Member
Posted 17 January 2017 - 01:30 PM
Is there a way in RootsMagic to open the Description field in a little window for editing, the way the Notes window opens with Ctrl/N ?
With a long description text, it is hard to review it, or to get to a specific part of it to copy and paste, in the one-line field.
Thank you,
Holly
Advanced Member
Posted 17 January 2017 - 03:36 PM
The description field is on the fact level. It can only be edited on the Edit Person screen. You do have to be careful putting to much text in the description field. If you go over 250 characters it will be lost in a GEDCOM export. It's just a limitation of GEDCOM. It's best to put longer text in the note field. For this reason I don't see us ever opening up the description field for people to edit it like they can for notes. It would encourage you to do something that you may be sorry about later.
Advanced Member
Posted 17 January 2017 - 05:05 PM
I was thinking the limit was more like 100 characters.
In any case, I use Notepad a lot for quick little editing things. For example, open a Notepad window, type a little bit of stuff, and then copy and paste it into somewhere in RM. Or copy and paste a little text from RM into Notepad, do a little editing there, and copy and paste it back into RM. That way, the window I'm working in is free standing from RM and I can make the font size etc. anything I want. I have Notepad pinned to my Taskbar at the bottom of the Windows screen, and it starts up almost instantaneously. I just close it out when I'm done. And if I do a Cut and Paste when I close it out, I don't even have to tell it that there is nothing that needs to be saved. It just closes immediately without giving me any obnoxious backtalk. I usually do Cut and Paste with CTL-X and CTL-V.
Notepad is a really simple and really dumb editor - no spellcheck, etc. - but it does very nicely for these simple kinds of tasks. I also use both Notepad++ and Microsoft Word sometimes in a similar fashion when the job is a little bigger and I need formatting or spellchecking or some such.
It's not just RM. There are several other programs where I use similar techniques, where the editing window is too little or the text is too little etc. Or as another example, there are a few cases where I have very long passwords and I will type them into a temporary Notepad window so that I can see them to be sure they are right, and then I will copy and paste them into wherever they really need to go. Passwords are usually masked as you type them in. I suppose masking makes sense on a public computer, but I'm not sure it's all that useful on my computer at home, and for long passwords it's a real pain. So Notepad to the rescue.
Jerry
Member
Posted 17 January 2017 - 07:11 PM
Thanks, Renee. I was trying to use Desc where possible because it is explicitly included in Sentences, but it seems that the Note, if any, is always appended anyway. So I will just use Note more. And I will double check any long Descriptions for truncation in my Gedcoms for Gedsite.
I understand the rationale, not to encourage long entries.
Yes, Jerry, I use Notepad a lot also, very convenient.
Thanks!
Holly
Member
Posted 17 January 2017 - 07:23 PM
I just checked for some long descriptions, and I see one that exported into the Gedcom that is 361 characters. So it must be more than 250 but I won't try to push it.
Advanced Member
Posted 17 January 2017 - 10:19 PM
I just checked for some long descriptions, and I see one that exported into the Gedcom that is 361 characters. So it must be more than 250 but I won't try to push it.
Actually, I think the problem is on import. I think that RM makes an arbitrarily long Description field on export, but truncates a long Description field on import. They way to be sure is to export and then import into a different database and to compare the data in the two databases.
Jerry
Advanced Member
Posted 17 January 2017 - 10:21 PM
Thanks, Renee. I was trying to use Desc where possible because it is explicitly included in Sentences, but it seems that the Note, if any, is always appended anyway.
Your analysis of RM's handling Note is correct. However, I think that RM really needs a [Note] variable in the Sentence Template Language. We shall just have to see if it is included in RM8 or not.
Jerry
