Enhancing the References - Thu, 16 Dec 2010

This is another feature I personally knew I needed, and wanted to get into Behold before the next release.

Behold has a number of "Detail" sections that are generated for you at the end of the Everything Report. This can include Place Details, Note Details, Repository Details, Source Details, as well as custom sections.  At the end of the detail for an item, all the references to that specific item are given and are organized by event.  Here are two examples:

Canada
  Birth: James J. LANNAN MCC-83, Ellen A. [KELLIHER] LANNAN MCC-83
  Marriage: James LANNAN and Ellen [KELLIHER] LANNAN MCC-83

S34  Birth Certificate Warren James Bailey
  S34-1  Yr: 1920, Vol: 2, Pg: 171, Reg#: 16811
    Quality: 4
    Occupation: Conrad BAILEY MCC-66, Catherine [NORTON] BAILEY MCC-66
    Residence: Conrad BAILEY MCC-66, Catherine [NORTON] BAILEY MCC-66

So the Birth, Marriage, Occupation and Residence events are grouped together, with links to the people given after the event.

This was okay, but to me it did not provide sufficient information. If I go to do some research, I want to know more about the events that the place or source are referring to. The specific items needed are the date of the event and the place of the event. Giving that in the Detail sections adds a lot to that information. You can cross reference easier, and it will help identify errors or omissions.

So now it will look like this:

Canada
  Birth: Jan 1844 –> James J. LANNAN MCC-83
  Birth: Oct 1847 –> Ellen A. [KELLIHER] LANNAN MCC-83
  Marriage: 1865 –> James LANNAN and Ellen [KELLIHER] LANNAN MCC-83

S34  Birth Certificate Warren James Bailey
  S34-1  Yr: 1920, Vol: 2, Pg: 171, Reg#: 16811
    Quality: 4
    Occupation: 4 Nov 1920 in Boston, Suffolk, MA –> Conrad BAILEY MCC-66
    Occupation: 4 Nov 1920 in South Boston, Suffolk, MA –> 
          Catherine [NORTON] BAILEY MCC-66
    Residence: 4 Nov 1920 in South Boston, Suffolk, MA –> Conrad BAILEY
          MCC-66, Catherine [NORTON] BAILEY MCC-66

The references are now sorted by event, then by date, then by place and then by the people in the order they are in the report. The Place Details obviously don’t need to have the place repeated again, so in that section, only the dates are given.

Both the place and the people are hyperlinked back to their original references. Because of that, I found I had to separate the places from the people so they wouldn’t appear as one, so I added a three character arrow, “—>”, between them. It will have to do until either I think up some better separator, or someone can suggest another way to differentiate them.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that adding this information does not increase the size of the Everything Report very much. And placing each Event/Date/Place combination on a new line divides it up logically and makes it easier to use in cases where one event has numerous references.

This will be included in the next beta release. I’ve still got a few more things I want to to sneak into it first. Hopefully the next beta will be out in the next few weeks.