I have looking at a demo version of an Australian program called “Relatively Yours,” and although it didn't tempt me at all to abandon Legacy, it reminded me once again of how inadequate the note-taking capabilities of Legacy are. In Relatively Yours, there is a screen entitled “Personal History” on which one can compose a narrative history of an individual, with all the formatting of a simple but good word-processor. (It reminded me of WordPerfect about fifteen years ago.)

What a pleasure to use something like that! If that screen were supplemented by an unlimited number of smaller notes (and of course a good search command), the program would turn into a serious instrument for historical research. In Legacy we have to make do with one set of General, Research, and Medical notes per individual, perhaps a custom event of “Research notes” (or something like that), and attached documents, but it is all very klunky: bracketed codes for some really primitive formatting, the inability to search attached documents, etc.

Legacy is a brilliant program, and I use it daily, but for note-taking I find it inadequate. (My professional career has been devoted to the pursuit of historical scholarship of other varieties, so I speak from long experience.) I'm aware that it's awkward to introduce RTF elements into a database program (though FileMaker and ProCite, to mention just two random examples, manage to do it), but until there is some improvement in this aspect of Legacy, I will be forced to divide my genealogical research notes among Legacy itself, external attached files, and Microsoft OneNote.

Is there a solution on the horizon?

Bill Peterson
(Washington, D.C.)


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