Hiding 'non-person' witnesses

[John Garvert 0]

v7.03

 

Hello,

 

When I enter a dash '-' before the ID# in the Edit Witness window to hide that witness i.e. '-1234', it accepts the dash, but when I save 'OK' and later return to the Edit Witness window for that same witness, the dash is gone i.e. '1234'.

When I enter a dash before the ID# of P1 or P2 of a Tag Entry window, it is preserved.

 

Here is the task I am trying to accomplish.

I have created TMG non-persons such as (Cemetery), (Census), (Church), (Hospital), etc. I learned this trick from the various online TMG tips. I use these non-persons for research/tracking purposes only, not wanting them to show up in reports for family.

I then created appropraite Roles in the tags for Births, Marriages, Deaths, Burrials, Censuses, etc. When entering a tag's wintesses on the Tag Entry window I add a withness with the Role for the non-person and associated ID, i.e. a Burial tag would include roles for pall-bearers, celbrant, etc, and a CEMETERY role witness with the ID# '1234' of a non-person such as Cavalry Cemetery in Anytown, USA. For consistency I use the witness ID instead of the principal ID because in the case of the Marriage tag, both principals are used, so the witness ID is the only option. Likewise the birth of twins, etc.

The Report I use most frequently is the Individual Narrative. I have some rather complex tags defined with many roles and sentence structures, especailly for Censuses. If one of the Sentence structures includes the Other Witnesses [WO] placeholder as

[W] was enumerated in the 1880 Census ... blah blah blah. <Other household residents include [WO].>

, my Census non-person is getting listed with all the other real-persons witnesses.

When I set this up the roles for these tags and the use of non-persons, my plan was to hide the non-persons using a '-1234' in the ID field. But it appears to only work for principals, not witnesses.

 

Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong.

 

Thanks.

[Michael Hannah 0]

When I enter a dash '-' before the ID# in the Edit Witness window to hide that witness i.e. '-1234', it accepts the dash, but when I save 'OK' and later return to the Edit Witness window for that same witness, the dash is gone i.e. '1234'.

I don't believe you can do this for Witnesses. Even for Principals I don't think it will do what you want. My notes show that a leading ‘-’ in the Principal’s ID number marks this name as excluded data to not display in the Person View on the tag when the “other” principal is the focus if “Preferences>Tag Box>Show excluded data” is not set, but does not exclude the name from still being output in some reports.

...Here is the task I am trying to accomplish.

I have created TMG non-persons ... not wanting them to show up in reports for family.

I use non-persons all the time. The simple way I have found to exclude them from reports is by use of a flag, which I have created called PSEUDO. Its default value is set to 'N' for all "real" people and to some other value to reflect the "kind" of pseudo person. I then filter all reports to only include people with the value 'N'. I think this may get what you want. Let me know if you still have problems.

 

Hope this gives you ideas.

 

[edited later] Hmmmm.... reread your post and I believe [WO] is designed to give all witnesses regardless of being assigned a role. My notes to myself remind me not to use [WO] when I only want some of the Witnesses. I don't think you can use that variable when you have these situations.

Edited July 8, 2008 by Michael Hannah

[John Garvert 0]

When I enter a dash '-' before the ID# in the Edit Witness window to hide that witness i.e. '-1234', it accepts the dash, but when I save 'OK' and later return to the Edit Witness window for that same witness, the dash is gone i.e. '1234'.

I don't believe you can do this for Witnesses. Even for Principals I don't think it will do what you want. My notes show that a leading ‘-’ in the Principal’s ID number marks this name as excluded data to not display in the Person View on the tag when the “other” principal is the focus if “Preferences>Tag Box>Show excluded data” is not set, but does not exclude the name from still being output in some reports.

When I put a dash before the ID# for Principals, that person is then hidden (omitted) from the Individual Narrative reports I generate (what I wanted, a neat feature, even if unintended).

When I try to do this with ID# for Witnesses, it doesn't work because the dash is never saved, although you would not know that unless you re-open the window to verify. Instead, you would assume it was saved since you can enter it without an error message/action and then OK/save without complaint from TMG.

I re-verified this behavior to be certain (using v7.03 on a Vista PC).

This is why I think it is a bug, it should either complain about the dash if not allowed, or preferably IMO behave like the Primary ID and allow the hiding of Witness IDs.

 

...Here is the task I am trying to accomplish.

I have created TMG non-persons ... not wanting them to show up in reports for family.

I use non-persons all the time. The simple way I have found to exclude them from reports is by use of a flag, which I have created called PSEUDO. Its default value is set to 'N' for all "real" people and to some other value to reflect the "kind" of pseudo person. I then filter all reports to only include people with the value 'N'. I think this may get what you want. Let me know if you still have problems.

 

Hope this gives you ideas.

First, using the flag to identify non-persons is a good idea. I have just implemented it, much better approach than what I was doing, Thanks.

 

But the flag does not solve my problem if I use [WO]. The flag with filters lets me easily eliminate non-persons from the group of people reports are generated for, but the non-persons still show up in the sentences/data for an individual's narrative if the non-person is a witness for that narrative's primary subject.

 

I see several inelegant and/or time consuming partial solutions if this bug/feature is not implemented the way I would like. Do you have any more suggestions or feedback?

 

Again, Thank you for your prompt response. That is one of the big reasons why I switched to TMG (the others being its sources management and program/report customizations).

Edited July 9, 2008 by MavMan

[Michael Hannah 0]

the flag does not solve my problem if I use [WO]

Yes, that is why I have been careful in my sentences in when or whether to use [WO]. I know of no current way to make the link to a Witness "excluded data" so that you can set report options to include or exclude that link. Since the TMG Help topic on "Exclusion" does not indicate you can use the '-' on the Witness ID number (but does mention Principals) I assume it is not implemented. I agree both that it should probably give an error, and might be a nice suggestion for a future enhancement. You might join the TMG Chat this weekend and suggest it. If enough of us users ask for it then Bob may consider it. Many enhancements have been direct results of user suggestions.

 

Until then, if you want to exclude some Witnesses, you cannot use [WO] you must use Roles and list those roles you want. Sorry but at least you know how to proceed.

[John Garvert 0]

Since the TMG Help topic on "Exclusion" does not indicate you can use the '-' on the Witness ID number (but does mention Principals) I assume it is not implemented. I agree both that it should probably give an error, and might be a nice suggestion for a future enhancement. You might join the TMG Chat this weekend and suggest it. If enough of us users ask for it then Bob may consider it. Many enhancements have been direct results of user suggestions.

 

I am not familiar with the TMG Chat. Could you direct me to a link I can get more info, or provide a brief overview, please?

[Virginia Blakelock 0]

For information on the upcoming Wholly Genes chat, see the announcement in the TMG rootsweb mailing list archives:

 

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/r...8-07/1215647186

 

The chats are also announced in the Wholly Genes Newsletters; the current newsletter is at

 

http://www.whollygenes.com/forums201/index...amp;#entry38841

 

Virginia