Comments on: RootsMagic 4 Unwrapped – Mapping

By: Eliz Purves

Eliz Purves — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 07:54:29 +0000

Please stop teasing us!!! When, Oh When can we get our hands on this great upgrade. You are tormenting us. Also would love to be able to pre-order it so that I can be sure of getting my hands on it as soon as it is released.

By: P J Evans

P J Evans — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:51:20 +0000

Or Radical, Kansas (which my mother said died because the railroad missed it).

By: Eloise Dorman

Eloise Dorman — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 05:26:26 +0000

I’m wondering how the mapping feature will handle places that no longer exist – such at Straight, Elk County, PA – existing prior 1930 but which is now at the bottom of a lake.

By: Deck

Deck — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:51:12 +0000

Seems that RM -if ever actually released- will certainly give other programs a run for their money.

By: Richard Blake

Richard Blake — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 04:22:45 +0000

Many locations over the years were in different counties, states at different times in history. It would be super nice to be able to type the name of a location in along with the date, and have the software pop up with the correct name of the location at that point in history. I wouldn’t really mind typing the info in for a location, and have it remembered…

Just a wish, Bruce, that would likely add to the many sleepless nights you have already spent on this project.

Regards, Rich

By: Michael Booth

Michael Booth — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:56:34 +0000

While we can’t specify an exact date, we can guarantee that anybody buying version 3 now will get a free upgrade to version 4.

By: gpence

gpence — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:39:12 +0000

Sorry for the newbie question, but when is v4 due to be available for purchase? I see various comments like “a few months” or “a few weeks”. I even read the comment telling me that anyone buying v3 would get v4 (for free) if it was released within 90 days… No offense, but I’m not particularly interested in v3 at this point, especially if v4 isn’t going to be released until Jan 2009 and I have to pay an upgrade…

By: Paul Bootes

Paul Bootes — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:16:46 +0000

Jon & John
Would a partial solution be to have a ‘reverse field’ option for place names as is currently provided by the RM3 List-Places report? This pleasingly produces a tree-like report of place names … so, Bruce, if you could adapt the same code into the option for place name display we might all be very happy? I have used the Reports – List – Places many times to help structure and ‘standardise’ my localities.

Paul

By: John James

John James — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:20:11 +0000

Jon, I believe RM will be using Virtual Earth, Bruce says so above and look at the screen shots for confirmation.

The thread you refer to was started by me with the opening “I wish ALL genealogy programs would make a move towards encouraging proper placename input and help bring about some standard for the future and I would like to see RM take the lead”

I believe RM has now taken that lead and if others follow suit then in years to come these freehand badly constructed and meaningless place lists will become a thing of the past. Every place should as far as possible point to the most exact location possible and this is a very welcome move in that direction in my opinion.

By: Jon Oddvar Sellereite

Jon Oddvar Sellereite — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:11:29 +0000

John, I am not quite sure what you meant with your answer. The web adress you refer to is Microsoft Virtual Earth, a similar mapping service to Google Earth. It is only a mapping service for showing maps according to a tranfered place name, and has nothing to do with the place list itself. Bruce is already using this service in existing Placefinder, but what Bruce has done in RM4 is that he is using a web-component, that allow web-pages to be directly shown within RM4.

If you meant, whether I was able to find all place names or not, then I see that Bruce refer to a “Place search” with 3.5 mill. names and a “Gazetteer” in his previous post (Places and Geocoding). Among 3.5 mill. names I will suppose there might be a risk that some names might be missing when going worldwide. Maybe Bruce could clarify a little bit more, the difference between the “place search” and the “Gazetteer”. To me it looks like the “place search” is a offline tool that searches trough a database on your harddisk with 3.5 mill. names, and that the “Gazetteer” is a online tool that search on internett trough even more names. Am I correct Bruce?

When I talk about a tree structure, I mainly talk about the “Master place list”, and the way the users places are presented and stored. The closest I can get to this on the screenshots, is the place list shown to the left to the maps, shown above. Here the places are shown as a list and not as a tree structure. If you look at this list, “England” is repeated many times. In a tree structure “England” would have been mentioned only once, and then as it’s own place name. In the same list some names are shown without a country, which actually means inconsistence. This would have been prevented in a tree structure.

As written in the wish list, a tree structure will give RM complete control of each item of the place name. Something that will give better possibilities for short place names and formating of place names in reports. Also refered to in my wish list article.

I hope Bruce will consider this in a future version, since it will give the optimal use of place names.

Jon Oddvar Sellereite