These are some of my ideas of how you might set up the database in the purchased version. You would want to experiment to see what works best for you.
Tribe, clan & subclan. You could create a person(s), [Tribe name, using the tribes name]. If there are different tribe names, link them to a person, All tribes, as children. Then create clans as children of Tribe and Sub clans as the children of the different clans.
All tribes (if needed)
Tribe
Clan
Sub Clan
Parents
Children
Thanks a lot for a well thought-out answer. I'm trying to grasp what you are saying, but have some questions to help me better understand.
You mean [all tribes] as the "roots person"? And then going back in "generations" with tribes being children of [all tribes], clans being children of a tribe etc? Or perhaps rather the other way around, that [all tribes] is a "person" from a long time ago, with tribes, clans and sub-clans as the generations following. But then I must know how far back in time I would like to go? Or any parent that I don't know becomes sub-clan/clan, and when/if I get to know their name I move sub-clan/clan up one generation? But how can a tribe and clan then be "parent" to "children" in different parts of the tree?
Age group/age set. You could perhaps create a user defined fact, Age group, with the description enabled. Enter a generation number in the description. Maybe also enable the date and enter a range of dates in the date. You would have to decide if tribe, sub tribes, orlan would be generation 1 and figure 14 years for each generation fom that person to the person you are entering. Counting the generations down from !st generation on the Pedogree view would give you the generations.
"Generation number" would be the name of the generation? In Samburu age groups are called Lmetili (initiated from 2004, Lmeoli (from 1990), Lkiroro (from 1976) etc. The year that is known to each age group is the starting year of the initiation of boys in that age group (+ 14 years until the start of the initiation of the next age group).
And each generation in the RootsMagic sense is not necessarily corresponding with the age groups. A father could have sons in several different age groups, and those sons in turn children in different age groups. So one generation as in parent-child could be anything from around 25 to 60+ years, depending on the age of the father when he got the child. But a child always belongs to the age group that is current when he's born (normally a boy is around 14-20 years old when going through the initiation together with his peers).
Perhaps I'm confusing things, but I like this idea, but only need to understand it a bit more.
Historical facts. Create a user defined fact, Historical. Enable the date and place and description. Enter the date and place with the name of the historical event in the description. Put any notes on what happened to that person n the fact note. Or, you could use the program defined Miscellanous fact.
Ok. But then several persons cannot be related to the same historical fact? In case I would like to search all who have shared experiences of a particular drought for example.
Sort dates. The sort dates are for arranging the fact in the order you want them. That is their only purpose. You can enter any sort date regardless of the date or no date in the Date field. You could even sort each fact as 1 or 2 or 3, etc. if desired.
Yeah, I will use them as "weight" (behind drag-and-drop sorting there's a number anyway), and then update the sort date in case another fact needs to be sorted in between, or if I get to know the real date.
Thanks a lot for insightful answers!
/Daniel