6 replies to this topic

[GlenB]

I was importing a source into RM from FS for a person using the FSPT screen, Sources tab.

After importing the Source the sides of the screen went blank briefly and redisplayed, as expected.

But on the left side (RM side) there was an odd citation shown. I'll type it here instead of trying to insert a screen clip in this message.

 

RootsMagic Sources

  Source

□ ◘ Ane Fredericksen in household of Niels Christensen, "Denmark Census of 1860"

      Citation: Census

      Citation: Susan Smith-1

□ ◘ .... more sources and citations

 

The issue is the citation to Susan Smith-1. Yes, this is the root person of the database, but Ane Fredericksen is her 4th cousin 4 times removed and was not explicitly referenced at any point since the source import was started. I had just imported that 1860 Census source from FS and attached it to a Census fact in RM.

 

I then imported some other source from FS to RM and, when the screen redisplayed, this odd citation was gone. And in checking, there is nothing in Susan Smith that references this source, so far as I can see.

 

So nothing got stored where it shouldn't have been, the data is OK, but the logic behind the display in FSPT is making mistakes - not consistently, so I realize how hard that is to locate!

 

[Renee Zamora]

I haven't seen this before. Go to File>Database Tools and run all tools in consecutive order after a fresh restart of RootsMagic. 

[GlenB]

Done.

 

Was that meant just to make sure nothing had got messed up in the database. All seemed to be OK, all the DB tools were happy.

 

I fairly often see "spurious" citations appear under a source in RM when I'm importing FS sources. They always go away on the next refresh/redisplay. I only reported this one because it was the first time I had seen some other RM person referenced in one of those citations.

[Renee Zamora]

Database Tools can resolve indexing issues that could show things as you described. It's always good to run the database tool periodically. You can skip the compact database tool if you haven't done a lot of merging or deleting. 

[GlenB]

Agreed. I do run the DB tools fairly regularly. But, as I said, the spurious citation disappeared on the next refresh, not after reindexing. So perhaps the issue wasn't an index side-effect?

 

This supports my contention that the FSPT screen gets "confused" sometimes. There are several threads in this Forum where I point to behaviours that all suggest that might be what is happening. Situations where the page shows one thing and then after a refresh / redisplay shows another. Happens on the left side and on the right side. All of it seems related to counting how many lines of info to show under a particular heading. My years of programming suggest that "off by one" errors are among the most common yet hard to detect programming faults.

 

You know I would present you with a detailed "how to recreate" if I could. But the fact that I cannot reproduce it reliably doesn't mean it doesn't happen, and it happens often enough that it bothers me enough to write it up here.

[GlenB]

Sometimes I see something like this:

 

RootsMagic Sources

  Source

□ ◘ Ane Fredericksen in household of Niels Christensen, "Denmark Census of 1860"

      Citation: Census

      Citation: Census

□ ◘ .... more sources and citations

 

and sometimes something like this:

RootsMagic Sources

  Source

□ ◘ Ane Fredericksen in household of Niels Christensen, "Denmark Census of 1860"

      Citation: Census

      Citation: 

□ ◘ .... more sources and citations

 

But in all cases it goes away on the next refresh. These are not limited to Census type records, but happen on a variety of event types.

[Renee Zamora]

I have added this to the development list.