46 replies to this topic

[BonSam]

With that, I already owned RM7 and then went ahead and paid the $30 to get PH3 and a future upgrade to RM*. I am sold. Thank you again to the RM authors for their hard work. I don't think they hear that enough. I have created programs in the past and know how thick skinned you have to be to keep producing for users and push forward with your plan without getting burned out from all the negativity that can come from users.

 

As long as RM sticks to gedcom standards, sourcing standards, and can export without messing the data up,  I will remain a faithful acolyte. Like I said, anything above and beyond is icing on the cake.

 

Joe

First, what's a "PH3"?

I think you are right about everything moving to the "cloud." Sadly, the cloud is not magic---that service can disappear in a flash, just as Ancestry could. Hopefully, software such as RM, will survive and continue to gives us the opportunity to fully own our data. That, in large part, depends on our support to the developer. The field of genealogy software has certainly whittled down in the recent years and the developers are not to blame entirely....at all.

[zhangrau]

PH3 = http://rootsmagic.co...onal-Historian/

 

I would seriously be disappointed if RM switched to a cloud service. The internet infrastructure is simply not mature enough nor widespread enough to ensure that I (and others) will ALWAYS have access to the cloud. The big telecom companies have repeatedly claimed that they have the infrastructure. But it is not true, in my opinion.

[Trebor22]

PH3 = http://rootsmagic.co...onal-Historian/

 

I would seriously be disappointed if RM switched to a cloud service. The internet infrastructure is simply not mature enough nor widespread enough to ensure that I (and others) will ALWAYS have access to the cloud. The big telecom companies have repeatedly claimed that they have the infrastructure. But it is not true, in my opinion.

I also prefer my family history software served up on my home PC :-) even if we do all end up with 24/7 access one day (unlikely!)

I wonder, is RM's website output moving to 'RM only servers' a first small step in the cloud direction?

[Rooty]

Bonsam;  PH3 probably refers to personal historian software from rootsmagic.

 

A cloud based service is not available many places and puts your data out of your control and at risk in the hands of third parties.

 

One reason for the shift cloudward may be the slowness of developers to keep their software current and make it available on popular platforms like the mac. 

[TheRev]

PH3 = http://rootsmagic.co...onal-Historian/

 

I would seriously be disappointed if RM switched to a cloud service. The internet infrastructure is simply not mature enough nor widespread enough to ensure that I (and others) will ALWAYS have access to the cloud. The big telecom companies have repeatedly claimed that they have the infrastructure. But it is not true, in my opinion.

So true. It is sad when I go to some Countries and see how much more their infrastructure is built up and cheaper to access.  The best networks I have used were one's where the government owned the equipment and allow telecoms to rent them. This creates more competition and therefore  inexpensive providers.

 

Whereas, in the US, our politicians allow monopolistic telecoms, whom we give our tax dollars to, to build our fragmented infrastructure. This money gets diverted to third party contractors that are the lowest bidders which typically translates to those in greater population arease will get better service. Those in the country can only hope a provider comes in their area. Which is not likely since money talks. My cable company wanted me to pay $30,000 to run a line to my house.

[Vyger]

"I don't ever remember Rootsmagic being voted best genealogy program".

 

I truly think RM is underrated. I've only been using RM for a few years and it fully does what I need it to do for my situation.

 

I have been a very long time user of RM and Family Origins before that, it is still my preferred program, whilst it has many desirable features it also has many deficiencies and a trail of infinished features. For example try printing an association report for events that took place at a particular Place Detail, yeah no PRINT button so does not mirror the same functionality as the Place list. In my opinion the developers simply move on from features once sold to the masses with little care for the difficulties users are left with having to employ work arounds to make some use of these features. My wife drives a nice vehicle but she would not be offended to hear me say she knows little of how to operate the numerous features incorporated in the vehicle, I believe that also describes the majority of RM users, simply scratching at the surface and getting by without serious research goals. If Rootsmagic are happy moving forward with that loyal band of followers then it will never be the #1 genealogy software available, a position it has never held except in vested interest circles on particular features.

 

My main database is over 100,000 individuals and there are many users with larger files, my research side (reference) database is closing on 450,000 individuals so there are serious researchers out there and many with more data than I.

