8 replies to this topic

[Brian Yokum]

What are the downsides of using shared facts?  Are there issues with GEDCOM transfers or syncing with other services?

 

I am particularly interested in using the "witness" role for things like baptisms and marriages.  Currently I am adding these to the notes for the non-shared marriage fact, then adding a user-created "Witness" fact to the witnesses, but this seems like a lot of redundant data entry.  I also have this data in the actual transcription of the source.

 

Also, what happens to those individuals who share a fact but are not in the database?  Is there any way to use this information, or is it only accessible when looking at the shared fact itself?

 

[Jerry Bryan]

RM's shared facts are not compatible with most third party software. For example, they are not transferred from RM to ancestry.com nor to familysearch.org using RM's direct interface. They are included in RM's enhanced GEDCOM (the "Extra Details (RM specific)" option). RM will import this data from its own GEDCOM, but most third party software will not import the information from such GEDCOM. Sentence template customizations associated with individual instances of shared facts are not included even in RM's enhanced GEDCOM. The latter is an RM bug, not a problem with third party compatibility. Within RM itself, there are number of aspects of shared facts where they do not behave quite like real facts, for example, in searching or making groups or making columns in People View - that sort of thing. The real focus of RM's shared facts is for making sentences in narrative reports.

 

Many RM users make heavy use of RM's shared facts in order to obtain the benefits you are looking to obtain. With one exception, I don't use RM's shared facts because of third party interface issues. The one exception is that I share RM's marriage and divorce facts with the parties to the marriage or divorce. This probably sounds very strange because the parties to the marriage or divorce already have the marriage or divorce facts. The difference is that the original version of the marriage or divorce facts prints only in the family section of narrative reports and is not in timeline order with the person's other facts. The shared version of the marriage or divorce facts prints in timeline order in the individual section of narrative reports. If I lose these shared facts when transferring data to third party software, no real data is lost - just some nice formatting of a report.

 

Jerry

 

[KFN]

One of the issues with GEDCOM is that it does not have a structure that supports "shared personal facts". I include the word "personal" in this description because some systems call a fact type "shared facts" to really mean "family facts" which generally refer to engagement, marriage and divorce. It also has a residence tag but for the life of me I could never really understand how a "family" (all members) could live together at an address for everyone's entire life!

A shared fact in GEDCOM would need a structure that could allow one entry of a fact and have it shared (related in the GEDCOM file) to all participants in the fact or event. This is NOT the case in GEDCOM so any "shared personal facts" maintained in the primary program must be broken out to all members when the GEDCOM is produced, the receiving programs of the GEDCOM has no way to know that two personal facts are really "shared personal facts" and concept of shared is lost.

[Brian Yokum]

Actually, I wouldn't be too upset if the "shared fact" was broken out to everyone who shares the fact during the GEDCOM export.  I view the use of shared facts as a time saver when entering data in RootsMagic.

 

Again, perhaps this could be an option in the export.

 

Brian

[TomH]

See my response in http://forums.rootsm...ems/#entry84026

[genealogy4primm@earthlink.]

"Shared Facts" is a misnomer per se. As others have mentioned, this phrase generally conjures up the concept of a Family Fact Type.

The various Fact Types can be Shared. (Family or Individual types in RM).

The better description of a RM Share a Fact feature of a Fact is "A Fact that is/has been Shared".

[Don Newcomb]

RM's shared facts are not compatible with most third party software. For example, they are not transferred from RM to ancestry.com nor to familysearch.org using RM's direct interface. 

 

 

I use shared facts primarily for census, wills and probates. On wills and probates I have created roles like, administrator, heir, mentioned-deceased, etc. I'm considering adding a role to the death fact of "informant", used only for the informant on the death certificate. One reason I'd be reluctant to use the Ancestry Sync feature is the lack of support for shared facts. What good is it to say someone's estate was probated but not who was mentioned in the file? That's the whole purpose of chasing probate records. I'm not exactly sure why RM couldn't create an Ancestry miscellaneous individual fact from the shared fact's role sentence information. 

[Jerry Bryan]

"Shared Facts" is a misnomer per se. As others have mentioned, this phrase generally conjures up the concept of a Family Fact Type.
 

 

I totally agree about "shared facts" being a misnomer. I'm not sure what the best term might be, but "shared roles" or "multiple roles" might come closer to the truth than "shared facts".

 

Every fact in RM has a "principle" role where the "principle" is the person who owns the fact. If you don't use RM's shared facts then it remain the case that every fact in your database has a "principle" role and the person who is the "principle" is the person who has the fact. You might not even notice that this "principle" role is there, but it is. It seems to me that in order for RM truly to have a feature called "shared facts" that it would have to be the "principle" role which is shared but the "principle" role cannot be shared in RM.

 

Jerry

[TomH]

I disagree that "shared facts" is a misnomer just because the Principal role is limited to 1. TMG allowed 2. "Co-chairs" share a role but the conference event is shared by all the participants regardless of roles.