With some regularity I miss the fact that someone has been married more than once and has children to another spouse. As Illustrated in the image above, my suggestion is to move the Spouses apart and make the connecting line between the ones being shown much wider, then in the space that’s been enlarged, create one or more narrow windows with just the name(s) for the other spouse(s). Clicking on the alternative spouse would move that relationship and its children to the foreground with the first spouse becoming a small window where the previous one had been. In the case of women with more than one husband, do the same thing but put the husband in an expanded area below the woman’s name.
3 Likes
We have the request for the return of the spouse button like RM7 had. Is that what you are looking for?
I don’t remember what the Spouse button was on RM7. What I propose is a good visual reminder that there is more than one spouse and that requires only one click to change spouses and see a second set of children.
they sort of already are
they show on right or left depending on your set up
Also shows the # of children of each family set.
This is a very interesting feature request. I was still using RM7 daily along side RM9 until June of this year, so I am still very familiar with it. Nevertheless, I just now went back and reviewed the RM7 Family View as compared to the RM10 Family View.
As regular readers of this forum may remember, I very much prefer the RM7 implementation of Family View to the RM10 implementation of Family View. And I also very much prefer the RM7 implementation of the info panel to the RM10 implementation of the info panel. The info panel is at the top center of the RM7 Family View and is at the top (left or right) of the RM10 side panel.
One of my many reasons for preferring the RM7 implementation of these items is that the RM7 implementation included the spouse buttons. So I think restoring these spouse buttons to RM10 would be a huge improvement. In theory, the spouse buttons are not needed in RM10 because the same information is available in RM10’s info panel. But I find RM10’s info panel to be so hard to use and so dysfunctional that I seldom use it. So I think restoring the spouse buttons to RM10 would be a great idea.
But now we have another very interesting idea to include even more spouse information in Family View, over and above restoring the spouse buttons. After thinking about it for a while, I think I would prefer just the spouse buttons. It seems to me that the RM10 implementation of Family View already includes so much less information than the RM7 implementation that adding the additional spouses as described would further aggravate the less information. Namely, one of the problems with the RM10 implementation is that it shows fewer children on the screen at the same time than the RM7 implementation. The new feature request surely has the potential to reduce the number of children on the screen at the same time even further. But the new feature request is still a very interesting and important idea. That’s because it’s so easy not to notice when one of the spouses in Family View has other spouses.
2 Likes
Well balancing screen real estate and presenting as much info to everyone’s liking — not an easy task. I have learned to like the way details, Parents more spouse can still be on same screen as family.
I wish I had more control of things – so I could drag n drop some of thing in different places. The person Edit Screen wastes too much use of screen IMHO usually so some improvments could be made there. Since the Topic in Family view – the layout of that screen might be improved through use of some grids types (not sure how to explain what I am visualizationing in my head
I was thinking a little further about this. One difference between the spouse button in RM7 and the new feature request is that with the new feature request as written, the extra spouse information proposed for RM10 would be displayed only if there was an extra spouse. But the spouse button for RM7 was there even if there was only one spouse.
If the spouse button were to be added back into RM10, I think it would be beneficial to show it only if there was more than one spouse. It’s not needed to switch spouses if there is only one spouse, and the absence of the spouse button would be a strong visual cue that there aren’t any more spouses. I think the visual cue could be more important than the ease of switching spouses, even though both are important.
1 Like
that’s great thought – I have seen that done with other things/software.
(I guess expanding on that ) show button if marriage facts, or children etc could determine the customization for that also.