 

Rootsmagic has the reputation and reviews it currently deserves, nothing more, nothing less but it has a sound foundation and the world at it's feet if it gets the feature list and release of RM8 right and problem free. Failing to get RM8 right in respect of research tools, location mapping, publishing and charting capabilities will probably resign Rootsmagic to an also ran status for several more years with a steeper hill to climb as other programs move on and push ahead.

 

I know folks are expecting a lot of features in RM8, but to be honest this program is so feature packed as is, I can only expect any improvements to be icing on the cake. I am totally thankful I have found RM and that the authors continue to provide us with the ability to bring in data from Ancestry and FamilySearch under one roof as well as the tools to clean up that data.

 

Hmmm, I have a classic car and I love it, however my road car is over three times as powerful, more efficient and equiped liks a space ship compared to my classic, whilst I love to drive my classic I wouldn't want to everyday. I don't want to see Rootsmagic become a classic like Brothers Keeper or PacMan, the desires of users are well known and I really hope Rootsmagic are up to the challenge of delivering on the needs of serious researchers, unless they are I will sadly be looking for another platform as I need to drive my reasearch forward. After a 25+ year relationship with the company that would be a hard and disappointing decision but one I would be forced to make for the benefit of my research.

 

As long as RM sticks to gedcom standards, sourcing standards, and can export without messing the data up,  I will remain a faithful acolyte. Like I said, anything above and beyond is icing on the cake.

 

Rootsmagic does try very hard to operate within the Gedcom standard but I would say it is technically outside of that standard like all software providers, DYOR. I am fortunate I can easily translate my data to the needs of other software offerings but many can not, if there is an attempt from software companies to lock their users in through lack of transferrable data structure then that is simply wrong. If I had the best software I would make it easy for users to leave and migrate their data in the full belief they would be returning, I would also make my import capabilities superior and more fully inclusive than all other software providers to ease the passage to Rootsmagic. I would strive to keep my users with superior charting, mapping, reporting and geographical suggestive tools, the fundamantals of genealogy research and constantly responding to user needs in a timely manner, something which was once true of Family Origins/Rootsmagic.

A Name without a Date or Place is useless in research, if I tell you I have a John Doe in my database you will ask me where he lived and when, Rootsmagic needs to leap ahead in the data mining and mapping necessary to make and suggest those possible community links.

[TheRev]

 

Hmmm, I have a classic car and I love it, however my road car is over three times as powerful, more efficient and equiped liks a space ship compared to my classic, whilst I love to drive my classic I wouldn't want to everyday.

 

 

LoL. That car analogy does not work for me since I use RM for a different reason. For my usage, RM will be the engine that keeps things running smoothly while I build a body around it. For example, here is what I do with the data I export from RM;

 

http://ourbigclan.co...7&tree=ncmULLIS

 

You are coming at me like I am a newbie . Maybe to RM as a user, but not from a programming perspective. I have been doing this genealogy thing for over 20 years. I understand what this program is and does on a level that most general users do not. I code and build websites as a hobby. I'm too lazy to build modules to connect Ancestry and Familysearch API's. I'd rather just pay for RM do do it...lol.

 

In order to keep RM alive, Implementing connection to Ancestry and FamilySearch was more important than working on bugs in the bells and whistles or implementing more features at this time. They needed to focus on the total re-write of Ancestry and Familysearch API's and bridging it to RM.

 

It is obvious by reading the history of this program and seeing what's under the hood that there was a conscious effort to follow programming and gedcom standards in order to keep data from becoming corrupt. It is definitely a labor of love. Other genealogy programs fall short of this and want to be everything to everyone with much fluff. Most of these programs failed because the technology changed and the authors did not keep up with the times. It is amazing that RM has kept up where most have not.

 

 

 

 

A Name without a Date or Place is useless in research, if I tell you I have a John Doe in my database you will ask me where he lived and when, Rootsmagic needs to leap ahead in the data mining and mapping necessary to make and suggest those possible community links.

 

I may not understand you correctly? RM does data mining quite well for a desktop program. It connects to the Ancestry and Family Search API's and pulls in data without corruption. 

 

In terms of mapping, I don't think free access will be around much longer for these programs. Google already wants to charge me for tapping into their API to use their maps. I expect Bing to follow suit eventually. Hey, maybe we will eventually go back to paper maps..lol.

