7 replies to this topic

[westis]

Hi,

I'm getting closer to choosing RootsMagic for my research about my Kenyan wife's family. I still, however, have a few remaining questions:

• In MyHeritage Family Tree Builder there is an hour glass view, where I zoom in and out to see more relatives, and I can see all relatives, not only parental descent as in the pedigree view. I find the pedigree view a bit difficult to navigate to get an overview of a person's uncles/aunts, cousins etc. Is there any hour glass kind of view in the pipeline for easier browsing?
• Group reports. Say I create a group of all the ancestors of a person, including parents siblings for each generation. Can I print a report of that group? I'd use that to send to selected people, for them to fill in details about their own relatives.
• Search index by given names. When I search for a person I almost always want to search by one of their given names (most people in the context I'm working with have two names, a traditional and a Christian name, either of which are used as "first name", depending on the context where it's used). But the search index only gives me the opportunity to search by family name (most have the same family name) and to search by given name(s) I have to do several steps to do an advanced search, so that even scrolling the index list is faster. Will search index by given names be included soon?

The other main contenders I have looked at are MyHeritage Family Tree Builder, Legacy and Disgen (the most common genealogy software in Sweden, although seriously lacking a modern interface).

[kbens0n]

1. This "hour glass" concept has been mentioned and requested for a very long time. I'm sure the request is registered for consideration by the RootsMagician to be added, but not as of yet.

2. If you were to color code those folks (using the same selection criteria), you can create Custom Reports designed to include columns containing various data fields, etc., BUT for most reports and cases (that are not strictly Ancestor or Descendant number of generations), it is currently done by dragNdrop (exporting) those folks to a temporary database and then creating a report or reports from that temporary one.

3. The NameFind button in Search->Person List accepts a given name only and then finds all (near)matches.

[TomH]

1. Choose your tool based on your priorities. Pretty charts such as hourglass do not contain much information, only the basic such as BMD; therefore, they can be made by a secondary tool from a GEDCOM from your primary database.
2. Any of the reports that include the "People to include" control include your named groups in the dropdown list. That includes the Individual Summary which is the form that you would most likely want people to mark up. The Family Group Sheet does not work from named groups - maybe it should!
3. The ability to use a surname wildcard for the sidebar index would be a useful enhancement. But you can create a named group of persons having a certain given name and that gives you a short sidebar list.

[John_of_Ross_County]

Hi,

I'm getting closer to choosing RootsMagic for my research about my Kenyan wife's family. I still, however, have a few remaining questions:

• In MyHeritage Family Tree Builder there is an hour glass view, where I zoom in and out to see more relatives, and I can see all relatives, not only parental descent as in the pedigree view. I find the pedigree view a bit difficult to navigate to get an overview of a person's uncles/aunts, cousins etc. Is there any hour glass kind of view in the pipeline for easier browsing?

You might try the "Wall Chart" report. It will show aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. However, I think it is disabled in the RootsMagic free demo version. The report can get to be a very large physical size for a complex family.

[westis]

Thanks for replies!

Yeah, I can create an hour glass view with a secondary tool, although it would be easier to be able to browse through people in that view. That would be my preferred view to find people and who they are related to, at least in this early stage of collecting information.

About groups etc. I kind of have found what I was looking for with your help! However, I can't seem to be able to print based on color code, but rather on group. But dragging and dropping to a new db sounds ok for now.

[TomH]

Okay, I misunderstood. It is a main screen, tabbed, interactive Hourglass View that you prefer and want in RootsMagic, in addition to the Pedigree, Family, and other Views. Maybe even better would be a View like Ancestry.com's Family Tree View. Unlike Hourglass, it also shows siblings. However, I'm sure the Hourglass is easier to implement.

[VirginiaBl]

Search index by given names. When I search for a person I almost always want to search by one of their given names (most people in the context I'm working with have two names, a traditional and a Christian name, either of which are used as "first name", depending on the context where it's used). But the search index only gives me the opportunity to search by family name (most have the same family name) and to search by given name(s) I have to do several steps to do an advanced search, so that even scrolling the index list is faster. Will search index by given names be included soon?

Tim Cook who has been researching the Cheyenne Indian tribes for many years (his wife is a full blood Cheyenne) has a problem similar to yours of multiple names, not the conventional given/surname. His solution to the indexing has been to enter all the names in the surname field - nothing in the given name field. He uses TMG but it looks like it should work as well in RM.

Virginia

[Renee Zamora]

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