Can you help?

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

 

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???

 

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!

 

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. (Double ration in case there is more than one of you.)

When does Alexander ever find time to do his own research?

 

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.

 

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!

 

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.