the template and went over to the sons shared census fact and using the customize function did a Ctrl V and pasted the template, sure enough it pasted the template to the son’s shared census fact but here was the problem: The sentence read: “{The father’s name rather than the son’s name} appeared in the census dated 19 June 1900….” . I had expected it to insert the sons name in the sentence because the template was written as: “[person] appeared in in the census dated 19 June 1900…..”
Was this because I copied it from the father’s fact, if so where should I have done the creation of the sentence template? One other thing I was wondering was if there is a complete list of all the sentence template special keywords / commands ([person], [Date], [Place Details], [Place], <>, etc) with an explanation of what data they use when used? I also wonder if these keywords / commands are case sensitive as person wasn’t capitalized and [Date], [PlaceDetails] had capitols in them?
I guess I need to spend some time at the roots magic youtube channel looking for sentence template building videos.
This just proves I need to read the forum more and “forge ahead” less! Thanks in advance for all your help!
While I (and many other users) may use shared Census facts - it may not be for everyone (or you)
I tried to create the roles in orders by degrees of distance
(there are more for others types but you get the idea)
You can edit the sentence for principal and each role as you want
example for principal
[person] appeared in the Census< [Date]>
< [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]>.
Household of [OtherPersons:Count] included:
<[Daughter: Count] Daughter(s)>
<[Son: Count] Son(s)
<
Wife: [Wife]><
Husband: [Husband]><
Daughter(s): [Daughter]><
Son(s): [Son]><
Father: [Father]><
Mother: [Mother]><
Brother: [Brother]><
Sister: [Sister]
<
Grand Daughter: [Grand Daughter]><
Grand Son: [Grand Son]><
Grand Mother: [Grand Mother]><
Grand Father: [Grand Father]><
Great Grandmother: [Great Grandmother]><
Great Grandfather: [Great Grandfather]
<
Aunt: [Aunt]><
Uncle: [Uncle]><
Nephew: [Nephew]><
Niece: [Niece]><
Cousin: [Cousin]><
Grand Aunt: [Grand Aunt]><
Grand Uncle: [Grand Uncle]
<
inLaw Daughter: [inLaw Daughter]><
inlaw Son: [inlaw Son]><
inLaw Mother: [inLaw Mother]><
inLaw Father: [inLaw Father]><
inLaw Sister: [inLaw Sister]><
inLaw Brother: [inLaw Brother]
<
Step Daughter: [Step Daughter]><
Step Son: [Step Son]><
Step Father: [Step Father]><
Step Mother: [Step Mother]
<
Boarder: [Boarder]><
Hired Man: [Hired Man]><
Housekeeper: [Housekeeper]><
Resident: [Resident]><
Roomer: [Roomer]><
Servant: [Servant]><
Lodger: [Lodger]><
Inmate: [Inmate]><
Visitor: [Visitor]><
Farm Hand: [Farm Hand]><
Maid: [Maid]><
Employee: [Employee]>
The Customize tool is not the tool you need. You need to go to the fact list and set up sentences for your roles.
The Customize tool is designed to customize one sentence for one person. Period. It has nothing to do with sharing facts. Indeed, with the customize tool you don’t even need to use those variables like [Person] and [Place] at all. You can type in whatever you want in plain English and it will be used. But again, it’s only for that one person.
Sad to say, there is a bug in the Customize feature. Once you have used it for a fact, you can’t really get rid of it for that fact. There is a Reset to Default Button, but it only resets part of the way to default and not all the way to default. I hope the bug gets fixed at some point.
As to the broader question of how to use the variables such as [Person] and [Place], they are all described in the RM Help file. And I’ll make this offer: post what you would like your role sentences for roles like Wife and Son and Daughter to look like using plain English, and I will post back what the sentence templates for the roles should look like using the variables.
Jerry,
Thanks very much for the offer. I have run into problems with these templates before and I’m not sure that I want to delve into then deeply at this point. I will definitely keep this in mind if I decide to make any complex templates in the future.
@Raydar These 2 articles from the RM help are worth looking at-- the 2nd one gives you the sentence template language..
You can go really elaborate on your shared sentences fact such as @kevync1985 or really simple such as just using the witness roll ( or set up a witness roll on a customized fact)..
[ThisPerson] appeared in the household of [person] in the census< [Date]>< [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]>.
Sally Smith appeared in the household of Max Smith…
or somewhere in between such as
[thisperson:cycle:casual] was enumerated as Daughter in the household of< [Person]> in the 2 April 1871 United Kingdom Census <[PlaceDetails]> <[Place]
Sally was enumerated as Daughter in the household of Max Smith…
You would create a new roll called daughter or son/wife and change a few words and as Jerry says you can write as much or little in the template.
Just keep in mind that shared facts do NOT transfer to Ancestry–it will just show on the primary person page and Ancestry does have a limit --so if you include say a copy of a census with 11 people in the notes of the fact–it probably won’t all show up..
That said have you tried out Copy A Fact --once you create a fact under one person, you can click on the 3 dots and copy that fact with notes ,sources etc to as many people as you wish
hit select and it will copy the fact but changes the name of the person --so the original fact said Max Acorn lived at 8 Almond Way-- the one for Kate now says Katherine Acorn lived at 8 Almond Way— and then you can go in and customize each sentence as need be…
One thing I learned, after I added a shared census to a couple of folks, and was told how to modify the sentence template, I did so. I decided to delete the shared fact then repeat it again so the template would be correct. When I deleted the shared fact from one of the sons it also deleted the original from the father. That alone made me think twice about using the shared fact everywhere.
