Wow,... thanks you Kathy for the in-depth assessment. I am sure many will benefit from it. Hermano > From: kmacard...@mac.com > Subject: [AZORES-Genealogy] Family Tree Maker for Mac --- my first impressions > Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2010 10:13:25 -0800 > To: azores@googlegroups.com > > I have used many genealogy programs over the years, both for Macs and for PCs > and own several for both platforms. Reunion (Mac) has generally been my > program of choice, though, as it is generally a very fine program, thorough, > and easy to work with. I am always intrigued by trying out new programs, > looking for that "perfect" one. To that end, I recently purchased FTM for the > Mac and have been working with it this last week. This is not a complete > review, but is only my first impressions of the program, both pro and con. I > hope it will be helpful to you if you are considering purchasing it. > > First of all, there are two versions of this program ..... One, for $69 is > sold directly from Ancestry > http://store.ancestry.com/ProductDetail.aspx?P=P-4845. The other version > sells for $99 but includes a Toolkit of 6 PDF books that may or may not be > helpful to you. It also includes a 6 month membership to the U.S. collection > on Ancestry. Before I purchased mine, I called Ancestry to find out if I > could apply that additional 6 months to my current Ancestry subscription and > was told Yes. I purchased my copy at Office Max, but it is also sold at Best > Buy, Office Depot, Amazon, and Apple stores. After I purchased and registered > it, I called Ancestry and they added 6 months to my subscription. That, > alone, is worth the additional $30, in my opinion! > > I first prepared a gedcom in Reunion of my 9,000+ individuals and imported it > into FTM. That process went very smoothly and quick. As most everyone knows > (or should know) gedcom is NOT a perfect process, nor do you get perfect > results. This was no exception. (Also, because I store my genealogy files in > Dropbox and share them with both my computers, I changed the default place > FTM wanted to put my file, to my Dropbox.) > > The program feels pretty Mac-like, in general. One thing I noticed right off, > though, was that, after the import, I clicked the button to View the Log..... > and it opened up Parallels on my Mac to go into the Windows XP System that I > run on my Mac! Oops....Not very Mac friendly there and bad first impression. > :) > > Gedcom import: Generally, most things were handled very well in the import. > Notable exceptions were that many of my Misc. Event tags in Reunion (gedcom > tag was EVEN) did not survive the import. Those included events such as > Illness, Accident, Surgery, Register to Vote, and Fraternal Society > Joined........ events that I added myself into Reunion and had given the EVEN > gedcom tag. When I realized this, I had to mark those individuals in Reunion > and add those Facts (as FTM calls them) into FTM one by one. I am still in > the process of doing this but am getting close to being finished with it. > > Notes: I use quite a few Notes in Reunion and have added my own with the > gedcom tag of NOTE; Census (where I record the entire household for each > census), Probate, and Military as well as the default one for each individual > of Misc. Notes. It seems that only one Note was imported for each person so > if they had a Military note, for example, you will have to manually add that > into FTM as part of your Military Fact for that person. > > Facts: FTM calls everything a Fact. There is a very large Note field attached > to each Fact. I do not know if there is a character limit to this field as > there is in Reunion (which is rather small). It is a very large field for > adding data so there is plenty of room to add in your Note data from Reunion. > When you publish a report such as an Individual Person Report, these Fact > Notes don't appear immediately below the Fact data (date and place) but > instead are gathered at the end of the report. I didn't like that at first, > preferring to have ALL the pertinent data including the Memo/Note, all > together with the event data. But, after working with this for a while, I see > the merits of having that Note data appear at the end of the report (before > Sources, if you choose to include them). You have an uncluttered view of all > the Facts (Events) in a person's life, shown as a concise list at the > beginning of the report. It makes it easy to view those events but if you > want more info on each one, you can refer to the end of the report where that > data appears. > > Sources: FTM has a set of templates included for adding specific source > types. I haven't done a lot of these so far so I can't really give you much > feedback on it as of yet. At first glance, though, it seems to be somewhat > limited for templates. The Source View, though, is very complete. You can > click on one of your sources on the left side and immediately see all the > source citation detail as well as the links (the people or event it is being > used on) and the media attached to it. Very nice! You can also rate your > sources with a built-in criteria that asks you quick questions about the > source to assign it a gold star rating OR you can choose your own blue star > rating based on criteria of your own choosing and there is a place to add > your Justification notes for your reasons. > > Media: I chose to import my Media links from Reunion into FTM. What that > means is that the links all appear in FTM, but not the images (photos, > documents, audio, video, etc.). This forces you to click on each