Preview

7.0.14.1

Media

  • You can now rename media files from within the Media Window. To do this, open the Media Window, select a Media record, and click “Rename Media File” on the Media menu (the top-level menu that is only visible when the Media Window is active).
  • When viewing an image in the Media Window, or in the Media tab of the Property Box, you can now zoom in and out on it, by using the mouse wheel, if you have one. If you zoom in so that only part of the image is visible, you can move around the image by clicking-and-dragging on it. This also applies when you view the image in the Media Viewer. It does not apply to thumbnails. This behaviour is similar to, and consistent with, zooming and scrolling in the Diagram Window and the Map Window. Note: there may be a short delay when zooming in on large or very large images.
  • There is a new option in the Media Window, to find and filter on media with “broken file links” (i.e. media, where the media file cannot be found on the hard drive). To do this, click the ‘Find’ button on the ‘Media List’ tab (left side of the Media Window) and choose “Broken File Links”.
  • The Media Window now remembers column widths if you change them.

Reports and Books

  • There is a new option “Compress Wide Tables” (enabled by default), in the Page Layout tab of Report Options and Book Settings. If ticked, and if a table would otherwise be too wide to fit on a page, the columns of the table are made proportionately narrower, so that the table fits within the page margins.
  • Previously, if a table was too wide to fit on a page, the text from the table could overflow into the page margin. If the table is now too wide (which it will only be if ‘Compress Wide Tables” is not ticked – see previous) it is now truncated at the margin.
  • A new option in the Note Window now allows wide tables to be split vertically (see “Note Window” below). This can be another way of solving the problem of tables that are too wide to fit on a page in reports.
  • An empty bibliography sections could cause errors with books. Now fixed.
  • Previously, ancestor reports did not include ancestors of same sex parents. Also, sometimes the sex of a parent was rendered incorrectly (for example, “Father” where it should have been another “Mother”). Both issues are now fixed.
  • Fixed a minor display problem with charts in books.
  • In specific circumstances, untranslated notes were not being coloured correctly in reports which are translated into other languages. Fixed.
  • Fixed a bug which could mean that Family Historian incorrectly left a blank space above source listings.
  • Duplicate fact images (same picture and caption) are now automatically removed from reports.
  • Fixed a minor problem with LDS Ordinance sections in reports.

RootsMagic Import

  • Support for RootsMagic qualifiers in sentence templates, has been improved. For example, [ThisPerson:Given], which uses the ‘Given’ qualifier, was previously not converted; and nor was [Date:plain] which uses the ‘plain’ qualifier. Both are now converted automatically to Family Historian equivalents. Please note this change only applies to new imports. If you have previously created a system-level fact set for imported RootsMagic fact types, you will either need to delete it and re-create it, or manually update it yourself. Also, if in previous imports from RootsMagic, new roles were added to standard Family Historian fact types, you made need to manually update the associated sentence templates yourself, if they contain unconverted RootsMagic qualifiers.
  • A problem with importing empty sort dates has been fixed.
  • When an event in RootsMagic has a date range with an identical sort date, Family Historian would previously create a sort date for the event as the start of the range, when importing the event. It should have not given the event a sort date at all in that situation. And this is what it now does.
  • In RootsMagic 8, source citations can be shared. This was largely handled correctly except that media attached to shared citations was previously only attached to one of the citation copies after import. This has been fixed.
  • Non-biological relationships (e.g. Step) were not being preserved on import from RootsMagic. Now they are imported from RM7 and RM8. FH will import Step, Foster, Birth, Adopted and Sealed relationships correctly. The last will only work if both parents are sealed.
  • ‘Double dates’ are dates where the year is specified twice, representing both the year of the calendar of the time, and the year as it would be now. A problem with importing double dates from RootsMagic has been fixed.
  • Sort dates that were marked as “after” a given year, and where the month and day were not specified (such as “after 1993”), were sometimes imported incorrectly. This has been fixed.

Note Window

  • Wide tables in the Note Window can now be split vertically (i.e. along a column boundary), into two narrower tables. There is a new command “Split Table Vertically at Column” on the ‘Modify Table’ menu that appears when you right-click on a table (it is also available on the Note Window’s toolbar menu button). The split command will automatically either duplicate the first column, or (optionally) add a new column to both parts of the split table, with line numbers. This is so that corresponding rows in the 2 resulting tables can be easily identified. These columns can be deleted if not required. There is also a new command, “Merge Table as Columns” which can be used to merge two tables which have been split in this way.
  • If you click “Locate this Note in Property Box” on the cog menu of the Note Window, it will now only float the Property Box if the option to float the Property Box when you click on links, is enabled. Previously it always did it.

Research Notes

  • Previously, when displaying the “Research Notes” report, tables in the research notes sometimes overflowed the margin on the right-side of the page, or were truncated. The new report option (“Compress Wide Tables”), mentioned above, automatically fixes this problem.
  • 7 new queries have been created for research notes. These are:
    (1) Research Notes
    (2) Research Notes for Individual
    (3) Research Notes for Place
    (4) Research Notes for Media Record
    (5) Research Notes for Source
    (6) Research Notes for Repository
    (7) Research Notes for Listed Records
    All of these queries allow filtering by type (log, task, plan or all) & status (open, closed, or all). To access these queries, click on the ‘Queries’ button on the main application toolbar. The queries can all be found listed under a new submenu, called “Research Notes (logs, tasks, plans, etc)”.
  • The “Research Notes” report (listed under “Miscellaneous Reports” when you click on the ‘Publish’ button on the main application toolbar), now assumes by default that a multiple research note selection will be required (previously it assumed that the report would normally only display a single selection). Click on the ‘Select…’ button to select the required research notes. If you click on the “Add Using Query” button on the Selector dialog, you can use any of the new research note queries listed above, to select research notes for the report.
  • When viewing the results of a research note query, you can now select any of the research notes in the Result Set, and easily view it in the Note Window. For more details, see “Queries and the Query Window” below.

