![]() ![]() Thus many citations can reference many variations of a single source record. With source templates, the source title may contain place-holders, or fields that can be replaced by different information from different source citations (footnotes). For example, a newspaper is cited by title and issue date:ĭaily News. Thus many citations can reference one source. Citations (footnotes) that refer to this source all use the same source title. Traditionally, each source record in a GEDCOM file refers to a single source, and it has a specific title that does not change. See for example Genea-Musings, The Seaver Source Citation Saga Compendium (February 16, 2011). From what I read, Family Tree Maker 2011 and Legacy Family Tree 7 may have similar issues. To understand the subtlety of this distinction, let’s look at this issue in more detail. RootsMagic doesn’t export source citations at all. The source templates themselves should not be exported without the accompanied source citations. Remember source templates should only be used as a tool to generate proper source citations. It exports source templates to a GEDCOM file rather than source citations. Its source citations are based on source templates. It turns out RootsMagic has a fundamental flaw. Source citations cannot be reconstructed in either case. What’s more, removing those template fields did not solve the problem. Now, even if another program understands that proprietary format, it cannot reconstruct the source citations. To “correct” this, later releases simply removed critical parts of the template format. Why were those template fields removed? If source citations were exported using its template format, then only RootsMagic, or another program that understood that format, could process and understand the citations. Since that time, GED-GEN or any other program for that matter, cannot process the source citations exported in a RootsMagic GEDCOM file. But then in subsequent releases of RootsMagic 4, some of the source template information was removed from its GEDCOM file. So I modified GED-GEN to handle the proprietary way in which RootsMagic exported source citations. This resulted in unreadable source citations on my web pages. When I exported a GEDCOM file from earlier releases of RootsMagic 4, I discovered its output included source template information. I use my own program, GED-GEN, to publish my family tree website. Source templates are a wonderful way of filling in the blanks to construct complete, standardized citations. I quickly found many of my citations were incomplete and lacking critical information. I spent a lot of time converting my free-form source citations using its source template facility. When RootsMagic 4 was first released, I bought into the notion of source templates. Unfortunately if you were to use source templates, other programs will not be able to process your source citations. Even if you do not agree now, there will probably come a time when you do. There are several reasons you will want to transfer your family tree data between different programs. Another will create a better family tree website. One will print a graphical family tree in a much better format than another. One program will print a report another program does not have. However I’ve yet to find one program that does everything I want. With it, I maintain my “master” family tree by adding, editing and deleting genealogical facts and information as I discover it. I use one program as my main genealogy program. Besides minor problems with formatting and punctuation, the most serious issue is: You will not be able to use your source citations outside of your genealogy program. Citations are then complete, and in standard format.īut should you use Source Templates? I say No! The reason? Most if not all genealogy programs have yet to get their source templates feature working properly. You simply fill in the blanks, and it constructs the actual source citation. When you create a citation to reference a source in your genealogy research, the source templates tool prompts you for the necessary information. Source Templates is a feature that some genealogy software programs now offer.
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