Jerry Bryan

1. I wish for RM8 to be a great success. I wish for RM8 to be well received by existing users and to be attractive to possible new users. I wish for RM8 to be well received both by PC users and by Mac users.
2. I wish for RM8 to give a higher priority to making existing features more complete and more functional than to introducing new features. In the same vein, I wish RM8 to give a higher priority to the actual utility of features than to the glitz of the features.
3. I wish for amount of data loss on a drag and drop operation to be exactly zero in RM8. All causes of such data loss should be identified and eliminated. This even includes not moving Description fields that are too long into Note fields. The Description fields that are too long should be retained.
4. I wish for RM8 to eliminate RM's frequent access violation errors, database errors, and lockups. There are surely multiple causes for these errors, but equally surely some of these errors must be related to incorrect locking and synchronization within RM's use of multi-threading for background operations such as WebHints. RM8 should never be allowed to get into a situation where the user cannot communicate with it, for example while it is awaiting a response from FamilySearch or ancestry.com. Even if one part of RM8 is hung, it should be possible to shut RM8 down from within RM itself.
5. I wish for RM8 to eliminate modal operation and instead support multiple windows or perhaps multiple window panes, all of which are active and live at the same time. In general, you should be able to type into any data you can see without requiring pop-up windows. Pop-up windows should be eliminated or minimized.
6. I wish for RM8 to remember stuff - all kinds of stuff. This would include the searching criteria used to create groups and color coding, which in turn would enable Dynamic Groups. This would include sizes and positions of windows and window panes. This would include List mode vs. Thumbnail mode when listing media files. And many other things should be remembered. If you can set it or change it, RM8 should remember your setting or your change. And if RM8 remembers it, there should be an easy way to reset it to factory default on a case by case rather than by a global reset.
7. I wish for the RM8 Sentence Template Language to support a [Note] variable. This is really a metaphor for many needful changes in narrative reports. For example, every aspect of narrative reports including the spouse sentence and carry forward sentences for children should be under control of sentence templates, and all vertical and horizontal white space should be under control of sentence templates. There should be an option on a person by person basis to carry forward a child to the next generation even if the child has no spouses or children.
8. I wish for RM8 to support shared citations or other similar feature. In other words, if a citation is copied many times, it should be possible to make a change one time that applies to all the copies. In general, source and citation management should become a live Sources and Citation View and no Print button should be necessary to see the Citations for a Source nor to see all the facts and people to which a Citation has been applied. The Sources and Citations View should have extensive filtering and sorting capabilities and RM should remember these filters and sorts. The Media files associated with Sources and Citations should be front and center in this new Sources and Citations View.
9. I wish for RM8's Lists->Place List to support a Print button for Place Details. This is really a metaphor for many needful changes in place management. For example, the Place List and any subordinate lists of events for a particular place should really be a live Place View and no Print button should be necessary. It should be clear when deleting a Place or a Place Details what you are deleting because it's too easy to delete a Place when you intend to delete a Place Detail. It should be easy to view and sort places in reverse order (country before state before county, etc.) The Place View should have extensive filtering and sorting capabilities and RM should remember these filters and sorts. And lots of other place management stuff that users have requested through the years should be included (c.f., many insightful messages from Vyger).
10. I wish for RM8's Color coding always to be readily apparent for any data displayed in any window or window pane instead of disappearing or washing out as it does now, for example for a highlighted person, or for example between the side panel and the main view.
11. I wish for RM8 to support multiple languages. This would include a user interface in multiple languages and sentence templates in multiple languages. This implies support of multiple sets of sentence templates in the same RM8 database, which also implies multiple sets of sentence templates in the same RM8 database even for the same language. This implies language tags for many RM8 data elements, such as notes, dates, and places.
12. I wish for RM8 to include major improvements in Shared Facts. In general, they should act more like real facts than they do. For example, it should be possible as an option to output shared facts as real facts in GEDCOM and via any API's which RM supports. It should be possible to display shared facts (the role facts) in People View (along with marriage and other family facts). It should be possible to search for and mark and unmark based on shared facts (the role facts). Whether as true shared facts or as shared facts converted to real facts, all information about shared facts should be output via GEDCOM (customization of role facts is not presently output via GEDCOM).
13. I wish for RM8 to include major improvements in TreeShare. In particular, it should support a true sync mode of operation, and the developers should make greater efforts to program around differences in RM and ancestry so that more data can survive unchanged a round trip between the two systems.

Jerry

I think this wish is a good idea, but even if the RM team agreed I certainly wouldn't want to see it before RM9 at the earliest. RM8 really needs to get out the door before any other good ideas are brought forth.

