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Dealbarta

Tabs in Sources & Citations

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I am having problems with the display of Citations in report footnotes or endnotes when the Citation is in a tabular form. Examples of tabular Citations are transcripts of census returns; birth, marriage and death Certificates; and military records.

 

I always transcribe the originals of these items into a tabular form using Word and my own templates. When I create a Source I copy the transcript into the Reminder window so that the information is readily available whenever I cite the Source in a Tag. However, in the Reminder window the items in columns are no longer lined up but only separated by a tab from the entry to the left, and all formatting such as bold headings or italics is lost. To line the columns up I have to insert additional tabs but as the word processing facilities in the Reminder window are extremely elementary to say least I can only do this by copying (Ctrl C) and inserting (Ctrl V) tabs. Other formatting cannot be restored.

 

After reading the User Guide, A Primer for TMG and Getting the Most Out of TMG I appreciate that the recommended method of using the Reminder field in a Source is to enter minimal information such as a reference. However, I think it is important to have all the information from a Source appearing in the Reminder window when a Source is cited. For example (U.K.) Census returns contain information about relationship, age, occupation and birthplace for a family. So a Source for a Census can be cited for:

  • The Census Tag. In this case I would copy all the information in the Reminder window into the Citation Detail window. Unfortunately the columns do not line up and I have to insert or delete tabs to make them do so but at least I have all the relevant information for the Census Tag Location fields, the Memo field and adding Witnesses.
  • Adding a New Person. In this case I would cite the Source in the Birth Tag and copy the information on name, relationship (to the Principals), age and birthplace for that person from the reminder window to the Citation Detail window. It may need a little editing to make a sentence but once again all the relevant information is available from the Reminder window.
  • Occupation Tag. In this case I would cite the Source in and copy the information about the occupation for a person.

So now in the case of the Census Tag I have nicely formatted Citation Detail, BUT, when I generate a report for printing or as a *pdf the tabs are converted to spaces and the carriage returns to vertical bars which makes any data presented in tabular form virtually impossible to read. For example an entry in the Citation Detail window arranged in columns:

 

post-23-0-86805000-1354747373_thumb.jpg

 

appears in the endnote of a report as:

 

1841 England Census for Pill, Easton-in-Gordano, Somerset, “| County: Somerset Registration District:

Bedminster Civil Parish: St George or Easton in Gordano| Address: Myrtle Hill, Pill, Somerset| Id Names Age Trade or Employment Born in County?| 630 Charlotte Adams 46 Charwoman Yes|632 James Adams 18 Sailor Yes| 633 William Adams 15 Mason’s labourer Yes|634 Charlotte Adams 12 Yes|253 Benjamin Adams 9 Agricultural labourer Yes| 635 Martha Adams 6 Yes”

 

which is virtually impossible to make sense of. However, if I generate the report as a Word document the data appears in columns albeit not lined up which means further editing. (Incidentally SecondSite also produces an output in columns but not lined up.)

 

I have tried copying a tabulated transcript into the Source Comments field and adding [MEMO] to the Source Template. However, the results are the same - tabs are converted to spaces and the carriage returns to vertical bars.

 

I must say that I was hoping that the word processing abilities of the Reminder window in Sources would be improved when TMG was upgraded from Vs 7 to Vs 8. Does anyone know whether there is an improvement in the pipeline?

 

But my real questions are about tabs and carriage returns.

  • Is it possible to maintain the line-up of columns when copying from the Reminder window in a Source to the Citation Detail window in a Tab?
  • Is it possible to maintain the line-up of columns between the Citation Detail window and an end note in a report generated for Word?
  • Why are tabs converted to spaces and carriage returns to vertical bars in an endnote generated for printing or a *.pdf document? Can a ‘normal’ column format be gererated?

Sorry for the rather long explanation but I hope it's clear.

 

I would be grateful for any help.

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