BJ, On 1/6/2014, 11:06 PM, BJ wrote: > I have followed this thread with interest. John, you have some great > points and I agree with you that the user needs some method for tweaking > the templates or at least generating and formatting some of his own. > However, a decision was made some time ago that the program would > attempt to encourage the less experienced users with some type of access > to using ESM's guidelines. The 100 or so quick templates were selected > and implemented. Some like them. Others use them and then there are a > good many like me who sticks with the older default format. Reprogramming to use the variables in templates as I suggest would not disable in any way what less experiences users see today. But it would add the flexibility that more experienced and professional genealogists need. Wouldn't it make sense to do that so it would cover the needs of all users? > The ESM templates are useful only if you intend to create reports and > charts with Endnotes. They then format the data is specific ways and > use generally accepted formatting of the documentation structure. Since > I don't intend to publish my tree and I don't create a lot of reports > and trees with endnotes, I don't use the templates. I content they are useful to anyone who chooses to use them, and if you don't want to use them you don't have to. > I understand FTM's desire to provide guidance to the inexperienced user > in which template to use, I find it very difficult to navigate; > unfortunately, I haven't been able to devise a better way of making it > easier. I'm not sure what you are getting at here. The guidance, to me at least, is provided in the picking of general source type (12 I think in Evidence Style), then which of the subtypes. A logical drill down, very intuitive in the Legacy implementation. I too find FTM's way of navigating them requires far too many clicks, but this is just an artifact of not implementing them in the best manner. > I think you will find that FTM has implemented ESM's templates and will > not be changing them. You are probably right. And if they weren't the 800 pound gorilla of genealogy software, only because they have the green leaves that NO other program vendor can deliver, they can do what they want. I urged them about 4 or 5 years ago to get out of the software writing business and focus only on the data collections and an API for other programs to connect to. This way every genealogy program could pay them a fee for their program to connect to the data, and every one of their users could pay a fee, part of which goes to cover the access fee, and part of which would go to Ancestry. This was back when Ancestry delivered a pile of crap for programs, they have gotten better. Actually Ancestry was sold to some European group, as I recall. With the fee model I suggest, Ancestry could probably make more money than they do by having almost all of a dozen or more programs using their API and paying for it, rather than just FTM being able to do it. They should at least cost out such a business model. End users would benefit because it wouldn't cost each one that much more, and there would be true competition between features of the programs that access the Ancestry data through the API. Just think how much better the interface to that data could be. FTM access is kind of crude, at least to me. But it is the only game in town today. So it could be a financial win for Ancestry, and a feature win for end users. Just my $0.02. John > BJ