The Families Edition Page

Purpose

This screen is used to create, view, update, delete Family records. Family records in Project Hirtius are used, as they would in a genealogy program, to record the union of two partners of opposite sex (by pointing to their Individual records) and to link children born to the couple (more Individual records) for the purpose of tracking their ancestry (taking advantage once again of all available metadata).

When I said that a Family object had to be composed of two partners of opposite sex, you should not read any hidden moral message into this. It's just that at present, Project Hirtius only supports the concept of biological parent-child relationship. Support for adoption and other forms of parenting will be added later on.

To help record the ancestral relationships within a family group, other object types should be used in conjunction, namely Events and Individuals. For more information on how these different objects interact, please refer to the Individuals Management Workflow.

Getting There...

The Families management screens are not available straight from the Main Application Menu. To reach the Edition Page of an existing Family:

From the Main Application Menu (or indeed almost any other Project Hirtius page), click on the "Manage Persons" icon in the header (). This gets you to the Individuals List.
Scroll to the bottom of the page. Click on the Families link located between the Individuals List and the page footer. This gets you to the Families List.
Navigate the Families List until you locate the couple you're looking for.
Then click on the family ID (first column), or on any of the action links (last column) to view, edit or delete the family record in question.

Of course, you can also reach the Family view or edition screen through a lot of other ways, such as using search results (see Navigation Tips).

To add a new Family record:

From the Main Application Menu (or indeed almost any other Project Hirtius page), click on the "Manage Persons" icon in the header (). This gets you to the Individuals List.
Scroll to the bottom of the page. Click on the Families link located between the Individuals List and the page footer. This gets you to the Families List.
Press [End] to reach the bottom of the list.
Click the Add action link in the bottom-right corner of the list.

Supported actions

The Family Edition Page supports the following actions:

Add: the form to fill in and submit in order to create a new Family record.
Insert: creating the new Family record in the database (post Add action).
Edit: modifying an existing Family record through a form populated based on the current database contents.
Update: storing the modified data in the database, updating the appropriate Family record (post Edit action).
View: display the current database contents for the selected Family record. No form in this case.
DelCon: first step when requesting the deletion of a record -- issues a prompt for confirmation. You will be warned if there are files attached to the selected record.
Del: the actual removal of the selected record (as well as all linked metadata records) from the database (post DelCon action). Please note that linked children records (if any) are not considered metadata and hence are not removed. The children are "unlinked" from the Family record before removal, but their own Individual record is not removed.
That action will be recorded: a new entry will be added to the Event Log.

Fields

Here below are the fields that you can expect to find on the Family Edition Page. The goal here is not to simply duplicate the database layout information. If this is what interests you, please refer to the Database Layout, the database creation script or the database itself. The purpose is rather to explain what each field is meant for [D], what format it is expected to follow [F] and what are the conditions for its validity (if applicable) [V].

A star (*) after the name of the field denotes a mandatory field (the star is shown in red with the same meaning in the application user interface).

Object ID*	D	Sequential ID, automatically assigned by the DB during record creation. Displayed read-only once available.
Male partner*	D	Full name of the male partner. Selected by the user during record creation. Displayed read-only once available.
Female partner*	D	Full name of the female partner. Selected by the user during record creation. Displayed read-only once available.
Couple creation date	D	Date the couple formed. Can be left empty if unknown. Please note that this field is technically not part of the Family record, but of the linked couple creation Event (= auto-event). See Individuals Management Workflow for details. In view mode and if set, the date will be followed by a letter between parentheses denoting the selected era (see next field). The corresponding Julian Day Number (JDN) representation will be displayed below it.
	F	Hirtius "historical" dates format, based on the ISO one: year in 1 to 5 digits, then month in 2 digits (padded with zero if needed), then day in 2 digits (padded with zero as needed). The date parts have to be separated with '/' (forward slash). Prefix the date with '-' (minus sign) for BCE years. If month and/or day parts are unknown, they can be specified as '00' (for the purpose of JDN computation, zero values are set arbitrarirly to 1). Examples: "2012/10/31", "136/00/00" or "-44/03/15".
	V	The date string is parsed and checked against the above format. Month part should be between 0 and 12, day part between 0 and 31. If day and month parts are provided, day is checked against month length with leap-ness computed based on selected era (see next field). The year part has to be different from zero.
Couple creation era	D	Calendar in which the Couple Creation Date field is expressed. Select from list. Unset ('-') by default. Required if Couple Creation Date is set.
Couple creation location*	D	Town, village, region where the couple creation event took place. Use "Unknown" or similar if unknown. Please note that this field is technically not part of the Family record, but of the linked couple creation Event (= auto-event). See Individuals Management Workflow for details.
Country*	D	Country where the couple creation event took place. Select from list. Use special value "Unspecified (--)" if needed. Please note that this field is technically not part of the Family record, but of the linked couple creation Event (= auto-event). See Individuals Management Workflow for details.
Event type	D	Type of union. Select from list (subset of all available event types, as managed from the Event Types Management Page. Choose either 'MARR' (officially registered marriage) or 'UNIO' (informal relationship). If the relationship starts out as informal and an official marriage act takes place later, use 'UNIO' for the couple creation auto-event, and add a regular Event record of type 'MARR' afterwards.
Comment	D	Any comment you might have on the family in question (general information about the couple, historical significance, etc.). This is where you would store the bulk of your research concerned specifically with this family (of course, a much broader scope of reseach is possible as well, encompassing all supported kinds of objects and any number of them -- please refer to Projects Management Workflow for advice on how to manage that).
Comment	F	Free text. HTML markup allowed. Special formats: '`{D1234}`': quote another Hirtius object using its object prefix and ID. Automatically rendered as a link to that object view page. See Objects and Metadata Types for a list of all prefixes supported by the application. Only objects and lesser objects can be referred to in this way. '`[1234]`': Bibref. Refers to the bibliographical reference with said number, as defined further down the page in the *References* section. Rendered as a link to a named anchor. Only works with bibrefs attached to the current object. '`[S1234]`': Srcref. Refers to the source reference with said number, as defined further down the page in the *Sources* section. Rendered as a link to a named anchor. Only works with srcrefs attached to the current object. Insert these formats in your text without the enclosing quotes. If the object that you refer to doesn't exist (yet) or is not linked to the current object (in the case of Bibref and Srcref), the reference will be rendered in a special style (orange italics) and the associated link will point to that object creation page (where possible).
See also	D	Use this field to link different objects together, even objects of different kinds. For instance, you might wish to link the family with a picture of the house where they lived, or of the city hall or church where the marriage ceremony took place (stored as Slides). As long as the list is empty, you only see the Add field. Once some See also entries have been created, you can also select one or more in the list below and check the Remove selected checkbox to remove the selected entries from the list.
	F	One or more object IDs, each composed of a single letter identifying the object type (see Objects and Metadata Types for a list of supported prefixes -- only fully-fledged objects are eligible here) followed by the numerical ID of the object. The prefix letter is case-insensitive. To add links to multiple objects at the same time, use a comma and an optional space to separate members in the list. E.g. '`d1242, i43, d239`'.
	V	Each object ID has to refer to an existing object. Attempts to link the current object to itself will be reported and ignored.

