Not sure I worded my topic correctly. In MacFamilyTree, I have my person page set up so standard facts like census records are on the left, while personal facts like eye color, hair color, etc. are on the right. Screenshot for demonstration.
How or do you enter these types of facts in RM? Adding them to person facts seems messy. They almost need a separate section like Health and DNA.
The RM database structure simply does not support the database structure called ATTRIBUTEs in GEDCOM, such as eye colour. It can contain such data in its EVENT structure with the Date and Place disabled (custom Fact Type). Other software may not recognise these as ATTRIButes on import. Try reimporting that person into MFT and see which side eye colour ends up on.
RM makes no format distinction among different fact types in its EVENts lists in displays and reports. The order is controlled by SortDate which is available regardless of Date being disabled so you could cluster ATTRIB-like EVENts.
Thank you that’s very helpful. But hmm… would these be better off entered into general person notes? Feature request - Attributes!
For filtering or statistics on people with hazel eyes, it would be easier to have an eyecolour fact type. You might be able to use some formatted text in a Note or Description to accomplish the same thing, e.g., a variant of a hashtag: #eyecolour:hazel# but that’s not as convenient or consistent. Might be aided by having a dummy person with a custom Attributes fact and the Note field filled with a list of attribute types, i.e., a form. Copy the fact to a person you want to add it to and fill in the form.
That’s a good idea, but I don’t think I have any need to search it. I simply like filling in as much detail as I can on my ancestors. I think I’ll stick with adding that info to the general person note, and hope in the future we get an attributes tab. Thanks!
I make heavy use of notes for all kinds of things in RM, including attributes. But I’m moving away from the general person note and towards facts that are really only there to be a note. There are several reasons.
One reason is to support multiple notes. There is only one general person note. Of course, I can put several different notes all in the same general person note, but that’s not what I’m looking for.
Another reason is placement in narrative reports. I can place facts that are only notes where I want them in narrative reports using sort dates. The general person note is always the last item shown for a person in RM’s narrative reports.
Another reason is citations. Each note that’s a separate fact can have its own separate citation. The general note doesn’t have its own citation. The only available citation is for the general person, and that’s not really specific enough. I’m also moving away for citations for the general person for anything except a person’s name on the theory that citations belong with facts. For a while, I copied and pasted all the citations for all the facts to the general person, but the citation list for the general person became so long and unruly that I decided that pasting all those citations to the general person record was madness.
There is a gotcha with my approach. Namely, the citation superscript for facts in RM’s narrative reports is after all the information in the fact except the note and before the note. This looks dreadful for facts that are only a note because the citation superscript is before the note. I compensate by placing the first or introductory part of a note into the description field. Doing so looks pretty good in reports. Also, the description field is available as a column in People List View and the note field is not. So it’s useful to be able to see those short introductory parts of notes in People List View. Be aware that the description field only supports about 100 characters, whereas the note field is effectively unlimited in length.
Jerry beat me to the punch – I might consider notes you could use also use formatting however with the caveat that the formatting does not always pass well to other software.
You might be able to use GEDCOM / Excel tools to make some the task easier to get in RM vs manual entry.
I was thinking a bit more about attributes such as hair color, eye color, height, weight, religion, etc. As far as I know, I don’t have any facts or fact notes really specific to those kinds of attributes. But they show up implicitly in my narrative reports in the sense that many of my facts have notes that are transcriptions of a source record. So for example, fact notes for military service events or draft registration events will have that kind of information. Religion often appears in obituaries, and I use obituaries as facts, not just as sources.
I realize that in some ways, such transcriptions are more appropriate to be recorded as notes in citations rather than in fact notes. But I like the information to be front in center in narrative reports, so I include it in fact notes as well as including it in citation notes.
not sure how this could be implemented in RM but it would be nice not have to duplicate notes.
Something like entering a Note not attached to a person or fact etc – then linking that note to a person, fact, citation etc. The database part would be relatively easy on the back end but the UI and user part would be more complicated
I’m a touch confused. How can a fact be only a note?
I may have to rethink this, and just keep that info in the fact citation note. In MFT, person notes can have as many separate notes as you want, so I will need to adapt this. I’ve also always kept a general research log in the person notes there. I haven’t figured out yet where to do this in RM.
Create a fact named something like Story or Narrative, etc. Then, make the sentence for the fact be something like just <[Desc]> without any [Place] or [Date] or any other text or variables. You can edit the sentences for all your facts in the Fact type list.
My actual template for facts that are only a note is as follows. It includes a carriage return at the beginning so that it begins on a new line in a report. There is no [Note] variable because RM doesn’t support a [Note] variable. Instead, RM includes all notes or no notes in a report, based on a report option. I very much wish there were a [Note] variable, but there isn’t.
<b>Narrative: </b><[Desc]>
I use point form sentences for all my facts, which are very different than the default RM sentences. If you were using the default RM sentence format, then your sentence for a fact that was only a note would probably only say <[Desc]>.
I’ve emailed myself a copy of this to ponder. I much appreciate the input here. So much to learn, and I don’t want to have to redo everything!
I suspect that most RM users would recommend doing this in using RM’s Tasks feature. It seems to be a fairly powerful feature. However, I don’t use it because it doesn’t seem to me to be well integrated enough into the rest of RM. For example, I cannot make groups or color code or do Advanced Searches based on the Task feature. So I have created special facts to include things like Research Logs and To Do items. They are set up not to print in reports. And I can access them with the full functionality of groups and color coding and Advanced Searches.
Here is a link to a Sample RM Report With Point Form Sentences. It includes both a Narrative fact and a Family Narrative fact if you look hard enough.
As you can tell, the sentence for every single RM fact - Birth, Death, Marriage, etc. - has been changed to point form. Each person’s name appears only one time, so there is no issue about full name vs. short version of a person’s name vs. pronouns, etc. as you read through the report. And there are no verbs or prepositions. Instead of “He was born in” it just says “Birth:”.
Thank you. I’ll do a comparison so I better understand the difference, although at some point, I will likely rewrite the narratives in Scrivener, as I hope to do some short epubs per family, to give to libraries, as no one in my family cares. I’d like my research to be available later.
