Family Historian User Group

[EDIT: This has been moved from Citing English Census (21362) thread as this forum is more appropriate.]

Another Adrian is joining the conversation. Only this one is less knowledgeable, lives Down Under and may not be as handsome.

I am writing because I have seen some of your interesting coments here on the templates, and seeking some advice.

I am a FH user and I publish my stuff using John Cardinal's Gedsite. I have just been reading Ian Macdonald's book and looking at the Essentials templates as I attempt to fix up decades of slack recording of sources and citations from the last century. I have decided to use the Strathclyde model, which is championed by Macdonald. Calico Pie also refers to the "experts" at the Uni of Strathclyde who inspired the Essentials collection. So, for me, this sounds like a great solution.

However, getting down to business, when I look at the Essentials templates sentences for the FOOTNOTES ... take the Essentials/Civil/Civil Registration Certificate footnote :- "<{Type} certificate> <of {Principal} and {Principal_2}>, {Date}, {Repository}." .... that's pretty thin - even for a Strathclyde Reference.

Can I ask what you have done about this? Have you cloned such Essential templates and then added more fields, using the Strathclyde style. I am actually doing the course, so I am familiar with the style but of course, they use FTM not FH on the course, so I know how to style the reference in FTM, but in FH, not quite so easy perhaps. I am not a AS user.

Any help much appreciated ... personal experience?

Adrian Snelson

Adrian;

I tried the approach of using the style shown in the book by Ian G. MacDonald. There is one thing that I think a person might not realize until too late. The book promotes a variant of the Strathclyde style that purposely eliminates the use of a Footnote and Short Footnote format in favour of a single Bibliographic format. FH7, on the other hand, uses all three formats. One could put the same code definition for all three FH7 formats, but I found that didn't suit my tastes.

The FH7 "Essentials" collection is not the Strathclyde style described in their most recent manual (posted on the university website). That's not to say that it is not a valid option, but just that it doesn't follow the MacDonald book and doesn't follow the Strathclyde manual.

I, and I think more than a few others, have found that one can borrow some Strathclyde citation concepts, but one has to be prepared to add elements to plug what one might see as holes/deficiencies in the as-published style. The nature and extent of these modifications is really a matter of personal preference, so plan to spend some time in thinking about what you prefer to see.

Personally; I went back to the who what where... basics of a citation and created my own general template that is based upon the "citing a book" paradigm. It covers about 75-80% of the documents I tend to use. However; making your own style is something one can try, but it takes a fair knowledge of citations and FH7 template design.

I do indeed clone and edit some of the Essentials templates. The flexibility of the template editor is one of the big advantages of FH.

Like Gary, I work with a modified Strathclyde style, taking into account also some of the elements illustrated by Mcdonald in his book. Whenever a new Referencing Guide update is available from the University of Strathclyde, I download it to my computer to refer to as well. And, just to frustrate purists, I occasionally bring in some EE elements. Having been scolded roundly on a FB group for daring to not follow EE style exactly, I rolled my eyes virtually and continued on regardless.

As far as I'm concerned, as long as we're not submitting for publication (in which case our references should conform to the publisher's style guide), we're free to cite however we like. Isn't it better to create a style that works for us that we're happy to use rather than struggle with conforming to a style that frustrates us and discourages us from recording our sources? Coming to terms with genealogy citation has been the biggest challenge of my journey (and I have an MA in History and diploma in Library and Information Technology) - it was only once I abandoned the notion I HAD to cite a certain way and developed a system that worked for me that I finally felt comfortable with this aspect of my work.

All that's to say - find what works for you. FH makes it so easy to personalize templates.

Teresa

AJSnelson wrote: ↑27 Mar 2024 05:16 [EDIT: This has been moved from Citing English Census (21362) thread as this forum is more appropriate.]
<SNIP>

Can I ask what you have done about this? Have you cloned such Essential templates and then added more fields, using the Strathclyde style. I am actually doing the course, so I am familiar with the style but of course, they use FTM not FH on the course, so I know how to style the reference in FTM, but in FH, not quite so easy perhaps. I am not a AS user.

Any help much appreciated ... personal experience?

Adrian;
Don't let the mention of templates scare you away from A.S. The program works quite well with the FH7 generic templates, the template sets packaged with FH7 and also with ones you might design yourself.

Creating templates is not as hard as it sounds, unless you are being VERY particular about citation content and syntax. If you are trying to closely follow the Strathclyde version used in your course, it is actually fairly straight-forward as one only has to learn the basics of the template language.

I think Gary is referring to Generic Source Records and the citation Footnote/Bibliography formats that are defined in Tools > Preferences... > Sources > Generic Source Formats... > View Format.

Yes, AS supports those Generic features.

Just here to agree with all of the posts.

As for learning the language of templates: it is a challenge to begin with but, once you've got the hang of it, it becomes second nature. Stick with it.

The trickiest thing with coding is that it is absolutely literal. Watch out for spaces where you don't want them etc.

I highly recommend starting with one template design, creating a sandbox project, and playing with it until you're happy with it. Put your sandbox template in it's own collection and, then when you're happy with it, clone this template into another collection where you'll store your completed ones.