Jerry Bryan

I was hoping for some easier way than colour coding/groups 

Easy or hard can be in the eye of the beholder. I don't know what your overall experience with RM is, but do be aware that you don't have to color code or put people into groups one at a  time. You can do it for thousands of people at a time provided there is some rule that can be followed, such as "all descendants of Samuel".

Also, I do hope that RM itself makes this easier. In your case, three enhancements to RM would help tremendously. One enhancement would be for RM to remember the rules that were used to create a group and to be able to re-apply these rules automatically. For example, one of the rules in your case would be "all descendants of Mark" and you are probably adding new descendants of Mark because that's the area of the database where you are working. RM presently does not include the newly added descendants in the group and it's something you have to remember to do yourself. Another enhancement would be for RM to be able to limit narrative reports to a group. It doesn't presently have this ability which is why you have do the drag and drop to a new database to create the report you need. The drag and drop can be limited to a group but the narrative report cannot. A third enhancement would to be able to mark and unmark by group and not to have to involve colors in the process of making a group such as yours.

RM's groups are a great feature, but RM does not utilize the feature to its maximum benefit.

Good luck with your project!

Jerry

This kind of facility is very much needed and I very much support your suggestion.

There is a complication that needs to be taken into account. Namely, the current RM design conflates its one and only "profile" for sentence templates with its one and only "profile" for GEDCOM export. For example, the Fact Type entry for the Birth fact defines how birth sentences should look in reports and also defines the conditions under which the birth fact should be output in different media such as GEDCOM, narrative reports, etc. So if you change this design (and it does need to be changed!), you need to take everything into account in the design of a "profile" system, not just GEDCOM.

When I have talked about this situation, I have talked about it primarily in terms of sentence templates and I  have used the term "styles" rather than "profiles", but it amounts to the same thing. In my view, the sentence templates could be set up so that there would be a Terse style or a Verbose style or a Point Form style or an English style or a French style or a German style etc. The same sort of thing is obviously needed for GEDCOM export, and whether it is called a profile or a style makes no difference. However, the options for GEDCOM should probably be separated from the options for sentence templates instead of remaining conflated as they are now.

Jerry

Rather than distorting your working database to declutter reports, export the people you wish to include to a temporary new database used just for reports. When you have made further revisions to the main database and need to produce new reports, repeat.

I totally agree with Tom about not distorting your working database. I think you will really like your procedure in the short run but you will really regret it in the long run.

It is possible to produce decluttered reports without distorting your working database. RM does not make this as easy as possible, but here is a way to do it.  I'll use your wife's example with "simple" names.

The key person in your list of "simple" names is Mark. You want all of Mark's descendants without any decluttering. You also want Mark's direct line back to Samuel, and you do want that part of the report to be decluttered. So let's assume that you have a fully cluttered database starting with Samuel and all his descendants. What we will do is make a temporary decluttered database with Samuel and only some of his descendants and run the report in the temporary database. After printing the report, we will delete the temporary database. This is what Tom already said, but this is how to create the temporary database.

• Open your main database,
• Clear all your colors.
• Go to Samuel and color code all his descendants and their spouses as red.
• Go to Mark. Color code some people as green as follows. Mark all of Mark's ancestors. Mark all of Mark's descendants. Unmark everybody who is not color coded red. The people you need for your report are now green.
• Drag and drop all the green people do a new, temporary database.
• Run your descendant report in the temporary database, starting with Samuel. It will be decluttered as you desire from Samuel down to Mark, and it will including everybody who is Mark's descendant.
• Delete your temporary database.

Instead of using green color coding, you could make a group to be dragged and dropped to the new database. But you can't get rid of the red color coding and use a group instead for that part of the marking and unmarking. That's because you can unmark everybody who is not color coded red but you cannot unmark everybody who is not in a group.

Jerry

From the users' perspective, the enhancement list is a black hole.

The list is just for consideration by the developers, and is not a commitment to include the enhancements in the product. It's not a public document, and the percentage of enhancement requests that make it into the product is not zero but it's extremely low. 

Jerry

Without me "removing" the Josselyn and Kebel families from the Smith main tree, a 2 generation report contains data and notes for 29 persons.

With the  Josselyn and Kebel families removed, there are only 17 persons.

With 3 generations, the figures are 67 with and 52 without.

I probably wasn't understanding your objective correctly. I wasn't going to produce any descendant report at all from the Smith main tree - just descendant reports from each person at one level below the Smith main tree.

If you did still wanted a simplified descendant report from the Smith main tree, you could have a chapter that was the Smith main tree for two generations, not including spouses. Then the spouses would appear only in the later chapters, not the first chapter. But as you can tell, I'm probably still not understanding the objective correctly.

Jerry