I wish for a new main view called the Event View. The look and feel would be modeled on the existing People View. The data being displayed would mostly consist of the contents of RM's EventTable which holds all the facts for all users. Hence, a complete and unfiltered Event View would contain many more rows than the existing People View. However, the Event View would not be presented quite like a simple SQLite query of the EventTable. Rather, the data would be presented in a bit more user friendly fashion than an SQLite query, behind the scenes joining with any other tables as required. For example, "role facts" should be included which requires joining with the RoleTable and the WitnessTable.

Double clicking any row in Event View would place you in the Edit Person screen for the person owning the fact and editing the selected fact. For family facts such as marriage, there are two possible individuals to select. I would hate always to be asked (too clicky) but I would also hate also not to be able get into either spouse. Therefore, each family fact should appear twice in the Event View, once for each spouse.

The columns available to Event View should be as follows. It should be possible to enable or disable the display of each column. It should be possible to sort on any or all columns - not just one column like People View. Not all the columns would be displayed by default, again using People View as a model.

• Name of event - birth, marriage, census, etc.
• Type of event - individual or family
• Person ID of owning person (like in People View)
• Reference Number of owning person
• FamilySearch ID of owning person
• Person Name of owning person (like in People View)
• Date
• Sort date
• Place
• Number of media files for the event
• Number of citations for the event
• Number of citations for the event that don't have media files
• Primary flag
• Private flag
• Proof flag
• Status flag
• Actual fact vs. role fact indicator
• For actual facts, shared or unshared status
• Date last edited
• Sentence template type (default or customized)
• Sentence template (raw, unfilled in)
• Sentence (sentence template after being filled in).
• Description (first 100 characters)
• Note (first 100 characters)
• GEDCOM export flag (really, a Fact Type flag, but useful here anyway)
• Publish online/create HTML flag (really, a Fact Type flag, but useful here anyway)
• Group sheets flag (really, a Fact Type flag, but useful here anyway)
• Narrative reports flag (really, a Fact Type flag, but useful here anyway)
• Individual summary flag (really, a Fact Type flag, but useful here anyway)
• Lists flag (really, a Fact Type flag, but useful here anyway)

In addition to being able to hide or show each column and to sort on multiple columns, the Event View should have powerful filtering capabilities appropriate to each column and that are specified separately for each column. For example, the date fields might be "between 1900 and 1910", place fields might be "contains Tennessee OR contains Texas", etc. Also, it should be possible to filter by group. Events/facts in RM do not have groups, but the owning people do, so the group filter should be on the owning people. Finally, RM should do a good job of remembering the sorting and filtering capability for the Event View.

It is tempting to ask to be able to type directly into the cells of this proposed Event View without double clicking to get into Edit Person. It could sure be nice and it could sure speed up a number of data entry issues. But I'm not sure how safe it would be.

In submitting this wish, I have also been thinking about RM's NameTable. This is the table in RM that holds the names of each individual and which also holds all alternate names. The names appear in RM's Edit Person screen almost as if they were events or facts. But I don't know if it would be a good idea to present the name data in the proposed Event View. There are enough differences in RM's NameTable and RM's EventTable to make a common view containing both to be somewhat awkward. Therefore, I think it would be better to have a Name View for the NameTable, following the same model I have just described with an Event View for the EventTable. And I'm especially assuming that RM's Name processing in RM8 will be enriched so that RM will have a Primary Name that will have all the same capabilities as does RM's current Alternate Names.

Jerry

This is sort of a wish list item, but it's not for any of the RM software products, per se. Rather, it's a wish or suggestion that there be a nationwide RM conference, hosted by the RM team and with presentations by them and also with presentations by any number of RM users. The RM team participates in many conferences each year. I could be wrong, but I don't think any of the existing conferences are specific to the RM company and its products.

As far as a time and place, I would try to attend most any time and most any place. If the RM team thought this might be a goo idea, then it would have to wait until after the release of RM8, and then another six months or so for the release to really be stable. Software is really hard and RM8 is a total rewrite, so that probably gets us at least to the middle of 2020. So maybe spring of 2021 might be an appropriate time for such a conference. As far as a place, there would be lots of travel involved for lots of users if they attended, so why not a central location and Salt Lake would probably be as good as any and might make it easier on the RM team. And as usual with most conferences these days, surely many or most of the sessions could be broadcast on the Internet.

Jerry

Is there any difference between [Name:Full] and [Name:NoCycle] in RM's Sentence Template Language. They seem to do exactly the same thing.

Jerry