 

Data mining on the net is a whole other animal. Data mining for genealogy content on the web is useless since there is no way of knowing where sources originated and there is so much noise that would have to be filtered. Like fake news

 

The nuts and bolts of RM are solid under the hood and does what most other desktop genealogy programs do not do, in terms of pulling info from Ancestry and FamilySearch in a clear concise manner.

 

 

I would rather see all the extraneous stuff pulled out of the new RM8 and the developers  focus more on  strengthening data manipulation with only modular addons for any bells and whistles that users want.

 

 

Cheers.

 

Joe

[BonSam]

Joe, Vyger and all, this a most interesting thread. One of the things that springs to mind is what feedback or analysis has RM or any genealogy software proprietor done to show them they must offer this feature or that to rank top dog in the marketplace? Most offer pretty charts, hook ups to ANCESTRY, etc. some have so many bells and toots that really have little use to a professional* researcher....the various rating sites always, always base thei ranking on the charts($), sharing (doesn’t work), and connectivity to FS and Ancestry. Really no educational components about research process.
*professional genealogy researcher: it is accepted that a person who follows and adheres to the standard and processes of the Genealogy Proof Standard is a professional. Their research is exhaustive, well documented, analyzed....all to put the correct branches on the trees they create. RM many tools for recording evidence, good source and citation templates, attaching images, timelines, etc. Reports, fortunately, can be saved as text edit allowing one to open in Word or Scrivener for far better composition. Excel works well for comparing and analysis of findings too.

[Trebor22]

Vyger wrote:-

Rootsmagic does try very hard to operate within the Gedcom standard but I would say it is technically outside of that standard like all software providers, DYOR. I am fortunate I can easily translate my data to the needs of other software offerings but many can not, if there is an attempt from software companies to lock their users in through lack of transferrable data structure then that is simply wrong. If I had the best software I would make it easy for users to leave and migrate their data in the full belief they would be returning, I would also make my import capabilities superior and more fully inclusive than all other software providers to ease the passage to Rootsmagic. I would strive to keep my users with superior charting, mapping, reporting and geographical suggestive tools, the fundamantals of genealogy research and constantly responding to user needs in a timely manner, something which was once true of Family Origins/Rootsmagic.

 

If I had a very big wand to wave for a Christmas wish it might be that one day there was a 'standard format' for genealogical databases so you could use whichever programme suited best and switch between them when ever you wanted  without having to squeeze your database through something like gedcom or use tools like Tom's SQLite gems. Sure its technically possible but I find it hard to imagine getting any software houses  on board :-(

Time to put my 'real world' head back on!

[keithcstone]

From a personal standpoint I'd like to see just a few things. First, being a developer from way back I'd like to see the removal of unnecessary obstacles to extensions to the platform like weird collating sequences or other proprietary things. Let those of us with skills extend the RootsMagic platform in a cross platform way. RMTrix is great, but it's not cross-platform. Without platform specific extensions RM could work on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I'm primarily a Mac user, but I use Windows when appropriate (and in my day job). I also have relatives with both platforms I would like to share data with without import/export. Second, I would like to see the most emphasis on exporting structured text in a manner appropriate for publication. Along those lines l'd like to see the capabilities to purge formatting text from any database field. When you've merged multiple sources often you'll end up with random RTF or HTML in your database. If you're going to use an external program to do the final formatting (or have a decent looking RM report) that formatting will create clutter. The ability to remove formatting and force fields to plain text would be a  godsend.

[JimDavis79]

Hear, hear!  I'm a TMG emigré and programmed my own software before that.  Anyone ever hear of GeneLinks?  No one?  Ah, not surprising.  FTM was an intermediate step to RM7, but issues for me in FTM that made the step to RM7 a very happy stride.  From my distant cubicle, the API that Ancestry opens to developers is clunky.  Therefore, I maintain a separate tree in Ancestry, not linked to my RM7 database and use the hints in Ancestry to download sources to my desktop.  I do the same with FamilySearch, not liking that anyone there can alter one's tree.  Double-entry, to be sure, but this way I'm certain that my data is mine, as well as all mistakes!

 

Since TMG died because of its programmer's illness, I am concerned about the managerial and programming succession plan of Roots Magic.  I raised the topic with Bruce Buzbee in 2017, and was assured that succession was well planned.  I'll be glad of RM8, but I'm so far behind on entering information that it'll be a while before new features change my life.  Let's hope there are many years ahead of us for Roots Magic.

