3 replies to this topic

[magmatic]

Just some comments on what I have learned about Fact Types:
My database was ported from a different program. For my custom Fact Types, such as Eye Color, the detail moved to the Fact Note, rather than the Fact Description. That makes it look funny in a narrative report (no identifying text, or a period in a strange place). So, I have had to manually retype the data into the Description and delete the text in the Note. (There does not seem to be a way to just delete a note.) 

 

I also found the sentence had a field [Fact type], but there is no such field. So, I manually changed that to hard-coded "Eye Color. [desc].". I am not smart enough to make it say "He/She has/had brown eyes."

 

[KFN]

Their actually should be a Fact for physical description.  
 

One downside to moving data between programs via GEDCOM is that each program has its own internal field description and use that does not match up well with GEDCOM -or- the receiving program.  Therefore data sometimes is lost or moved around.

 

The GEDCOM specification is very specific About what data goes where, but each program must interpret those definitions to their own definitions of fields, in some cases data is split between fields, others may be combined, others may not exist at all.

[Jerry Bryan]

You could have made your sentence template be "Eye color. [Note]" without the quotes and just left your information in the note field. Except that RM includes the note field automatically and does not actually have a [Note] variable. Therefore, your sentence template could have been simply "Eye color." without the quotes. The sentence template looks funny without the reference to the note field, but it does work.

 

I have a number of "note only" fact types myself, and they do work. However, they do have one very ugly characteristic. Namely, the citation superscript appears after the body of the sentence and before the note. So you get such things as Eye Color:²³ blue rather than Eye Color. blue²³.

 

I use SQlite scripts to supplement my work with RM. Were I in your situation, I would have written a very simple SQLite script to move the Note data to the Description field for the specific fact types that needed that kind of data manipulation. If you are up to a little programming, then a simple script can sometimes save you dozens or hundreds of hours of data entry.

 

Jerry

[magmatic]

Oh boy, I don't think I am ready to get into SQlite, although I do have the capability. For a lot of these it might be simpler to just do it manually. There are not that many.

 

How do you know what the RM fields are actually called in the code vs. the name used for display.