We need a flag to indicate where someone has more than one spouse. Now a viewer must know to check this, when it would be easy to display next to birth year for example. Children of the second spouse will not be seen if the reader does not check for a different spouse, so a flag for an additional spouse and a flag for any hidden children would help immensely. Happens all the time!
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Yes, that would be a nice feature. However, if you want to flag them in a group or color you could do a saved search for every person who is married with more than one spouse. Just a thought.
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good thought. but this would be so useful that it should be an automatic flag. logic is simpleā¦if someone has a past spouse, flag that and if child, then flag that.
The number of spouses is shown in the Info View on the side bar for the person selected in all views except Association. Why is a flag needed?
To who? You?
RM doesnāt use the concept of flags but if they did, then there would be literally hundreds of āuseful to someoneā wants. Many people would all have their own pet flags that they want to use, and it would be a real pain in the ashes to show them all in the UI.
If you actually believe this is something widely useful, you need to sell it to the developers. Why is it useful? To whom and how many users would it be useful? How do you know it would be useful to anyone other than you? And so forth. Write it up and convince Bruce and Company that this feature is worth the time to drop all the other features/fixes they are working on and to implement this one.
I donāt really understand the utility of this proposed flag. As others have mentioned, the info panel at the top of the side panel already shows the number of spouses at all times for the currently highlighted person.
I use Descendant View set to 2 generations a lot more than I use Family View in RM10 because I find the RM8/9/10 Family View to be so dysfunctional. So I usually see all the spouses that way. But even in RM7 where I used Family View a great deal more than I do now, the RM7 Family View didnāt have a flag to indicate more than one spouse. Rather, it was just like RM8/9/10 in that the number of spouses for the currently highlighted person was on the screen at all times.
Finally, I use the Family tab in the bottom of the side panel most of the time, and it shows you not just the number of spouses but also the names of the spouses. When I need the functionality of the Index tab in the side panel, I usually get the index functionality by switching the main view tab to the People List view rather than by using the Index in the side panel.
I see your point for how flag could be useful to different people - how do you decide which flag are more important and how to display those all those flags. I think Family Historian has an add-on that add icon for such things. Given that groups can filter and display this info ā there is an option for you. As some users have pointed out that are many more features many users are waiting for.
I know it is on the sidebar for spouses, not kids. But the utility is when you are looking at all the individuals and making sure all are entered, none missing or trying to find someone with some search criteria missingāwithout taking your vision off to the side. agree that some would want and some would see no need, but this would increase accuracy when examining the thousands of persons in my tree. There are numerous feature requests that seem to address less universal questions.
I think that RM needs to become more user friendly to those of us without extensive computer knowledge, particularly knowledge of RM 8/9/10. It is not an intuitive program (unlike, say, Ancestry) and what should be simple tasks can become a fight with the program. I can see the benefit of Charismaās suggestion, particularly for those of us who are used to performing most functions by double clicking the person in the pedigree view tree and doing it from there. Also it would be nice if some contributors counted to ten before typing. The banner at the top of this post asks us to welcome Charisma to the community. Some of the posts are far from welcoming, bordering on being rude. @Charisma, itās a welcome from me, please donāt be put off asking questions and making suggestions in future.
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This may be true, however what you do not see is the likelihood of the work involved to implement this. Your desire of being able to double click in the pedigree view would be many times easier to make happen, especially for a small team of two programmers.
Honestly, I am tired of seeing all the brilliant ideas posted here for features without any attempts to think them through or at the very least try to write them up in a way that makes everyone, especially the devs, stop and think about why that newly requested feature is just the most awesome idea.
In this case, I think flags would be just spiffy for some things, however, how do you limit it and where does it stop? If the flags were to be useful, do we get a standard set of flags? Can we create custom flags? Do we get unlimited flags? Do we get maybe 10 of them to use as we wish? How will the flag fit into the user interface in a useful way? Can we have a new report to print out all/some of our flags?
I seem to recall an older piece of software, possibly Legacy, which gave you 10 flags to use. Of course that lead to calls for more flags because 10 wasnāt enough. I donāt know if that ever happened as I have never went back to check.
I will also agree with your assertion that RM8+ is NOT an intuitive program, however, it is also not meant to be Ancestry. The both operate in separate niches for different users. Comparisons between them arenāt really relevant in many aspects.
Thanks for the welcome Charlie. I have used RM for many versions now and consider it to be the best value for features available. It is cosmetically lacking in current terms, but it is extremely powerful and capable. It is not user friendly, but my own experience includes writing a commercial software program, owning an Apple II, an Altai, building my own PCs etc. Ease of use and intuitive interfaces are hallmarks of modern software (see Jobs: toaster e.g.) Some commenters on my post seem to have pride in hidden arcane knowledge that they possess of RM, perhaps the tone reflects this. Okay by meā¦
Hi Charisma,
I find your idea great, would also be useful to me!
Dear kfunk,
we are the users of RM and therefore are allowed to make suggestions. Even if we are no IT professionals.
And I do not see huge costs to implement this. (And I am an IT professional)
I am guessing not a very good one, or not a developer at the very least. Anything that requires altering the structure of a database is a large cost action. The whole point is if you are going to āmake suggestionsā then you need to do more than say something like āI want feature Xā. The developers already have a roadmap as to where they plan to go. If you want to suggest something then sell it to them and make them want to write it and alter all the other code in that may need to be altered to accommodate feature X. If you canāt do that, then you donāt deserve the feature.
User have asked for the Spouse button like RM7 had on the Family View. If that is what you are looking for the request has been reported to development.
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this idea does not require a database change as I see it. The program has already retrieved the spouse count, displaying on left sidebar. It then is like āIf spousecount.var > is greater than 1 then print spouseflag.icon in selected person.boxā. This would greatly assist persons visually using the screen informationāthe hidden family would be obvious. Those running report generators not so much. makes a computer flag like 
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ā¦and when you get a flag, then everyone and their brother is going to want a flag for this, that or the otherā¦and that will begin requiring database changes. See previous posts!
Many of us have asked for additions to the program over the years, including myself. Now I realize these have come with a price. Intuitive and easy to use versions of RM6 and RM7 have resulted in new versions, i.e. RM 8, 9 & 10 which are not intuitive and much harder to use. That being said I use RM10 daily along with RM7 due to my desire to use FamilySearch matching. I will stay with RM7 as my primary program as long as it works since it meets my needs. I realize companies need to release new versions to continue to make money, but it is my guess that most older RM users are not pleased with the new direction which makes data entry much more tedious. While new features can be useful, not always is newer the preferred way for everyone to go.
Iām not understanding where this icon would be located, that would make its utility more useful than the other couple ways one can visually determine or filter for multi-spousal individuals. Where specifically in the user interface is this great return on investment going to appear? I can see the utility of adding enhancements not already represented visually, but a mere icon for those with >1 spouse is actually less informative than the āactualā number currently shown. Then weād need more for similar contexts likeā¦ where thereās twins, or never married couples/parents or foster/adoptions or same sex couples or no proof level entered or those marked disproven and numerous other contingent situations not clearly borne out via selects and filtering. Every āviewā tab has a different layout to which the icon(s) would have to be added and co-located. Itās likely such an implementation is not just a triviality.
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There seem to be more posts recently mentioning cost/price and there seems to be a need for more staff at RM. Much as I dislike the concept generally, I would not object to RM operating on a partial subscription basis, such as free program and options for monthly/annual subs. I suspect even $4 per month, or $40 per year,per member would increase revenue and remove the need for ānewā versions with all the branding and advertising costs that must involve. Just a thought, Iām many of us pay hugely more for other sites.