RM8 Person side view panel: the person summary space utilisation

RootsMagic
1

In RM8 which I am using a lot for checking and inquiring on my working (input efficient) RM7 database
I am already finding that I’m missing the very quick succinct birth / marriage / death date and place from RM7.
With limited screen real estate I more frequently use the index list below the person side view for working on groups of people (with a pedigree view open in the main screen), I generally have the majority of the side panel devoted to the index portion, not the person detail .
Which means:
I CAN see:
an avatar which is about 4 lines high
next to it the first line is taken up by a birth - death year
the second line with the relationship
the third I’ve not yet noticed anything in
the fourth has the hints / problem report / FamilySearch icons to the right.
Then the Details / Parents / Spouse tabs

But to see the actual birth death and marriage dates and places
I have to either

  • open for edit,
    or
  • keep resizing which panel gets more screen space to bring the BDM info into view
    and even then - scroll down
    If I’ve used sort dates for eg custom facts to make them sort to the top of the person details then that’s yet more scrolling to find the basic info about the focus person whose pedigree I’m examining.
    If those 3rd and 4th lines aren’t currently used can the top panel please be used to display rather more like the RM7 succinct display that’s at the top of the screen to make more efficient use of the space?

Or has anyone actually seen all 4 lines of text used?

1 Like
2

All the 3-4 lines you mention in the side panel show only the years of birth and death. There is a lot of empty space.

image

To see more details in Pedigree view, they want us to look below “Edit” to find the birth and death info. This means we need to pick up the mouse to scroll down the side panel to find that info. This isn’t easy when a person has a lot of facts to weed through.

It might be nice if the basic facts of Birth, Marriage, and Death were somehow made more visible by having those lines in bold or something.

3

Yes, it’s the scrolling and resizing that is unhelpful when the info ysed to be available at a glance.

It does also include the relationship if one is set but I’ve not seen any text, yet, on the left hand side of the 3rd and 4th lines.
image

I suppose the hints / trouble report / FamSrch id icons might get in the way for the 4th line - perhaps they could be vertical in this summary box :slight_smile:

4

The wiki page has not caught up with the relationship display. Perhaps there is no plan for potential lines 3 & 4. It’s just space left over by the height reserved for the photo.

The info view displays:

  1. The highlighted person’s name
  2. The highlighted person’s primary photo
  3. The primary person’s life span (birth - death)
  4. The status icons (FamilySearch, problem alerts, etc)

http://wiki.rootsmagic.com/wiki/RootsMagic_8:Info_View

5

As I use RM8 more, I am more and more missing the very quick succinct overview, visible at a glance of the birth death marriage dates AND places.
If this waste space isn’t able to be repurposed to provide this again
perhaps there could be an setting somewhere to be able to force this primary BDM info to the very top of the person panel regardless of sort dates or anything else so we don’t have to keep resizing the person panel to see the basic info given it is now buried amongst everything else.
Not everyone uses large monitors.
(Support ticket lodged to make this an offficial request)

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