I was aware of the column with the three tabs, one of which was spouses. I keep missing the fact that someone has a 2nd spouse. Recently I royally screwed something up because I forgot to look for a 2nd spouse. This should be obvious, not something that can be easily missed unless you look for it. I didn’t have this problem with the software I used for about 20 years prior to switching to RM. It was very obvious when there was more than one spouse. I think I used RM7 briefly before the RM8 iteration was released, which is why I can’t remember the appearance of the spouse button. I can appreciate what Jerry is saying about decreased numbers of children being visible. I think this could be improved by taking a little of the space from the top and bottom of each child’s box and ditto for each parent’s box - particularly the bottom margin of the parents’ boxes. In my proposal, the additional spouses window / box could be very narrow. It wouldn’t require more than the name and maybe an indication if there were other children. The important things to me would be that it’s obvious that there’s a 2nd (or more) spouse, and clicking ONCE on the name of that spouse automatically switches to the offspring of the 2nd family. As another suggestion, in the children’s window, there’s enough horizontal space to list locations along with the years of birth and death. It would make it easier to see which children moved across country and which stayed locally.
If you combine family view with the spouse toggled on the panel (left or right depending on config - you can always see exactly how many spouse (1, 5 or 10) Usually the defaullt is Details --but often I keep it toggled to spouse for the reason you mention.
it on the same screen as the family view - the bottom line is things should be more flexible
1 Like
I have that column toggled on in my screen in RM10 and I use it to get to other spouses, but like Jerry, I haven’t found a use for it and don’t look there unless I’m specifically looking for other spouses. Am I missing some way to have the default tab / highligted tab be the spouses? Mine always starts on the details tab as the one highlighted but if the default appearance was the spouses tab, it might be more useful - I’d have to try it for awhile and see.
Aha. I just learned that the Spouses tab stays highlighted when you move from one person to another. I’ll have to remember to select that tab each time I open the software. It’s a workaround.
PS. I only grabbed part of my screen to make the proposal so it was easier to focus on the area of interest. I’m seeing the column with the tabs that everybody else is seeing.
1 Like
Yes— on mine, once I change it in any person from detail tab to SPOUSES --no matter who I click on next , it shows the spouses until I change it again…
1 Like
Yes, that’s what I just discovered. When I close the program it starts over on the Details tab again. I had wondered if there was a setting somewhere to make it open to the spouses tab every time.
1 Like
I am guessing that is not available option - but could be a nice enhancement (back to my point about more available customization. Including personalization of layouts
Sorry abt that-- you and I posted our messages at the same exact time-- unfortunately there is not anyway that I can see to make it the default—so maybe we need to add that as a feature request @rzamor1 --the option to choose between details/spouses/parents on a permanent basis UNTIL you want to change again…
As for the info window on the left @RWL , I also don’t use it much BUT you can do a lot with it-- you can jump to any spouse for the highlighted person— or you can jump to a child of a 2nd spouse— and you can edit/delete/ unlink a child and even add a new child from there
Never tried it BUT it actually gives you more options then RM 7
There are a couple of ways to run the side panel - with the top half larger or with the bottom half larger. Here’s an example with the top half larger. I don’t like to run this way because the top half doesn’t show the children unless you drill down and the bottom half often is not large enough to show all the children unless it is larger.
Here’s the same screen with the bottom half larger. For the most part, I prefer this set up and it’s the one I use because I can usually see all the children and most or all of the siblings. But I lose the ability to rearrange the spouses or the children. It’s very frustrating. I wish I could use this setup all the time and still be able to rearrange the spouses or children by clicking on buttons in the main part of the Family View like I could in RM7.
One other issue is that I was thinking that it did not remember to keep the same tab highlighted in the info panel as I change people. But as others have already reported, it does remember to keep the same tab in the info panel highlighted except when you first start RM. What I was probably remembering is that RM Explorer has the same basic set up as the Info panel with the three tabs for Details, Parents, and Spouses. Except that in RM Explorer when you are moving around, it constantly reverts back to the Details tab and the Details tab is pretty useless. Whether you are in the side panel or whether you are in RM Explorer, I always go into RM Explorer rather than trying to use the Details tab. The Details tab simply doesn’t show enough information and it is too hard to use. I offer as evidence the Details tab for this person as compared to the Edit Person screen for this person. And even the Edit Person screen sometimes doesn’t show enough.
Sorry @thejerrybryan , you lost me here- because I can use this view to move from a child to a parent and just be showing the one parent on his parents page and can rearrange children or spouses as long as he is highlighted (under pencil icon)
