6 replies to this topic

[ketchell]

I am a TMG emigre and learning the RM features.

 

In TMG you can search the title for sources containing a particular word. I use this a lot in TMG  asthe first word in a source is often not very useful. I don't see that kind of feature. Am I missing something?

 

If not, a title word search be a very useful feature for the Source List window.

 

 

[kbens0n]

Search -> Find Everywhere

[Jerry Bryan]

Search -> Find Everywhere

 

Find Everywhere does work to find source names, but it may or may not be what you expect. It finds the search string within the source names within a person. It doesn't find the search string within the source names within a source list. To accomplish the latter, you would need an enhancement in the source list in RM8 or you would need to use SQLite.

 

To find search strings within the source names within a person, you an also use just plain old Search or you can use RM's marking dialog while color coding or making a group. The search is basically Source Name Contains. You can specify a person source or a fact source.

 

Jerry

[kbens0n]

Find Everywhere does work to find source names, but it may or may not be what you expect. It finds the search string within the source names within a person. It doesn't find the search string within the source names within a source list.

Not sure what you mean by "within a person". I noticed I had two separate, but equal, sources in my Master Source List. One named "Connecticut Nutmeg" and another named "The Connecticut Nutmeg". Search everywhere found them using the term 'nutmeg' under categories for both Sources and Citations, as well as other uses of the word within the People category.

[zhangrau]

Wouldn't it be easier and simpler to have a Search box at the head of the Lists > Source List? Let that box search all of the source fields and display an appropriately filtered list. While we're at it, how abut adding a Search box to Lists > Repository List.

[Jerry Bryan]

My terminology of "within a person" might not have been as clear as intended. What I was trying to say is that it is not searching Lists > Source List. Rather, it is going through each person, one person at  time, and determining if that person has a citation of a source which contains the designated string as a part of its name (or as a part of its footnote sentence, etc.). As zhangrau suggested, having this functionality in Lists > Source List would be much easier and simpler for your purposes, but RM does not support searching from Lists > Source List. RM does support searching from Lists > Media Gallery but not from most of the other lists. The search that's available from Lists > Media Gallery is really needed on all the lists.

 

Jerry

[ketchell]

If you have a lot of sources, the current list is problematic. Trying to find a particular source is very time consuming. here is no sort order by say author, sourceID number or any other parameter nor can you search for a word in a title like TMG. TMG certainly didn't cover the need but usually could find a particular source in that same window quickly. Going out of the source list window to find a source is slow and tedious. Search everywhere is slow, moving between windows takes time and screen space. I would still need to remember if I used the exact title or modified master source title to find it in the source list window.

 

Several years ago I gave up on decent source management in genealogy programs. I come from an academic librarian background and instead used a separate true bibliographic/citation management system. Originally EndNote and now Zotero (free and extremely flexible). Unfortunately this requies a duplication of sources. If I'm going to go outside the source list window to try to find a source then using Zotero is easier except the duplication because the other features of Zotero are very useful (attaching links, documents, media, folder categorization, etc.)

 

I've found in the RM forum that people have developed source categorization techniques to try to get a handle on this issue. Rather than put that effort into RM, I'll maintain my duplicate source management in Zotero despite the duplication for now.