Change Current Person

[Uncle Buddy]

I've used one genieware extensively, call it G1; another genieware substantially, call it G2; and dozens of others--GA thru GZ--long enough to get the idea that they were not intuitive to use nor particularly rich on basic features.

I'm not saying these geniewares are useless. Just that attempting to learn them or even review them is a tricky learning process in itself, one I might call "How to not design genieware." I don't want to frame this is a negative rant but rather I want to move toward a more useful application by improving on what I've seen and avoiding the mistakes of the noble pioneers who've gone before.

Today I sat down to start on something I've been putting off for a while. G1 used a stricture which would only allow you to make changes to one person at a time. I got used to this and when I changed to G2 I was in trouble because G2 allows you to make changes to two people at a time. This is confusing. I don't like it. Treebard will have a Current Person. In order to make changes to someone, you have to make that person current. Then you know who you're working on and it's hard to get confused about that.

What I didn't like about G1 was that in order to change the current person, several steps were involved. G2 has a current person too but then plays loose with the concept. G2 not only doesn't honor the current person stricture, it makes it even harder to change who the current person is. In both geniewares, you have to go search for someone to make them the current person.

In Treebard, there will be one person screen, which currently is the Person Tab. It's the front page of the application, the front tab on a tabbed interface. I don't want to leave the person tab or open a dialog to change the current person to someone else. One of the most important aspects of Treebard design is reducing the number of steps to get something done. I've had repetitive motion pain in my right hand and arm for over 25 years due to what I venomously call "clickety-click-click-click". I don't want to reach for the mouse several times or click several buttons or open a series of dialogs to do one thing, because it hurts my body and wastes my time.

Treebard's person tab opens with the Change Current Person field already in focus. Currently it works in a rudimentary form and I'm looking at making it really do something great. If I type "Bennett" in the field I want to see every Bennett in my tree instantly. As a mini-profile, for selecting amongst my many Bennetts, not just as a name.

In G1, you had to click a field to open a search screen. Then you could type the first or last name and all the matches would come up with what I'll call a "profile" for that person. The profile consisted of only an id number, name, birth date and death date. But what if I have three Bennett Boyetts born around the same time? I had to jot down the three id numbers and open each person in turn (make each one the current person) till I found the one I wanted to work on. This was a daily routine. It was a big turn-off, and I'm talking about my favorite program.

In Treebard when I type "Bennett" in the Change Current Person field, everyone with "bennett" in their name will pop up immediately without my having to open a dialog. The info will open by itself and close by itself if I stop using it. Right now all I have is a simple field that shows IDs and names in an alphabetical dropdown list. That's no good, I'd have to manually search through it. So it needs to have an autofill functionality so it only shows me bennetts. In order to really keep me from having to open all the six Bennett Boyetts one at a time to see who they are, a real profile has to be shown side by side for each Bennett Boyett. The info I want to see in a profile is a name, birth and death date, id number, parents, residences. That should be plenty but name variants and occupations might not be too much when looking for one John Smith out of a long list of John Smiths. Once I see the John Smith or Bennett Boyett that I want, a simple click of the mouse or a tab and enter or arrow key and enter should change the current person without my ever having to open a dialog to do it.

As I try to build this functionality in Python, Tkinter and Sqlite, I might come back here to keep track or to vent. It doesn't sound easy but there are plenty of programs already available that do a tenth of what I need done. We don't need another genieware like that.

[Uncle Buddy]

user docs: Change Current Entity dialog (a.k.a. "The Finder")

To locate a particular entity (Person, Place, Source, etc.), just type any letter or numeral from the entity's name or ID number in the Change Current Entity input. A dialog will open showing matches to what you typed. You can keep typing to filter down to the match you want, or change focus to the table of matches by clicking in it and then arrowing down or up to the match you want. Instead of clicking in the table to get it into focus, you can tab into it or press Shift+RightArrow. When the entity you want is highlighted, to make it the current entity you can press Enter or Spacebar or click the button at the bottom of the dialog. To go back to the selector input, click in it or press Control+LeftArrow.

The Finder will show matches to any part of the entity's name, ID number, alternate name or spelling, nickname, middle name(s), Cub Scout badge number, etc. So if you type 'dai' and the only match in the table is Zelda Bombast, you may have registered her nickname as 'Daisy'. This is helpful in case you only remember 'Daisy'. If all you have is a list of social security numbers, and one seems familiar, start typing that one and the name of the matching person(s) will appear. If Zelda's soc. sec. no. starts with 415, you can just start typing 415 and her name 'Zelda Bombast' will appear.

Treebard uses display names of your choice (they require no sourcing) so you can use a standard spelling on the display name if 'Zelda' has half a dozen different spellings in the public record and you have no way of knowing which spelling is correct. You can use the most common spelling 'Zelda' in her display name so she's easy to find. But if you also input an alternate spelling such as 'Zsildaugh' and all you remember about her is that she had a 'gh' in one of her names, you can type 'gh' in the finder and 'Zelda Bombast' will appear in the finder table along with 'Joe Blow Laughworthy' and 'Sally Limbaugh', not to mention 'Ghretta Gharbough'.

The Finder table can be sorted by any of its columns in ascending or descending order by clicking the column head. For example, you can quickly find the entities you've entered most recently by clicking the ID field to reverse the order and display the newest numbers first.

Treebard's Finder is exceptionally helpful by showing enough data in the table itself to find nearly any entity on the first try. For example, if you have several John Smiths in your tree, and you have to pick the right one, but several are born close together, Treebard's Finder table shows not only their birth and death dates but also their parents and spouses as well as residences and occupations. You'll almost never have to experimentally switch to one John Smith after another to figure out which John Smith is the one you want to work on. This wealth of information is presented in a simple way that is easy to understand, without a lot of confusing controls to distract you from doing genealogy.