Index View & People Not Always In Sync

RootsMagic
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I have Index view showing in the Sidebar of the People screen, and when I click on a name the summary Info box at the top of the page always changes to the person I’ve selected - which is good and what I would expect.

If I’ve selected this name from the Index, the person’s name is automatically selected in the People view list as well BUT if I’ve selected the name from the People view instead then that person is not automatically selected in the Index.

This different behaviour seems illogical to me, and can be a little confusing at times.

I’ve quickly checked the other views - Pedigree, Family, Descendants and Couples - and they all seem to behave in the same way.

Is this a bug and can I ask please for it to be sorted out?

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It worked the way you wish for decades, up through RM7. Then in RM8 the behavior changed so that the sidebar index no longer tracks with the main view. The new behavior has remained in place through RM9, RM10, and RM11. Requests have been made to restore the RM7 behavior, but nothing has happened in that regard.

I have never understood the reasons for the change and it seems very user unfriendly to me. I believe the rational has to do with all the filtering capability that now exists, where if the sidebar index is filtered by a group or by a name that the person you highlight in the main view may not be visible in the sidebar index. Therefore, RM throws out the whole concept of the sidebar index and the main view tracking with each other.

To me, the biggest advantage of the sidebar index was that I could click on a particular John Doe in the main view and immediately see that John Doe listed in the sidebar index in the context of all the other John Does in my database.

As a result of these changes, I seldom use the sidebar index. Most of the time, I leave the side bar set to what in RM11 is called the Life Summary view. I now essentially use the People View in the main view as my index. So I do a lot of switching back and forth between Descendant View and People View, or between Pedigree View and People View – that sort of thing. It’s a different way to work, but I like that the Life Summary view is there for me in the sidebar nearly all the time. And I still have my index that tracks with all the other views. It’s just in the main part of the screen instead of in the sidebar.

Interestingly, the People View has the exact same ability to filter by group and by name as does the index view in the sidebar. But that doesn’t keep it from tracking right along with Pedigree View and Descendant View.

By the way, I occasionally do still use the index view in the sidebar for brief periods of time. It’s sort of like the old days where I wanted to see a list of all the John Does in the sidebar index. I do it now only when I want to scroll up and down all the John Does in the sidebar index and watch the John Does go by in Pedigree View or Descendant View in the main part of the screen. Or similarly, I will filter the sidebar index by a group, and then scroll up and down the index with the main view set to Pedigree View or Descendant View. That was an ability in RM7’s groups tab in the sidebar that moved into the sidebar index beginning with RM8.

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I’m just a RM user, not an RM developer, so I am only guessing. But there’s another rationale that may have influenced the decision to make the sidebar index no longer track the main view.

In the early days of the RM8 Community Preview and even into the early days of when RM8 was in production, one of the new RM8 features that was heavily touted was that you could be working one place in RM, switch to another place in RM, return to the first place in RM, and you would be back exactly where you were. For example, you could be in the Place List having filtered or scrolled to a particular place, switch to the Sources List and do some work, and then switch back to the Places List. At that point, the Places List would be just like it was. You wouldn’t have to filter or scroll back to the same place you were working on to get back to the same place you were working on.

So the same design principle when applied to the sidebar index might suggest that if you leave the sidebar index to go work in People View or Pedigree View or some other main view, that highlighting a different person in the main view shouldn’t have any effect on the sidebar index. In other words, the sidebar index shouldn’t track the main view. Again, this is only a guess as to the thinking behind the design.

But whether or not this was part of thinking behind the decision was made for the sidebar index not to track the main view, my perspective is that the principle of moving from one place to RM to another place in RM, then to return to the first place to find it unchanged is a net negative for the usability of RM. That probably sounds counter-intuitive. Surely I don’t mean what I’m saying, but I do.

For example, suppose I had a person highlighted in Family View in RM7, switched to Pedigree View, highlighted a different person, and returned to Family View. At that point, the newly highlighted person would be highlighted in Family View and would be in the primary position. That’s exactly what I want. But starting with RM8, it tries to put Family View back like it was. That’s exactly what I don’t want.

I have never been able to figure out all the rules that RM8 et. al. follow when switching views. It doesn’t always seem to be the same and I can’t predict what’s going to happen. I can’t describe how it really works because I can’t figure out how it really works. And I’m not sure, for example, that RM11 is still doing it exactly the way RM8 did it. It may have been tweaked a little bit along the way. But I found the way RM7 did it to be exactly what I wanted and to be much more user friendly. I’m sure not all RM users agree, and it’s possible that the majority of RM users prefer the new way.

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Jerry, Thank you for your two messages posted here. I hadn’t thought about how filtering might throw a spanner in the works! Having read, and re-read, your comments I think I will adopt your sensible approach of using the main People View as my index, allowing me to default to the new Life Summary which I like too.

I have customised my People View to show columns for Date Edited, Birth Date, Death Date and FamilySearch ID. This gives me more than the standard Index View. I’m also adding another column for the description field of a custom fact called Status. I intend to use this field for short and simple text to flag up where I’ve got to with my research on a person, typically something like ‘Complete’ or ‘Brick wall’ or even ‘Important’! Showing this on the People View screen might help to streamline my workflow and prevent me from wasting time by repeating online searches which I’ve already done previously. People with no flagged status will be “unfinished”. This flag will not print in Narrative Reports.

I hope this may effectively turn a little problem into what could, in the end, become a big help. Thanks again for your help.

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Here’s another spanner in the works. Modern RootsMagic can have three individual Edit Person windows open at once. Which gets the focus (highlight)? Last one opened? Close that window and that person might not be on a particular screen/view. So that focus would have to change. Close the first opened next. RM would have to track open/closing windows and constantly update the UI, manipulate several views at once (there are multiple both for the Index and the Main screen View).

Actually, in RM7 (as Jerry mentions) it “hinted” who was focused and highlighted in the Main Screen, but NOT with a colored highlight similar to the selected, but rather with a grayed out background in the Index for that person’s name. It DID represent being selected and if the grayed name was clicked… became a colored highlight. That was also to clue the user visually, the keyboard/mouse cursor had changed locations from Main Screen to Index (or vice versa). Nowadays, RM is not a “keyboard-first” paradigm. One can’t Tab or Arrow their way around to other sections of the UI to access various menus for sub-parts of a main screen.

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