Citation Window

The Citation Window is used to display source citation details (as in the example above).  It is also used to set up or view a prepared citation.  In that case it, will have three buttons at the bottom and there will be other differences.  To learn more about this latter use of the Citation Window (and associated visual clues), see Citation Window with a Prepared Citation.  The page below describes the use of the Citation Window to display source citation details.

The Citation Window is a floating window that can display all details of a given source citation.  A source citation can be viewed as consisting of two parts:

• The Source record details
• The citation-specific details

The difference is most easily explained with reference to a concrete example.  Suppose your source is a book.  A typical approach would be to create a Source record to represent the book, and to link all the facts that you gleaned from it, back to this Source record.  These links will be used by Family Historian when you later create reports, to generate appropriate source citation footnotes.  For this reason, we often refer to the links that connect a fact with a Source record as citation links, or even just as citations.

Let us suppose that you discovered 5 interesting facts within the book that you want to record within your project - they could be about one person, or about different people.  It doesn't matter.  You will want each of those 5 facts to be linked back to the same Source record, because that's where they all came from.  So there will be 5 links, from 5 facts, to a single Source record.  Some of the source citation information that you will want to record, are going to be the same for all 5 links: such as the name of the book, the author, publishing details, and so on.  These are all bits of information that most naturally should be kept in the Source record.  However, there may also be bits of information which are not necessarily the same for all 5 links - most obviously in this case, the page number.  You might have learned about the first fact on page 11, about the second on page 82, ... and so on.  The page number is an important piece of information, but the best place to keep it is not on the Source record (where there's no easy way of associating it within any particular fact), but on the link itself - because the link is attached to the specific fact that it relates to.  We say that details, like the page number in our example, are citation-specific.

On the main tab of the Citation Window, Source record details are stored in the top-half of the window, and citation-specific details are stored in the bottom half.  It is important to be clear about the difference.  Changes made to the Source record will affect all citations to that Source record.  Changes to citation-specific details affect that one citation alone.

How to Access the Citation Window

The Citation Window is used to enter and edit details of new and existing source citations.  Source citations are listed, and can also be created, in the Citation List Pane of the Property Box.  See the Citation List Pane for details of how to create (add) citations, and how to edit and view existing citations.  You can also add source citations directly into notes, using the Note Window.  Again, the Citation Window is used to enter and edit the source citation.  Within a note, each source citation is represented within the body of the text by a little superscript number.  Each such number is a link.  If you click on it, the source citation details will be displayed in the Citation Window, where, again, they can be viewed and edited.

Drag-and-Drop

The Citation Window supports drag-and-drop, which can be a quick and easy way of adding text and pictures.  See Drag-and-Drop to learn more.

Customizing the Citation Window

To customize the Citation Window, click Customize Citation Window in the cog button  menu.  Customizations are shared (to an extent) with the Property Box, when it displays Source record details.  See the "Special-handling for Source Records" section in Customize Property Box for more details.