Does anyone know a way to change sentence structure in a resulting report if the Place data is the same, instead of over and over?
My thought is, in a report for a person which has many events occurring in the same place, I don’t want to see:
Bob was born in Norfolk, Virginia, United States. Bob did this in Norfolk, Virginia, United States. Bob did this other thing in Norfolk, Virginia, United States. Bob married Mary in Norfolk, Virginia, United States. Bob died in Norfolk, Virginia, United States.
I’d like for my sentence templates to somehow realize that the place appeared earlier in that paragraph (or even the whole report), and after the first occurrence, use the Abbrev value from then on. I don’t want/expect the need to “fix” each event’s existing sentence template using the ‘Customize’ feature for Fact I add.
Is there a way to accomplish this today in RM11?
If not, can we get a feature request for it to be added, making reports more reader friendly?
It doesn’t address your issue directly, but I simply omit “United States” from all place names where it applies, which is nearly all of my place names. I realize this is standards non-compliant. And I really would prefer to include “United States” for all appropirate place names in my database. I just don’t want them in my printed reports for family reunions.
I’m standards non-compliant in other ways as well. Non-genealogists who read my reports have no concept of the standard of counting commas to determine what the parts of a place name mean. I think that’s a terrible standard anyway. But I include words like “county” and “township” in all my place names for the same reason of readability for the non-genealogist. The underlying issue is the same: the way data is stored in a database may not be the best way for the same data to be presented on the printed page.
Ahh, I made the same request many years ago. As a workaround, I developed an outboard query that batch customised the event sentences to accomplish something along the lines of what we want the requested feature to provide: a less repetitive report.
It was for RM6 databases so it may fail on a later version. If it doesn’t work on RM11, I’m sure it can be readily updated.
Adding to @thejerrybryan’s dropping the country name is his customisation of the sentence templates to point form which eliminates a lot more repetitive verbiage and makes the report easier and faster to scan.
I only add the word “County” if the Place name does not appear before it. In the case of Norfolk, Virginia, I have a separate entry for Norfolk, Virginia (which is now the designation of the independent city) and another for Norfolk County, Virginia which ceased to exist on January 1, 1963. If I have a separate entry for the County, I geocode the county independently of any internal communities.
My process for anything European is completely different and a bit labor intensive.
Tom reminded me that point form sentences are another alternative to the problem of repetitive sentences in reports. Point form sentences can be produced by modifying RM’s sentence templates to meet your needs.
I have used point form sentences in printed reports for family reunions for years, and they seem very effective and non-repetitive to me. The person’s name only appears once. There are no verbs, so the sentences all read something like
Birth: 12 June 1842 In Anderson County, Tennessee. Death: 2 Dec 1902 in Knox County, Tennessee.
You can see an example of such a report at Dropbox The first individual in the report has a lot of facts with long notes, so you may need to scroll down the report a bit to get the full effect of how the point form sentences really work.
Thanks. If I understnad your meaning of “point form sentences”, I’ve already manually “Customized” most of my sentence templates to use options for [Place:Abbrev]. But, my Abbrev for place names contains the Cuty, State or County, State. But, if a Residence fact is in Norfolk, Virginia and another Fact happens in Norfolk, how would I omit the appearance of ‘Virginia’ after the second appearance of Norfolk without also affecting the later appearance of say Hampton, Virginia?
I should think the RM development team can find a smarter method for reports to determine a place has been used repeatedly, and allow the user to determine rules for how they should appear. I think this all requires a feature-request.
My point form sentences do not address that particular issue. Rather, there is a general shortening of the sentences to produce an overall simplification. Place names are still repeated for multiple facts. And multiple facts are not smoothed together into fewer sentences. It’s still one sentence per fact. But the sentences themselves are much shorter and simpler.
RM already does that for a person’s name in Narrative reports. It’s called name cycling and rotates through Full, First, Pronoun. If you read and understand the linked page in my earlier reply, you’ll see that I accomplish that by customising the sentence for every event, not the default for the FactType.
See the Customize button in the sentence preview for any event for a person in the Edit Person screen:
When you customise at that level, it affects only that one event and only for that person. To do so for every event for a person is doable manually but for everyone in even a small tree prohibitively laborious. That’s why I developed my (temporary, it was hoped) workaround that customises every event for every person in one go.
So, yes, our requested feature is needed. In the over 13 year interim period since I first requested it, RM Inc has provided nothing other than these options:
trim country from Place Names in Place List
set FactType sentence template to use [Place:Abbrev]
As fact are listed in the report in the order they are listed in the person’s edit page, one thing you could do is simple leave off Virginia in the place name after the 1st fact and just put Norfolk-- it would automatically suggest Norfolk, Virginia the 1st time you tried BUT just put in Norfolk and it will accept it-- after the 1st time, you would always have to make sure you picked the right one BUT it works..
Thinking outside the box— a little unconventional BUT-- why not make a customized fact such as lived or residence-- you could use a sort date of right before or after his birth date by adding -1 and -2 to the dates
