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Can you help?

Alexander Bisset

Alexander Bisset

Administrator
Staff member
The documentation team have been complaining that I've added lots of useful features to Family Tree Analyzer lately that they been wanting to use. As such they have been struggling to keep up and write up some useful documentation for other users.

Would you be able to help write up the odd paragraph now and then or to proof read and help edit the content if so please let myself or Tim know. Or if you have questions please ask.

It's really the odd paragraph now and then not a lot of commitment.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
 
You have a team? And I've been feeling so lonely :(

But as Alexander has said, if you've worked out how something works or want to, just post it here and "The Team" will magic it away to the documentation site. The less technical the better, nice and simple, that's the way I like it.
 
Now I know a lot of people are using FTAnalyzer, because I can see there's been 358 downloads of the current version.

So I also know that FTAnalyzer is helping you identify errors that you can fix, and show you missing censuses that you might have overlooked, or ancestors that you can add to Lost Cousins, or maps showing you were your ancestors lived and how they moved around through the years. But in 2 weeks since requesting some help, we've heard nothing :(

Is writing a paragraph on a feature you've just used and posting it here too much to ask? :oops:

Please?
 
Tim said:
Now I know a lot of people are using FTAnalyzer, because I can see there's been 358 downloads of the current version.

So I also know that FTAnalyzer is helping you identify errors that you can fix, and show you missing censuses that you might have overlooked, or ancestors that you can add to Lost Cousins, or maps showing you were your ancestors lived and how they moved around through the years. But in 2 weeks since requesting some help, we've heard nothing :(

Is writing a paragraph on a feature you've just used and posting it here too much to ask? :oops:

Please?
Click to expand...

I took part in the Fathers over 50 project recently using FTA, and resulting from that Peter asked for more information on mothers too. That gave rise to some questionable facts for four mothers on my tree, and caused me to do some more research to get to the TRUTH! Without FTA these would have been unnoticed, so I would like to raise a loud cheer for all those involved in the programme.
 
I agree with Linda, without the analysis done by FTA I would have not have corrected some entries, in fact I'm still struggling with a couple of the women in my life & the need to change the root person in my system. A feature that I did not even know existed until now o_O
 
I am happy to give some feedback when I get to use a new (to me) feature but I am not sure that I am feeling up to submitting a full documentation description just yet. Meanwhile, I hope these comments help.

I installed v3.2.0.0 and tried the Maps/Lifelines feature. It is not yet documented in detail but everyone should give this a try. It is easy to use.
There are a few improvements that I would like to see, if possible, but otherwise it is a great 'time waster'. ;) I have spent over an hour writing this post while investigating the capabilities of this part of FTA.

Most of my past relatives have only a few Residence Facts so I added several new ones (is that grammatically correct?) for my own instance although not strictly relevant as far as any census is concerned. I was very impressed with the way that my life movements were then displayed across the world. This feature makes it much easier to appreciate where families moved from and to. The main limitation seems to be with how well Google recognises each address. For instance, why is Chester, Cheshire, England only partially resolved? In other places I was reminded just how important it is to include the country in every address, otherwise St Paul, Shadwell, Middlesex is resolved to be Paul Street, Lexington, North Carolina! Another justification for using FTA to highlight data omissions - thank you Alexander. I also thought it funny to see Scotland become Achamore House in Loch Tay!

I immediately noticed the name of the subject individual being displayed upside down, depending on the associated data, but suspect that the display of that name is probably outside of the FTA program's control. At first, I also wanted an indication (in the map's title?) of just where was being displayed as I had no idea where Mouldsworth was until I had zoomed out quite a distance. However, I then noticed the data facts under the map which could supply that appropriate information. Perhaps a note about that could be included in the documentation when it is extended?

The lifeline is displayed with a green dot at each end (start and finish?) but the relationship to each displayed fact is not clear where there are many locations displayed which the viewer is not familiar with. For instance, could extra relevance be added (easily?) with intermediate 'dots' and an on-map label or fact highlight when the pointer hovers over each such location???
 
Great ideas Bryman. We have experienced the same issues in testing and had the same thoughts about either numbering the points on the map to coincide with the lines of facts, or when you highlight a fact, it puts a dot on the map to shw you where it is.

Keep the ideas coming :)
 
Sorry Tim, I confess to downloading it and then not using it :( Things came up in my life and so it was put on hold. My son has just upgraded my netbook so I will reinstall it and actually use it this time!
 
Hi Carla,

No problem. Make sure you download the latest version because there are loads of new great features. :)
 
Tim said:
We have experienced the same issues in testing and had the same thoughts about either numbering the points on the map to coincide with the lines of facts, or when you highlight a fact, it puts a dot on the map to shw you where it is.

