6 replies to this topic

[Jane B]

I am just trying out some of the new features in RM6.
Having just set up a website I am wanting to double check the living flags to ensure I'm not publishing anything in error. I've colour coded all the living people to highlight (hopefully) and help identify any rogues way back I can immediately mark as not living. So, when I update the living flag I would expect the colour coding to change from green (living) to black (dead) but it doesn't - the colour stays green.
Am I doing something wrong or is it wrong to expect the colour coding to update like that?
Advice gratefully accepted

Jane

[Laura]

Color coding does not automatically update itself. If you uncheck the living tag of a person and want them to them be coded black, you have to do it yourself and clear the color green as you work on each person's record.

Or you could clear the living tag and make several dead people Black at one time by selecting Clear color and People selected from a list. On the Select people screen, Mark Group, Select people by data fields, Living flag is False.

[Alfred]

No, you would have to redo the color coding. It is static in that newly added or changed people are not colored as those you selected earlier.

==== edited after Laura's post ====

My goodness, I must be slow responding, when I started, Laura's message wasn't there. 8 minutes?

[Jane B]

Thanks everyone. At least that explains things however I'm very surprised t hat the coding doesn't update automatically. I will need to rethink my processes
Jane

[Laura]

There are many times I use color coding and make changes and change the color coding to another color, or I don't want the color to change at all. I would be very upset if RM automatically cleared the color to Black as I have people in my database whose permanent color is Black.

[Jerry Bryan]

There are many times I use color coding and make changes and change the color coding to another color, or I don't want the color to change at all. I would be very upset if RM automatically cleared the color to Black as I have people in my database whose permanent color is Black.

When RM4 and Named Groups came along, the same issue arose. In the context of Named Groups, the term "Dynamic Groups" has come to be used to describe the idea that the criteria used to create a Named Group might be saved and then reapplied as needed. For example, if a Named Group was created that was all your own ancestors, or all the descendants of John Doe, or everybody in your database born before 1850, and if new people were added to your data base (or new data added to people already in your database), then your Named Groups would be adjusted appropriately. Some comments from the RootsMagician have suggested that Dynamic Groups of some kind were planned for RM4 but were withdrawn from the release in order to get RM4 out the door in a timely fashion.

There are been a lot of discussions on this forum about how automatic or non-automatic such a Dynamic Groups facility really ought to be. If such a facility was completely automatic, then it could really slow down RM and it could sometimes contravene the needs of users as your comment describes.

But the notion of saving search criteria certainly pre-dates Named Groups and RM4 (and even precedes color coding), going all the way back to Family Origins days. When color coding came along, there was much discussion about color coding not being automatically applied to newly added people. The term "Dynamic Colors" was not invented in analogy to "Dynamic Groups", but it is the same concept.

I advocate for a facility that will remember search criteria and that will re-apply the search criteria at the request of the user. I tend to think that making such re-application of search criteria totally automatic or dynamic is not such a good idea. I call the this idea "refreshable" rather than "automatic" or "dynamic". And I also think there are other applications for "refreshability", such as Set Relationships.

Finally, I think that the new Web Publishing facility in RM6 brings yet another need forward for this kind of "refreshability" because color coding can now be reflected to published Web pages in a very useful and interesting way. So wouldn't be nice to be able to color code your database in some fashion that suits your needs, publish pages via the new Web Publishing facility, add some people to your database, refresh your colors, and republish?

Jerry

[Renee Zamora]

Confirming enhancement request is in our tracking system.