[BonSam]

Thanks, Jim.
I’m glad to hear your approach to Ancestry and FS. It seems, at least from that chatter, that people spend a lot of time fretting over linking up with these sites. They are certainly both good research sites, and what you find there is easily transferred to RM.

This ongoing thread has been most interesting and keeps us all distracted while we wait for RM8!
Bonnie

[pbooth99]

I  work as a computer programmer , specializing in performance tuning of low latency financial apps or high traffic web sites. I use  alot of software tools in my job but I am a reluctant purchaser of software because the potential list of software I might want to use is close to infinite. If I look at the genealogy software, and subscriptions, that I pay for I see:

 

Rootsmagic

Reunion

Heredis

FamilyTreeMaker

AncestryFamilyTree

MacFamilyTree

Genmerge

Gedpad

GedGap

 

ancestry.com

thegenealogist.co.uk

findmypast.com

deceasedonline.com

 

rootsmagic is clearly the best value  for money of the software products. And a big part of that is this community that doenst have na equivalent in any of the other software products

[Ed Pring]

My criteria for judging good software - of any persuasion -  is and always has been:

• Does it work and do I like it?
• Does it meet my needs?
• Is it being (over time) constantly improved?
• Is it reasonably priced?

 

For my genealogy needs, RM meets my criteria for good software.

 

Elder Geek

[Jerry Bryan]

My criteria for judging good software - of any persuasion -  is and always has been:

• Does it work and do I like it?
• Does it meet my needs?
• Is it being (over time) constantly improved?
• Is it reasonably priced?

 

For my genealogy needs, RM meets my criteria for good software.

 

I like this list, and with one significant quibble I would say that RM meets all four criteria for me. My significant quibble is with the third item. When was the last time that source management in RM was improved? When was the last time place management in RM was improved? When was the last time that all the access violation errors in RM were improved? When was the last time that data loss in drag and drop was improved? When was the last time that narrative reports were improved? When was the last time that errors in the source templates were fixed?

 

The problem with the third criterion is that RM has had a history since the introduction of RM4 of adding new features without any work at all to improve existing features that have significant problems. I guess you could say that the new features constitute improvement, and hence they satisfy your third criterion. But the main body of RM has languished.

 

Jerry

[Rooty]

Price is reasonable. However it sure does not work well nor meet the needs of Mac users. It also seems to be getting worse over time with tech support consumed by supporting treeshare etc.

[Vyger]

The problem with the third criterion is that RM has had a history since the introduction of RM4 of adding new features without any work at all to improve existing features that have significant problems. I guess you could say that the new features constitute improvement, and hence they satisfy your third criterion. But the main body of RM has languished.

 

Jerry

 

Sadly, as another long time user, I have to agree with Jerry, my '58 Ford starts and drives but it's certainly not going to pass any road worthiness test even with it's shiny new towing hitch

[Ludlow Bay]

RM's long-standing business model has been to introduce a little flash and ask for cash.  Combine that with the uber-insulting "confirming this is on the enhancement request list" and you know exactly what Bruze Buzbee thinks of the customer base that has supported him for 30+ years.  I learned long ago not to be taken in by his flashy baubles and meaningless promises.

[Paul Harris]

RM's long-standing business model has been to introduce a little flash and ask for cash.  Combine that with the uber-insulting "confirming this is on the enhancement request list" and you know exactly what Bruze Buzbee thinks of the customer base that has supported him for 30+ years.  I learned long ago not to be taken in by his flashy baubles and meaningless promises.

 

 

[robertjacobs0]

I've been a RootsMagic user ever since Wholly Genes folded, but I haven't encountered any "meaningless promises." I agree that "confirming this is on the enhancement request list" is annoying.

 

I would prefer that the list of enhancement requests were posted, together with the number of users who would favor each. Family Historian does that; it makes one feel more a participant in the software's direction than a supplicant, begging at the gate.

 

If I may say so, I think it's an error to lay one's frustrations on the heads of small specialized software companies. I know nothing of the economics of software publishing, but it's clear that if one wants to hire a full-time programmer at, say, $50,000 per annum, that one has to sell 1000 copies of a $50 software package every year just to pay the programmer alone -- and one hasn't even begun to pay for overhead, taxes, food for the family, a roof over one's head, and the services of a charming and technically adept person who has to write "confirming this is on the enhancement request list" on the forum, probably more often than she cares to.