Queries and the Query Window

  • 7 new queries have been added (see “Research Notes” above).
  • You can now specify the alignment (left, right or centred) for any column in a query. This is specified using the new ‘Align’ field, on the Columns tab. The default is left-aligned.
  • Some queries prompt you to specify parameter values when you run them. Previously to specify a text value, you had to type it into a field. Now, you can alternatively specify that the text must be chosen from a dropdown list of values. The same list can also have entries which match ‘all values’ or ‘no value’. This feature is implemented on the Rows tab of the Query Window, using a new field which shows the type of the parameter (if the filter takes a parameter). The parameter type might be ‘text’, ‘date’, ‘number’, ‘record’, etc. The Type field appears immediately to the right of the label for the parameter, at the bottom of the Rows tab. With text parameter values only, you can click on this field and specify a dropdown list of values, to be displayed in the parameter window, when the query is run. This new feature is used in the new research notes queries, for selecting the required type and status of research notes.
  • Three fact queries have been modified so that they now exclude all facts which have been flagged as ‘Rejected’. These are: “Fact Date Warnings”, “Events Near Place” and “Individual Timeline”.
  • The “All Events” and “All Facts” now have 4 new columns each, that show the fact flags that have been set for the various facts. These queries do not exclude ‘rejected’ facts (but the fact that they have been flagged as rejected will be shown by the fact that they have a ‘Y’ in the ‘Rejected’ column).
  • If you right-click on a column heading, in the Result Set tab of the Query Window, a dropdown menu appears with the options “Sort Ascending” and “Sort Descending”. The previous mechanism (click to sort ascending or alt-click to sort descending) still works.
  • On the Columns tab, the “Show Qualifiers in List” option (bottom of the Field list, on the left-hand side) did not add qualifiers to the list for any branch which had been opened and was now closed. This has been fixed.
  • Previously you could jump from any data-linked cell in the Query Window, straight to the relevant field in the Property Box (or view the relevant record). Now, if a data-linked cell is associated with a field that can be displayed in the Note Window, you can also opt to view it in the Note Window. This works not only with cells that represent fields that contain values that can display in the Note Window, but also with Note records and Research Notes, and fields that link to Note records or Research Notes. The “View in Note Window” menu command will be available, for appropriate cells, when you right-click on the cell (on the context menu that appears), or if you select the cell and click on the Query menu (last button on the Query Window toolbar).

Miscellaneous

  • User-specifiable fields in template-based Source records and associated citations, are known as metafields. Previously these did not sort in accordance with their data type in the Record Window and elsewhere (for example, a date metafield did not sort as a date). This has been fixed.
  • There is a new colour selection dialog for selecting multiple colours (in contexts in which multiple colour selection is required – such as when selecting diagram colours). The new selection dialog is simpler and easier to use than the old one. It also has the advantage that it allows colour values to be easily copied and pasted between items.
  • If you click on “Gedcom File Tasks” on the File menu, the submenu that appears includes a list of recently-opened files. Files with long file names were displayed differently from files with shorter file names, which seemed inconsistent. The system can now handle much longer file names, in a consistent manner.
  • Files in the same list that no longer exist, are now automatically removed.
  • Improvements have been made to the validation of expressions (data references or functions) in all contexts.
  • Fixed an issue which could, in rare circumstances, cause Family Historian to crash when displaying a list of source citations.
  • Fixed an issue with filtering in the Records Window.
  • Adding a spouse for a person who had no sex, or sex ‘unknown’, was not handled correctly. Now fixed.
  • The Historical Maps feature has been removed for the time being. This feature had stopped working when the service it used was withdrawn. For more information about historical maps, please see the Notice Board.
  • Clicking on the column headings of the top panel of the Named Lists pane (options pane on the right side of the Records Window), previously did nothing. It now causes the list to be sorted in the usual manner (or press ‘Alt’ while clicking to reverse the sort).
  • Various minor improvements have been made to the Family Historian Sample Project
  • The Help has been updated to include descriptions of the new features, described above.
  • Improvements have been made to the Plugin Help

Advanced Features for Power-Users

  • A new ‘built-in’ function has been added: IsLinkedFromList. This is used in the new query, “Research Notes for Listed Records”.
  • The Family Historian API (used when writing plugins) has been updated as follows:
    (1) The function “moveFile”, in the fhFileUtils module, could crash if the file already existed in the target folder. This has been fixed.
    (2) The functions “fileGetContents” and “filePutContents” in the fhFileUtils module, have both been enhanced to support file names in UTF-8 format.
    (3) The function “readTextFile” in the fhFileUtils module, previously had a size limitation which has now been removed.
    (4) The “calcBirth” function in the fhUtils module, has been updated to handle ages in Years and Months.
    (5) The Help for the fhSQL module has been updated to clarify that the module requires that UTF-8 must be enabled.