To me, this raises for the umpteenth time a genealogy issue I think about a lot. Namely, should you expect and require your main genealogy software to be extremely comprehensive in meeting all your needs, or rather should you expect to use a variety of outboard tools such as FTA to supplement your main genealogy software? Or more specifically, exactly what should you expect from your main genealogy software?
Jerry
When I started out, now more than 20 years ago I did expect one piece of software to 'do it all' but experience has shown me that's more a dream than reality (perhaps RM 8 will prove me wrong). That said I also think its sometimes nice to use other programmes, it keeps me aware of what is out there, often just does what I want where RM did not, and sometimes makes me think about things in a different way, which can be good! It was mentioned recently on the forum about RM websites, I think RM is rather dated in this respect and likely heading in the wrong direction, so using a 3rd party utility is for me a simple solution, I also use a word processor for some of my writing, can I ever expect RM to be as good as Word or LibreOffice?
I think the nearest a programme might come to meeting all my needs (and or doing things in the way I want) would be to allow 3rd party 'add ons' - (as some programmes do - eg Gramps & FH) the community can then take a stab at filling in some of the gaps.
All that said RM8 may still be my programme of choice when its released, after all none of the competition is perfect, its our choice where we spend our cash :-)
