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Archiver > TMG > 2004-03 > 1078240201


From: "Gregory Winters" <>
Subject: RE: [TMG] FTM Import and Footnotes
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 10:10:20 -0500
In-Reply-To: <2004329354.453572@TERRY2>


Terry:

Everything you're saying about the *sources* is indeed correct and I've got
no problems with this piece. Rather, there seems to be some sort of video
problem with the software and my computer (I've talked to tech support about
this) which is making some of this investigation very hard to complete. For
example, scrolling takes anywhere from 15-20 seconds to refresh the view
after clicking on one of the scroll arrows or in the scroll bar track
itself. Dragging the scroll bar is impossible. I've experienced this
problem in any of those Master lists where there are large amounts of data.
In the situation you and I have been dealing with here, when I went to the
Master Source List, the 'More' feature was already set, but there were two
peculiar overlays of source lists, each with their own row buttons and
scroll bars. (The fonts are all weird sizes and this causes words to be
'chopped off' in their labeling areas. I've played around with the screen
font sizing in the Program Options:Other area, but only the smallest font
sizes seem to work properly. Many of the field and box label areas don't
seem to resize themselves when selecting larger fonts.) All this display
distortion caused me to believe that I was missing entries from the Source
List when in reality, I wasn't. I toggled the Less/More button in the
Master Source List window and everything jumped back into place. (I have to
do this each time I open the List.)

However, the other problem - missing FTM footnotes - is still there. I
don't know if you've been following the thread I've had with Jim Byram, but
he seems to have hit the nail on the head: TMG does not recognize the
Footnotes field in the FTM application when importing directly. TMG seems
to run through a logical heirarchy when performing the Source/Citation
importing from FTM. First, it requires that all Citations have Sources.
This is the problem I had originally when working with Bob Velke, and he
suggested that I go back into my FTM file and assign all Citations (and
Footnotes) valid sources (i.e., don't leave the Source field blank simply
because I wish to attach a footnote to an Event/Tag.) Thus, I had to print
out a complete set of reports and go through the records one by one and
assign Sources, creating an 'Author's Notes and Comments' source when no
other valid source for a footnote was feasible.

Well, I guess this only addressed half the issue. Now, it seems that for
each footnote created, I also have to have a clone citation (with text). In
other words, I cannot have a Source citing a Footnote - I have to have a
Source which cites a Citation which cites a Footnote. <sigh> Why did all
this come about? Well, if you clone the Citation as the Footnote, you are
forced to duplicate everything in the Footnote which is originally listed in
the Citation, including the technical reference stuff. In the case of the
'Author's Notes and Comments,' there *is* no 'middle layer' of reference.
All footnotes *are* the notes and comments. It's not like saying that I
have a particular year's census, then I'm citing a certain roll, page, and
image, then I'm adding comments.

It's my understanding that only Sources can be combined when displaying a
report, not Citations. Thus, if I have a family of 10 who appear all on the
same roll of microfilm in a Census, then although the Source data can be
combined, if I have separate comments for each one of the family members, I
am forced to repeat the specific Citation detail for each and every one of
them so that my comments will appear in the Endnotes of the report. This is
what happened in FTM and why I chose not to duplicate the Footnote data in
the Citation field.

Example:

<Person 1> <1830 U.S. Census with combined Bibliographical data> Richland
Township, Belmont County, Ohio, roll 724, image 47, page 612. Joseph does
not appear in the 1840 Census with his family, but is listed living with
father in Pennsylvania. [The last sentence here is my added commentary which
I placed in the Footnotes since it is not a direct part of the Citation.]
<Person 2> <1830 U.S. Census with combined Bibliographical data> Richland
Township, Belmont County, Ohio, roll 724, image 47, page 612. Elizabeth
remarried sometime before 1840 and is listed with one additional child.
<Person 3> etc.

This is why FTM has a checkbox in the Citations/Footnotes area of the Source
window allowing the user to repeat the information in the Citation for that
particular database Event or to simply display the footnote. In the above
example, I would display the Citation information - the particular data of
the 1830 Census - for Joseph, but there is no reason to continue displaying
that data for the rest of his family (unless the paper listing carried over
to another page). They are *all* on the same Richland Township roll of
film.

So there you have the two reasons why I did not use Citations for every
entry: 1) 'Author's Notes and Comments' is already a Source - I do not
want this text string printing out in the Footnotes for the same reason that
we do not include the bibliographical information in the Footnotes, and 2)
there are layers of common Citation data which I also do not want repeated
over and over, but are still implicitly attached to remarks I would enter
about a particular Person or Event.

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: Terry Reigel [mailto:]
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 9:04 AM
To:
Subject: RE: [TMG] FTM Import and Footnotes

On Mon, 1 Mar 2004 23:05:17 -0500, Gregory Winters wrote:

> You are correct about the truncation piece. That is indeed the box
> I'm working with. I guess I would like to know if this could get
> fixed because there is twice as much 'white space' in the window as
> there is text, so it's not being truncated because of lack of room.

As I said, what you see here is the Abbreviation field. Go to the Master
Source List, then find one of the sources in question. Double click on in,
and look at the Abbreviation field on the General tab.
Change it to whatever you want to see listed as a brief label for this
source. Keep in mind that whatever you enter is never printed -- it is just
used in the Citation screen and in the Master Source List (when it is in
"Less" mode) for you to be able to recognize the source. I don't recall what
the length limit is on this field, but you can find it by entering a long
label and seeing how much is retained when you exit the field.
>
> I have indeed opened the Citation Detail and this is where I expected
> to find the text of the Citation (as I indicated in the example I sent
> you). However, the Citation Detail is blank. I *have* attached text
> to the source itself in the past, but I quit doing this because I was
> unable to figure out how to get that source text printed in Citation
> footnotes.

Have you gone to this source in the Master Source List to see if the text is
actually there, as I suggested in my previous message? I'm trying to figure
out if it's really missing or just in a place you don't expect.

Is the data you are looking at from a direct import or by GEDCOM?

Terry




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