WishList - Witnesses in multiple locations

[EricRJones 0]

What I would like is for tags to allow witnesses to have different locations than the principal. In fact, what I would really like is to be able to specify the name, age, and location of each witness when I add him or her to a tag. This would be optional of course.

 

My desire for this is constantly brought home to me. For example, I would like to create an Obituary tag with a role of Mentioned-Child (or whatever). Then when Catherine Owens obituary notes that she has a daughter Mrs. Percy Jones, Schenectady, it would be a simple operation to record this fact (knowing as I do from other information that Mrs. Percy Jones must be Catherine's daughter Anna). Now I understand I can work around this by using the Living tag (and creating a Name-Var that includes the age), but if I want to find out how I know the person was living at a particular address, I need to check the footnotes for the source. I think it is much cleaner to have it show up in one tag that identifies the princpal and the event generating the information (I would especially love this for family group sheets). I've wished for this feature with Immigration Records & Death Certificates especially, although I can think of lots of other uses as well.

 

I realize this would change the focus of TMG a little, making it more document-centric than person-centric, but I think it would be a very useful feature.

[GenerationGoneBy 0]

What I do is create a special name tag and put the location in the suffix field of the name tag. Like Harriett Smith (his daughter of Nashville) or John Jones (of Williamson County, TN)

 

Then it prints: Also mentioned was Harriett Smith (his daughter of Nashville).

 

I also use this method for deeds, where James Jones (of Williamson County, TN) sold land to John Doe (of VA).

 

It helps me to see this in the PE as well. Just one of the work arounds that might work for you.

[Michael Hannah 0]

Clever idea, Teresa, and useful for a lot of purposes. For other workarounds, you could simply write a custom main tag sentence and/or memo to say exactly what you want. Of course Teresa's idea will automatically let the special information show associated with the Witness name in the main tag sentence. I usually don't put these details in the main tag sentence, but reserve these details to only print in the Witness sentences and use split Witness memos and appropriate Witness sentence structures. Thus that Witness person's sentences mention other information unique to them, like their location, age, etc.

 

I could see this wish adding extreme complexity to the main tag sentences, especially if multiple people are assigned to a generic Witness role or to a custom role. What would you have [W] or [WO] produce, especially if all or part of the location and/or age were missing/not computable? Or a whole new set of [Wx] variables like [WL] for names and locations, [WA] for names and ages, [WAL] for names and ages and locations in that order, and matching [WOL] etc. ...???? I have often thought it might be nice if the Witness memos, including the split Witness memo parts, could be referenced in the main tag sentence, as a more generic solution to this wish. But I could not get my mind around the complexities to even figure out how to propose a solution, especially in the light of multiple people assigned the same role, each with their unique Witness memo. If I were Bob, I would probably file this wish in the "too hard to even figure out how to do" folder, but then Bob has surprised us with features that I previously thought were too hard to do, so you never know.

 

At least there ARE workaround ways to output what you want with the current software, just not as easy or quite as automated as your wish might imply.

Edited March 11, 2007 by mjh