There is a serious problem with RM10 Descendant Charts. In the attached example, Bob and Betty Smith have one son (Charles Smith) and Benjamin and Belinda Doe have three children (Annie, Barbara and Cecil). Therefore, Charles Smith is a second cousin to the three Doe children. However, the RM10 Descendant Chart output depicts all four of the children as siblings - also, every one of these children is shown as having two mothers and two fathers! When I ran two individual Descendant Charts for the children’s parents (Bob/Bettty Smith and Benjamin/Belinda Doe), those charts showed the correct parent-child relationships.
I notified RootsMagic Support and sent them the RM program file that depicts this flaw and the response that I received was that “…this is a known problem with the Descendants charts… We do not have a timetable on when this will be addressed.” Based on previous questions in this forum, it appears that this program flaw has been a known issue since at least May 2023.
To be fair to potential RootsMagic customers, there really should be a disclaimer on their website to warn that their software has “a known problem” and they “do not have a timetable” for fixing it. That would be truthful advertising.
Since all who post here are merely users (except the company’s moderator), unfortunately, you’re just yelling at the clouds.
Thank you for the heads up. A program defect this egregious really deserves some yelling and also a consumer protection warning. Maybe some independent genealogy forums and review sites might help speed up the “timetable” for a repair. Also, the RootsMagic “support” person, in this case, was stunningly tone deaf - they would do no worse just using ChatGPT.
I have never seen any company or business post a warning about their product having a “known problem”.
I had posted that I couldn’t replicate your problem, but I had a misspelling + left a generation off (during editing to remove married surnames from females) and unknowingly generated an incomplete chart. In the process of further troubleshooting, I have your same result depicted in a minimalist design and when observed inside the red hexagon… the connector line is lighter coming from the Smiths on the left (a single line) and then appears to meet the Doe’s parent descender and becomes darker (a doubled line) heading to the Doe children.
That may not be new info, but I also believe that this particular second-cousin relationship may be a conflict or cause for the chart flaw. While experimenting with increasing chart zoom via the + button, I continuously get a Bitmap size too big Error that disappears the chart representation and its thumbnail, too (NOTE there’s normally a longer pane divider between the thumbnail pane view and the chart pane view that also is overwritten? by the Error block in the screenshot):
This is only for Top to Bottom & Bottom to Top (not L to R & not R to left). It appears that the zoom control has a range that starts with the minus icon dimmed (lowest) all the way up to the plus icon dimmed (highest). There are 33 distinct clicks to go from lowest up to highest and, surprisingly, 27 distinct clicks to go down the other way. This is true for most, if not all of the charts (and works well), but… this particular database and specific second-cousin relationship (at the same vertical axis) triggers the Error message on the 13th click of that + icon (immediately after clicking Generate Report). I’m sharing the database on my Microsoft OneDrive
in hopes someone else can reproduce the symptom. Hope it’s germane.
@Timetable and @kbens0n I also created a smaller version of the families concerned
I agree that in a top to bottom view that the connector line is lighter coming from the Smiths on the left (a single line) and then appears to meet the Doe’s parent descender and becomes darker (a doubled line) heading to the Doe children. I saw this not only with the Doe line but in some of my other lines BUT could NOT post it as it was unreadable.
BUT I also tried left to right and it is very obvious in that view
I sent my RM10 program file to your support team (Diana) and she replicated this issue. I’m attaching the same file to this email that I sent to her. Also, as I’ve mentioned, your team stated that this has been a known issue, so I’m not the only one who’s had this problem. This problem has also been noted in your RM users forum. Your team stated that the problem was caused by the fact that there was a second marriage in a previous generation (Conrad/Cheryl/Denise Doe). Second marriages are extremely common, they should not trigger an error and other genealogy programs handle this tree perfectly.
What’s been most disturbing is that in the responses that I’ve received, the common implication is that this is not really a big deal. It’s actually an embarrasingly bad error, implying that these families are polygymous, so how much worse can it get? I just want to emphasize again, I’m not the only one who’s had this problem.
Ray
(Attachment Test.rmtree is missing)
Kevin -
I sent you my RM file (“Test.rmtree”), but I received an error message saying that my attachement was rejected. I’m trying again, sending it as a zipped file, possibly that may work. Anyway, I sent the same file to Diana of your support team, so she should have access to it.
Ray
I sent my RM10 program file to your support team (Diana) and she replicated this issue. I’m attaching the same file to this email that I sent to her. Also, as I’ve mentioned, your team stated that this has been a known issue, so I’m not the only one who’s had this problem. This problem has also been noted in your RM users forum. Your team stated that the problem was caused by the fact that there was a second marriage in a previous generation (Conrad/Cheryl/Denise Doe). Second marriages are extremely common, they should not trigger an error and other genealogy programs handle this tree perfectly.
