Specification:Summary Event List

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Proposed report: showing a summary of the events in the database, useful for distribution of your database on the web, without compromising privacy.

Task Status
Specification draft review
Approval obtained
Implementation not started


Introduction

This report shows a summary event list sorted by place name and family name. A summary of the events is given as follows. The report displays for each combination of place and family name the number of events, and the year span of these events.

This type of report is often use to exchange information between researchers. It is short, so easy to go over, yet contains relevant places and years. People researching a person in a specific yearspan, can quickly find if there is a chance that this info is present in the database described by the flash list.

Example/Screenshot

Flashlist.png


Specification

Document Sections

The report consists of two sections, the document title, and the summary list.

Document Title

The document will be titled "Flash List for <NAME>", where <NAME> can be

  • name of the active person of whom the summary event list is generated. This is determined by the display settings of the program, using the unsorted display algorithm. This is typically "Firstname Lastname", but can be overriden by the Preferences settings.
  • name of the custom Person filter or custom Event filter used to generate the summary event list
  • name of the database file if the entire database is used

Summary List Section

There are two levels, one for the first sort field, and one for the second sort field, ie Name/Places or Place/Names The first level is left aligned, bold. The second level has an indentation, and is of fixed length. On the second level, every line is accompanied by a summary as in firstsort

secondsort N B M D Min Max U

where

  • N – number of persons referenced
  • B – number of reference on birth (or christening, baptism)
  • M – number of reference on marriage
  • D – number of reference on death (or burial)
  • Min – year of the first date reference
  • Max – year of the last date reference
  • U - '*' if not exact dates are mentioned, ' ' otherwise

If for N,B,M or D the number is 0, “-” or “0” are shown. For the date: Suggestion: only exact dates, fuzzy and unknown dates are ignored (and the U column contains a star: '*').

What events are exactly considered?

  • Events with no place attached are not shown. These events arise from eg interviews or sources which only indirectly mention a death date. The summary event list is meant to know where to look up information, so these events have no place on the summary event list.
  • Suggested: Only primary role events (including family events). Only the common events are counted, and only once per person: Birth (or christening), Death (or burial) and the most important Marriage (TODO: Really count only one marriage per person?). all person's marriages?, More information:' I write "most important" because with one marriage we certify a family. It is the one of three events where we can choose the place ... It is often the place of bride, and her parents can still live there.

The reason for the above is that the report should help users in research: where their ancestors lived and where they can find certificates. Otherwise, they can easily shared a database summary without private informations.

Question: Something which would make the summary event list even more useful would be not only to sort on family, but on family name in same branch. Like this a common family name like Smith will be divided in branches and would be listed once per branch. For this a function should be made that given a person database, can divide it in seperate family branches (probably this is too much to ask however.

Sample Entry

A sample entry should be as below. Since two presentation methods exist, both are shown.

  • sort1: place, sort2: family name
Paris N B M D Min Max U
Hansdotter 1 0 1 0 1885 1885
Smith 7 7 3 2 1884 1912 *

or

  • sort1: family name, sort2: place
Smith N B M D Min Max U
London 2 2 0 0 1996 1998
Paris 7 7 3 2 1884 1912 *

Report Options

  1. Sort level choice. There are two options : 1)first sort field is family name, second sort field place name, and 2)first sort field is place name, second family names. (TODO: I do not understand what you mean with: The level. This option will be an integer value that will indicate first (and second) level for this report) ==> for me, level is the sort level (first, second)
  2. Generate Report with Active Person, custom person filter, custom event filter, or entire database.