Keep the ideas coming :)
Click to expand...

I will try to oblige.
Spotting deficiencies and coming up with ideas for improvement is generally fairly easy but I am always concerned that I may be asking for too much. Some ideas may lead to very desirable features but Alexander only has 24 hours in the day. Perhaps he will just have to work some of the night too!
No wonder that he doesn't have time to fully document as well. Well helped team. :D:D (Double ration in case there is more than one of you.)

When does Alexander ever find time to do his own research?
 
Doing my own family history research what's that??? ;)

Thanks for the ideas. On the website we have an area for logging issues


Ideas expressed here can be turned into suggestions/feature requests/bug notices. I then can work through them as I get the time/inspiration. Some will take minutes to add some will take months. However if they aren't suggested and aren't on the list I'll forget.

So by all means make the suggestion and we can add them to the list.
 
I have now downloaded FTAnalyzer but am obviously doing something basically wrong as it doesn't seem to recognise my data. I've checked the data in the gedcom I downloaded and it looks fine to me. So why does it put Life Span as Unknown for people for whom I have very clearly birth and death dates? Why does it put zero zero zero against all the censuses in Lost Cousins Facts Recorded although lots of them are there in the 1881 census? In someone's advice earlier on (Alexander? Tim?) you say "If you only store a census as a note then your family history program won't record it as a census fact and thus FTAnalyzer won't know you have recorded something against that person." Oh dear. Where should I have recorded census data then (I run Legacy). I think those are enough problems to be getting on with. I've a feeling that if I get them sorted, the rest will fall into place. At least I got rid of 4 rather ancient ladies giving birth. So that was satisfying.
 
Hi Gillian, You say it "doesn't seem to recognise your data", but from the sounds of things it is actually loading the file as you are at least seeing some results?

The unknown lifespans is possibly because it didn't recognise some of the date formats, when the GEDCOM file loads does it put any text in the first tab indicating it had problems with any dates? If so what does that text say? If it isn't ignoring the dates it could be failing to recognise birth facts or death facts for some people. In the individuals tab what does is say for the births and deaths for those people that say unknown lifespans?

If its still not obvious could you possibly export one or two of those individuals into a small GEDCOM snippet file and send that to me that way I'll be able to see what you are seeing and try to provide a fix.
 
Hi Gillian,

Welcome to the world of FTAnalyzer :) I have time today to have a look at your tree if you would like to PM me a copy or just a few people to look at.
As Alexander mentioned, it sounds like you have some issues with date formats. Dates should be in in this kind of format,
29 Nov 1856, or Mar 1837 or 1872

There are other formats that can be used and you can find more help here in some documentation that I've added for FTA.

On your Lost Cousins facts issue, you need to create a Lost Cousins Fact for each person for each census year in your Legacy software. For more information on creating a Lost Cousins Fact for Legacy, please see this documentation page.

So I don't think you are storing your census details as notes.

Something you could try quickly, if you go to the Search Summaries tab, and press the View Coloured Census Report, what colour cells do you get?
 
Thank you both very much indeed. You're both very helpful and have given me a lot to think about and work on. The trouble is that today is one of those busy days and I won't have time to study the things you suggest. However, the weekend is near and, although Saturday will be yet another busy day, I should have time to look into FTA on Sunday. But now I have to go out and that's more or less the end of computer time for today!! Just quickly, Tim: I use the date format you suggest, ie, 29 Nov 1856, or Mar 1837 or 1872. And I think I've loaded it correctly because it did tell me about the old ladies giving birth. I'll happily send one or both of you a gedcom, or snippet thereof, but don't want both of you to have to spend your precious time peering into it? Since I don't think I'll be able to send it till Sunday, shall I send it to you, Alexander? Tim said he has time today, but I don't think I have!
 
Either one or both, we both enjoy working out what the issues might be and helping people with their files.
I'm on holiday today which is why I could definitely have looked at it today, but any other time is ok.
Just PM us both, 4 eyes are better than 2 :)
 
It's not a problem to have a look at your file Gillian looking at other peoples files to identify problems has been how the program has developed and improved enormously over the last 6 months. That in turn has helped others who have used the same family tree program or record their data the same way. So think of it as not so much spending my precious time as helping me improve the program for yourself and everyone else.
 
I'm home for a short while, long enough to thank you both for being so generous with your time. I'll get back to you on Sunday definitely, possibly even tomorrow, Saturday. I need some time to look into FTA again before sending you both a mini-gedcom.
 
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