Longterm RM user with new-to-RM8 comments

RootsMagic
1

12 Oct 2021
Hmmmm.
New version (v8) of the genealogy program has arrived. Installed and registered. Converted two most recent databases (last used in v7) to the new (v8) format. No change in data, and the new format is approx. 11% larger (1.8 GB / 1.625 GB). Menu system and screen layout are quite different, so I’m about to enter fullgrumble mode. Instead of a customizable icon bar, where I could place the most-used commands, there is now a dropdown list with every one of dozens of commands in alpha order. That’s not feeling efficient. Haven’t tried running reports or generating books, yet. I want to do a speed comparison between v7 and v8 on basic processes like opening a file, saving a backup, etc.
Mumble, mumble, grumble, grumble, bad word, bad word.

Start with 2 databases open in RM7 - hit the Exit door icon, skip all databases - re-open RM7 and BOTH databases are there.
Why doesn’t that happen in RM8? Why only ONE database on re-open?
This is an UNHELPFUL change. Opening a second file opens a second instance of RM8. How does this affect Windows resource usage? Why isn’t there an “exit all” command? Why can’t I automatically open 2 or more databases, as I could in RM7?

Why doesn’t the Places tab actually show the list of place names? All I get is an incomplete list of GPS coords. How is this useful? This is weird! The icon with popup tip “Map view” switches to show the alpha list of places… Will this now be my default view? Or will I have to hit the “Map view” icon every time I use the Places tab?

Skinny scrollbars in Windows are NOT helpful. I have edited the Registry to widen the system scrollbars, but RM8 uses a skinnier scrollbar than my browser. Why?

I selected the Media tab, and after a delay was presented with a set of small thumbnails. I selected the “Media list” icon and now have a tinier thumbnail (useless!) with the filename. Files are in some RANDOM order. There is a pair of sort buttons, but all it says is it will switch the order. HOW will it switch the order? I clicked the sort button and got a new, still random, list of media. My media files are stored in a subfolder organization system that RM8 appears to completely ignore. According to Windows Properties, I have 53,475 media files in 535 folders. Why can’t I maintain my carefully-designed storage & navigation system? WHY do I have to wade through a list of 53,475 items? When I click the spyglass icon, the oval Search input box is half-covered by the left-side toolbar. That’s not helpful.

13 Oct 2021
Resuming work in RM8
The Pedigree view only allows 5 or 6 generation views. Why was the 4 generation view dropped?
Why can’t I select a person anywhere in the view to change the focus? I want to switch to a Descendant view, but this no longer works like it did in RM7. Why? It seems I am forced to navigate through the Index to the new person, then select the new view. Not efficient.

Adding a Citation for an existing Master Source:
The right pane view is TOO NARROW, and what is this new field “Citation Name” ?
I copied and pasted data from Ancestry into the Research Notes (as I have done THOUSANDS of time before) and EVERY ONE of the 9 linebreak/carriage returns was stripped out. Who had this silly idea? Am I going to be forced to add all of the linebreaks manually? What a WASTE of my time. I looked through the Settings and saw nothing that would affect that pasting behavior.

Why are there no Tool Tips on the 5 column icons in the Edit Person view?

Where are the buttons to memorize and paste a citation? The clickiness of this interface is very frustrating !

What’s the difference between re-using and copying a Citation? Which did RM7 do?

Every click, every action, has a noticable delay as compared to RM7. I wonder if this is because everything is now a graphic object, rather than a text character?

There is no place to select a display font and size? That font scaling slider has no context (as point size does) and there is no change to the Display Settings screen when adjusting the slider, so what is it for? “You will need to restart RM…” What? With ZERO feedback? Ridiculous !!!

When adding Parents to an individual, RM7 prompted for marriage info. RM8 does not. Why?

In RM7 I could use the Index to navigate to another person’s record and Edit that person without changing the focus from the person I had just been editting. Really helpful. No longer possible in RM8.,

Adding Media to a fact:
The delayed responses to clicking are frustrating. In RM7 the Caption and Description were entered on a single screen. In RM8 they are split onto separate screens. More clicking to get the same job accomplished. I was under the impression that one of the programming goals was to “flatten” the process. That hasn’t happened.

14 Oct 2021
Adding a Citation:
In RM7 I could select a Master Source by typing the first few characters of its name. In RM8 that really doesn’t work anymore, because the search seeks those characters anywhere within the Master Source name. Example: typing “mi marr” should take me to “MI Marriages”, but instead shows me a list of all Michigan counties with a marriage index or record source. Is there a setting somewhere to restore the RM7 search at beginning of Master Source?

In addition to stripping out ALL of the linebreaks, pasting the Ancestry data into Research Notes is also stripping out ALL of the [spaces]. Why? Is there a setting to fix this misbehavior?

Added a Media item to the Citation, and also want that same Media item attached to the Marriage fact. Guess what? RM8 has forgotten the prior folder used (RM7 did not) and RM8 has forgotten the Caption and Description that I already applied to that Media item. This gets worse and worse as I work with the software.

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When I go to Places, it defaults to “Place List” and I see all my places listed alphabetically. Maybe some of your places are “phantoms” or something and need to be cleaned up if you are only seeing coordinates.

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The thumbnails I’m seeing are not too small in the default “Thumbnails” choice.
The “Media List” does have very small thumbnails but are still seeable. And you are right, the file names are not sorted alphabetically. The 2 sorting options do not make sense to me either.

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I do not see what you are seeing regarding the spyglass (search box).

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4 generations is an option. You can click the Descendants icon to change views:

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I have requested that in Beta testing, so we can only wait and see if some kind of hover over pop-up will one day appear.

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There are several areas where you can find Memorize or Paste or Copy Citations. The clickyness is maddening. After months of staring at the sources and citations area of RM8, it still confuses me and I sit there and think, “what am I supposed to do next”? You can go down a rabbit hole of sliding menus and be easily lost.

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There are two options when you want to copy and paste a Citation to another Fact. Determine if you want to “Memorize” or “Reuse” the citation. The Citation name determines how we find the Citation in a Citation list. After clicking the “Memorize this citation” icon in the “Edit Citation” window, go to a Fact, click “Sources” then click the “Paste citation” icon. After that, there are two options:

Reuse citation
“Re-use the memorized citation” - this copies the entire citation so any changes made to that citation will change it for everyone else that is using that citation. This is how the RM7 Master Source works. But in RM8, you can do this for citations. Think of this as a “shared” citation. When in the Edit Citation field, it will show how many times that citation was used in the “Citation Used” field. You can click on that field to display the names and events where the citation was used. This option works great for census transcriptions because if you later notice an error, you can correct the error and it will appear corrected for every fact in which it was used.

Paste copy
“Paste a copy of the memorized citation” - this creates a brand-new citation so that any changes made to that citation will change it only for that one citation. This is what happened in RM7 when you pasted a Memorized Source; RM7 created a completely new separate Source detail. Think of this as an “unshared” citation. The “Citation Used” field will always show that the citation was used only one time. It seems this option would be used less often.
(This reuse/paste citation info may have been from user Jerry Bryan)

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I changed my font scaling to 125%. It would be nice if when moving the slider, you could see how it will look.

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Unfortunately, there is no setting for that.

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I think it would have been better if you started a new post for each issue. You can then add a tag such as “feature-request” so that Renee can see all the feature requests more easily and start working on them. :laughing:

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I’m sorry but there are far too many different subjects in this post. The titles of the posts matter. They enable future readers to read the header, the question and the specific answers. This post could become very long and unmanageable.

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