8 replies to this topic

[Patrick R]

I have one sister, who is actually my half-sister (born of my mother's earlier marriage) and my adoptive sister (by virtue of my father having adopted her). Her birth shows up twice in my mother's timeline view.

I understand the logic of this; she is a child of my mother's marriage to her previous husband, but also shows up as a child of my mother's marriage to our father, and the timeline view just selects specific facts from each listed child. The problem is that is selected my sister's information from two different marriages as if she was two separate children.

This is not a critical issue, but it IS an annoying one, as I have several instances of individuals with multiple sets of parents.

[Laura]

Unlink your half sister from the family with her birth father and your mother. Relink her to her birth father and without a mother.

Leave her linked to her motber and stepfather's family as the otber set of parents.

[Patrick R]

That didn't work. My sister then no longer shows up with her mother and birth father. Unless I link her to both her parents, she doesn't show up in that marriage.

When I do it that way, she no longer shows up twice on my mother's timeline view, but the resultant problem elsewhere (no longer showing up in that marriage's Family Group Report, for instance) is unacceptable.

[Laura]

Would you ever be actually printing a FGS for her birth father's family?

[Patrick R]

I have. But more importantly, as she has had contact with her half-siblings from her father's later marriage, she doesn't show up under his marriage to our mother.

Here's the problem I have with any workaround: Having two sets of parents listed was never a problem in RM before, and I have four or five instances of it in my database. It is only with a new feature (the timeline view) that it has become a problem. We need to have the new feature fixed rather than find workarounds that screw up something that was working fine before. As much as I appreciate the effort to work around an issue, a good workaround should not cause more complications.

A popular saying is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Well, the feature that allows us to identify multiple sets of parents is NOT broken. What IS broken is the Timeline View. It is what needs to be fixed.

[Renee Zamora]

If you look on wall charts and the descendant view you will children listed multiple times when they have more than one set of parents. It's not surprising at all that the timeline view also shows this. The program does not know where you do not want the line repeated so you need to decide which set of parents you want the child attached to for reports, etc.

[Patrick R]

I know of no way to set "primary set of parents" for reports. If the program does not know, then neither do I. And as a programmer, I know what a user would tell me: if the program does not know, then it should.

One of the given truths in my genealogical studies is that families are not simple units. There are second and third marriages, there are half- and step-siblings, there are adoptions, and frequently, those multiple entities overlap each other. It gets complicated. But we're in the computer age, and checks for intentional duplicates (such as my sister being counted in two of our mother's marriages) could be done. In the Timeline View, the it's not like she's listed in two different marriages. It is that the exact same fact is presented twice, as if it is two separate events.

Should I have posted this under "Wish List" instead of "Issues"?

[Renee Zamora]

In some reports (pedigree) the primary set of parents will be shown. This is the last viewed set of parents for the person. With descendants it does not show the primary set of parents for a child, but all descendants, even repeats. Not sure how we could specify other then you unlinking them in that case. It is an issue we have in the tracking system for development to figure out.

Even though the repeat of the children in the timeline is not being listed under a parent's marriage it is coming in a second time due to the multiple links to that person. If you created a shared event of the child's birth with the parent you would be seeing the event repeated again also. There are cases where seeing multiple linking is a good thing so you can learn of problems in your database. That is another one for development to figure out how to fix.

[Patrick R]

It would be a second step when pulling the data for timeline, being to check for and remove duplicates, based upon Record Number, which is unique for each individual.

It actually might not be a second step, but simply altering the filter which pulls data from other individuals for the timeline view.

If this is done, multiple listings would always indicate a problem; if my sister showed up twice in my mother's timeline, it would be because there were two different entries for her.