What’s been most disturbing is that in the responses that I’ve received, the common implication is that this is not really a big deal. It’s actually an embarrasingly bad error, implying that these families are polygymous, so how much worse can it get? I just want to emphasize again, I’m not the only one who’s had this problem.
Ray
(Attachment Test.zip is missing)
Kevin -
My second attempt to send you my RM file also failed. If there’s any way to send it to you directly, let me know. Otherwise, Diana of your support team should have access to it.
Ray
Kevin -
I sent you my RM file (“Test.rmtree”), but I received an error message saying that my attachement was rejected. I’m trying again, sending it as a zipped file, possibly that may work. Anyway, I sent the same file to Diana of your support team, so she should have access to it.
Ray
I sent my RM10 program file to your support team (Diana) and she replicated this issue. I’m attaching the same file to this email that I sent to her. Also, as I’ve mentioned, your team stated that this has been a known issue, so I’m not the only one who’s had this problem. This problem has also been noted in your RM users forum. Your team stated that the problem was caused by the fact that there was a second marriage in a previous generation (Conrad/Cheryl/Denise Doe). Second marriages are extremely common, they should not trigger an error and other genealogy programs handle this tree perfectly.
What’s been most disturbing is that in the responses that I’ve received, the common implication is that this is not really a big deal. It’s actually an embarrasingly bad error, implying that these families are polygymous, so how much worse can it get? I just want to emphasize again, I’m not the only one who’s had this problem.
Ray
Again, everyone here is merely a user. I’m just a user. Users trying to support users.
If you can, please download the tree I shared and load it into RootsMagic. Then, with the settings defaults, hit the Generate Chart button followed next by pressing and counting the + icon presses of the magnifying glass to see if it continues magnifying all the way to its highest setting, without a Error. Thanks
Jerry -
You’re totally missing the point - it sounds like you’re OK with selling a product that has a known defect and hoping not too many people will notice it or complain. That’s a pretty bad reflection on the reputation of your company.
What’s been most disturbing is that in the responses that I’ve received from your company, it sounds like you’re not interested in actually fixing the problem, that it’s not a big deal. It’s actually an embarrasingly bad error, implying that these families are polygymous, so how much worse can it get?
Ray
Kevin -
Deleting Denise WifeTwo Doe from the program fixes the Descendant Chart problem. So the problem is caused by second marriages in previous generations.
Ray
Kevin -
My second attempt to send you my RM file also failed. If there’s any way to send it to you directly, let me know. Otherwise, Diana of your support team should have access to it.
Ray
Kevin -
I sent you my RM file (“Test.rmtree”), but I received an error message saying that my attachement was rejected. I’m trying again, sending it as a zipped file, possibly that may work. Anyway, I sent the same file to Diana of your support team, so she should have access to it.
Ray
I sent my RM10 program file to your support team (Diana) and she replicated this issue. I’m attaching the same file to this email that I sent to her. Also, as I’ve mentioned, your team stated that this has been a known issue, so I’m not the only one who’s had this problem. This problem has also been noted in your RM users forum. Your team stated that the problem was caused by the fact that there was a second marriage in a previous generation (Conrad/Cheryl/Denise Doe). Second marriages are extremely common, they should not trigger an error and other genealogy programs handle this tree perfectly.
What’s been most disturbing is that in the responses that I’ve received, the common implication is that this is not really a big deal. It’s actually an embarrasingly bad error, implying that these families are polygymous, so how much worse can it get? I just want to emphasize again, I’m not the only one who’s had this problem.
Ray
Kevin - I’m sorry for misunderstanding your relationship with the RootsMagic company - we had an email exchange and I was under the impression that you were employed by the company. Thank you very much for analyzing this problem with the Descendant Charts, it’s very appreciated, but in the interim, I’ve moved on to different genealogy software that doesn’t have this problem.
Ray
Thank You for the words of appreciation. Enjoy your endeavors!
Note: Just for clarification to viewers of this post… Timetable and I ~did not~ have an email exchange. They’re likely confused by an email from the forum to them (as a notification) about activity on this discussion.
Yes, you are correct about the notification emails. I had sent a complaint email about my problem with the software to some of the executives at RootsMagic and apparently notification emails from this forum coincidentally reached my inbox shortly afterwards. That’s why I thought it was a private email exchange - and it also explains why some of my remarks that were posted here may seem a bit disjointed!