Controls

In View mode

Calendar View icon (): Located next to the Couple Creation Date field, that icon is a link to the Calendar View for the year in question and drawn for the era in which the date was expressed, giving you a way to identify all other event-like objects in the temporal vicinity of the current one. Owing to the fact that the query is made based on the internal date representation as JDN, all applicable events will be found, irrespective of the calendar in which their own date was expressed.
This icon is only present when the Couple Creation Date field is set.
Edit link (Switch to edit mode): Located at the bottom of the page, just above the footer. Click on this link to edit the current object (switches the view from a R/O rendering of the contents to an HTML form that allows you to modify that contents and submit it afterward).
Del link (Delete this family): Located at the bottom of the page, just above the footer. Click on this link to delete the current object (jumps to the delete confirmation page).

In Edit mode

Submit button: (Also in "Add" mode). Commits the locally modified HTML form fields contents to the database that stores Project Hirtius data. Use it to save your latest modifications. It is of course perfectly legitimate to click Submit any number of times during a long edition session to avoid loosing unsaved data. When doing so, use the Edit this family some more... link on the update result screen (see below) to return to the current family record and edit it further.
Reset button: (Also in "Add" mode). Cancels any un-committed change, and returns all HTML form fields to their initial value (i.e. the one they had when the page was last loaded in the browser). Use this button to revert any erroneous edit you might have done (Beware: this only works on local changes that have not been saved to the database yet, i.e. for which you've not clicked on Submit yet).
Edit Couple Creation Event: This will open the Events Edition Page on the linked couple creation event.
Edit Children: This will open the Family - Child Edition Page.
Edit Events: This will open the Object - Event Edition Page.
Edit Categories: This will open the Object - Category Edition Page.
Edit References: This will open the Object - Bib. Ref. Edition Page.
Edit Sources: This will open the Object - Source Ref. Edition Page.
Edit Attachments: This will open the Object - Attached File Edition Page.
Switch to view mode link: Located at the bottom of the page, just above the footer. Click on this link to view the current object (switches from the current HTML form that allows you to modify the object contents and submit it afterward to a R/O rendering of that contents).

In Insert or Update result mode

This result page appears once you have clicked the Submit button on the Add, Edit or Clone page. It will offer the following links:

View this family link: Brings you back to the current Family record in view mode. Use this link to visually check the effect of the latest changes you submitted.
Edit this family some more... link: Returns you to the current Family record in edit mode. Use this link to further edit the family in question. This link is also present just after you added a new family. You have to use this link to add some of the metadata that can only be attached once the record has been created (categories, bibrefs, srcrefs, attachments, etc.)
Edit couple creation event link: Opens the Events Edition Page on the couple creation event for that Family. Use it to further document the couple creation event by adding all relevant metadata. You can also use a similar link on the Families Edition Page in Edit mode at any time (see above).
Edit MP link: Opens the Individuals Edition Page on the male partner for that Family. Use it to further document the individual by adding all relevant metadata.
Edit FP link: Opens the Individuals Edition Page on the female partner for that Family. Use it to further document the individual by adding all relevant metadata.
Add a new family link: Opens the form that allows you to create a new Family record. Usefull when creating multiple records in sequence.