Media link > in the Media view. When you double click to open it, you are presented with > the choice of YOU searching for the media file or letting FTM search for it. > FTM does it much faster than I could locate the file, even knowing exactly > where it is. FTM takes only 3 or 4 seconds to find the file so the process > goes fairly quickly. Then, you can assign a category to the item (built in > are Photo, Census, Document and a few others.... you can add your own, if you > wish), add a date and description, add a note, and (most importantly) assign > a link to the media file of a person or the actual event, or both. Depending > on how many media items you have, this can be a long and tedious process. I > am still working on mine .... but I'm almost finished with it. There is no > provision that I can see, to link more than one individual at a time to a > media file (for instance, linking both the bride and groom to a marriage > record.) You can link both, but you have to do it separately. That process > could be much improved upon in future upgrades! > > Places: I love this feature! You have a list of all your places and when you > select one, you are very quickly awarded with a map of that area ...... even > our Azores! You also get a list of all the people who are "attached" to that > place with a little arrow that when clicked, shows you what event(s) of > theirs occurred there. Very nice! Also, you can choose to view people in the > Places view. When you click on a person, you see a list of their events on > the right. You can check off the events you want to add to your map. Then, > you get a migration map for that individual. It shows their path with > whatever events you choose to add. You can export this in several ways as a > PDF to show their path but it does not indicate each individual place along > the way by a push pin or label. Nice, but could be improved upon. > > Publish: The reports and charts in FTM seem to be very good as they are well > known for. I was disappointed not to find an Individual Narrative Report. > But, there are ways to work around that .... one is to create a different > type of report for one generation, such as an Ahnentafel Report. That gives > you the details of a person's life in narrative form that you can edit later. > One thing I looked for and did not find, was a way to save a reports options > for future use. Charts and Reports, though, look very interesting and I look > forward to playing around them more in the future. > > Web Search: I haven't used this a great deal yet, instead choosing to focus > my time and attention to cleaning up my data from the import, creating my > media links, etc. First things first! It does look very interesting, though, > and I look forward to trying it out. > > My Wishes: There seems to be no way to Mark or Flag people like you can do in > Reunion ... wish that was an option. (However, if you want to export a gedcom > from FTM and choose Selected Individuals, you are presented with a selection > window to select a person and all their ancestors, descendants, or other > options ..... not as much control over the process as I would like.) I have > not found where you can view the actual gedcom tags for the Facts or be able > to edit those or the sentence structure that appears in certain reports so > that you have more control over those....wish that was an option. I have not > found anywhere that you can use the normal Mac behavior of command+click or > shift+click to select more than one item... that could be added and would be > most welcome. These items are not a "deal breaker" for me; they may be for > you. But, they are things I would certainly like to see added or improved > upon in the future. > > In summary, I am really getting to like this program! It has a lot to offer > and I can only hope that they continue to develop it and add new features as > they go along with its development. I am still getting used to the interface, > but I find that I like it. It is clean, attractive, informative with lots of > options everywhere you look in the form of tabs, buttons, and popups. And, it > is very easy to navigate through your family file. On the Family tab of the > Person view, you can view the Index, Bookmarks, and History. The program > feels very quick and responsive. There are a few areas that could be improved > upon, to be sure...... giving the user more control is a big one....., and I > look forward to hopefully seeing those improvements in the future. Meanwhile, > I'm going to spend more and more time exploring the program and plan to use > it side by side with Reunion for the time being. As I discover more about it, > who knows? I may decide to make it my main program...... or not. Time will > tell but I do so enjoy the journey! :) > > Kathy > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Visit the Azores GenWeb Project: > http://homepage.mac.com/kmacardoza/Genealogy/azoresindex.html > Climb my Family Tree: > http://homepage.mac.com/kmacardoza/Genealogy/Kathy/index.htm > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > > > -- > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > azores+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. Follow the confirmation directions when > they arrive. > For more options, such as changing to List, Digest, Abridged, or No Mail > (vacation) mode, log into your Google account and visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/Azores. Click in the blue area on the right > that says "Join this group" and it will take you to "Edit my membership."
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