Once again, you guys have been awesome helping me learn the ins and outs I didn’t know existed and I have also learned that each and every trick has it own ramifications, good in some ways bad in others. Thanks for all the help!
well I am only a beginner on Fact Sentences
Mostly I just reused / adapted what others did see farther below for the full code
example of results
code principal
<b>[person]</b> appeared in the <b>Census</b>< [Date]><i>
< [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]</i>>.
Household of [OtherPersons:Count] included:
<[Daughter: Count] Daughter(s)>
<[Son: Count] Son(s)
><
<b>Wife</b>: [Wife]><
<b>Husband</b>: [Husband]><
<b>Daughter(s)</b>: [Daughter]><
<b>Son(s)</b>: [Son]><
<b>Father</b>: [Father]><
<b>Mother</b>: [Mother]><
<b>Brother</b>: [Brother]><
<b>Sister</b>: [Sister]
><
<b>Grand Daughter</b>: [Grand Daughter]><
<b>Grand Son</b>: [Grand Son]><
<b>Grand Mother</b>: [Grand Mother]><
<b>Grand Father</b>: [Grand Father]><
<b>Great Grandmother</b>: [Great Grandmother]><
<b>Great Grandfather</b>: [Great Grandfather]
><
<b>Aunt</b>: [Aunt]><
<b>Uncle</b>: [Uncle]><
<b>Nephew</b>: [Nephew]><
<b>Niece</b>: [Niece]><
<b>Cousin</b>: [Cousin]><
<b>Grand Aunt</b>: [Grand Aunt]><
<b>Grand Uncle</b>: [Grand Uncle]
><
<b>inLaw Daughter</b>: [inLaw Daughter]><
<b>inlaw Son</b>: [inlaw Son]><
<b>inLaw Mother</b>: [inLaw Mother]><
<b>inLaw Father</b>: [inLaw Father]><
<b>inLaw Sister</b>: [inLaw Sister]><
<b>inLaw Brother</b>: [inLaw Brother]
><
<b>Step Daughter</b>: [Step Daughter]><
<b>Step Son</b>: [Step Son]><
<b>Step Father</b>: [Step Father]><
<b>Step Mother</b>: [Step Mother]
><
<b>Boarder</b>: [Boarder]><
<b>Hired Man</b>: [Hired Man]><
<b>Housekeeper</b>: [Housekeeper]><
<b>Resident</b>: [Resident]><
<b>Roomer</b>: [Roomer]><
<b>Servant</b>: [Servant]><
<b>Lodger</b>: [Lodger]><
<b>Inmate</b>: [Inmate]><
<b>Visitor</b>: [Visitor]><
<b>Farm Hand</b>: [Farm Hand]><
<b>Maid</b>: [Maid]><
<b>Employee</b>: [Employee]>
code other
<b>[thisperson]</b> <i>([ThisPerson:Role])</i> Age:[thisperson:age:plain] appeared in the household of <u>[person]</u>
<b>< [Date]> Census </b> < [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]>.
That comment really caught my attention. It first occurred to me that you must be incorrect because the way to “delete” a shared fact from the son would be to unshare it. And indeed, you can do the unshare either from the son’s Edit Person screen or from the father’s Edit person screen. And either way, the father’s original Census fact is not deleted.
But you didn’t say “unshare”. Instead, you said “delete”. And again it occurred to me that you must be incorrect because surely RM wouldn’t allow you to delete one of the father’s facts from the son’s Edit Person screen. So I decided to test it. And guess what: you are correct on every count! So my apologies for doubting you, even if it was from the privacy of my own computer.
It seems to me that this behavior is a either a coding bug or an incorrect design. I just can’t imagine why it’s ever a good idea to allow a fact for one person to be deleted from another person’s Edit Person screen. This is not like with a fact such as Marriage where the fact can be edited or deleted from either spouse’s Edit Person screen. Both spouses in a sense have ownership of the Marriage fact. But I certainly don’t think of sharing a role as giving the same kind of ownership of the fact to the witnesses as the owner of the fact has.
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I agree. Although after thinking about it, the scenario is a bit more complicated because I like that the shared fact is editable from the sharee’s edit person window. I wouldn’t want to loose that capability. At a minimum it would be helpful to have the ‘are you sure’ popup message contain additional language explaining that continuing will delete the event from the original person and all shared people.
yeah I recall find that out on my own db before – so I am always mind full of how I handle
I agree that editing from the Edit Person screen of the person with the role makes sense - correcting a date or a place or adding a citation or a media file, etc. I see no reason to force the user to go back to the original fact to do that. But supporting a Delete at that point sounds very scary. It feels like what you are doing is an unshare of the role when you are actually deleting the original fact.
But thinking a little more - even though supporting an Edit makes sense to me, might a user feel like they are only editing their role like it was a copied fact rather than that they were editing the original fact? Even so, I support the idea of allowing the Edit but not allowing the Delete. Or at least raise a serious alarm about the Delete before allowing it when the delete is coming from the role.
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that the real issue — no alert if deleting… will delete for everyone including principal – this is an error anyone (even experienced) user could make especially if you accidentally shared with self (principal)
Well I guess my blundering around has maybe brought to light a chance for RM to at least add a warning message when you pull something like I did. Glad to hear that It wasn’t just me doing something stupid. Which I do quite regularly!
Again, thanks to everyone for their help in these matters.
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Wish I had done an ordered list. In my case, I did them in the order I came I did them in a haphazard order.