Individuals Management Workflow

This page will offer some high-level guidelines and recommendations on how to create and maintain Individuals and Families records, as well as all the object and non-object entities that will serve as metadata for these two main object types.

Also, please keep in mind that Project Hirtius has not been meant (at least at this stage) as a full replacement for genealogy programs. If genealogical studies are your primary goals, you may be better suited with another program such as Gramps.

In any case, the recommendations that follow are just guidelines. Please feel free to use the tool as it best fits your needs.

Here is an overview of the process:

1. Create index tree
2. Define your approach
3. Create the central individual
   1. Fill in the creation form
   2. Further edit the Individual's record
4. Build family around him/her
   1. Extend tree towards the past (going "up")
   2. Extend tree towards the future (going "down")
5. Navigating the family tree
   1. Starting from an Individual
   2. Using the Lineage table
   3. Starting from a Family
   4. Using the Children table
6. A few words about auto-events
   1. Creation
   2. View
   3. Edit / Update
   4. Clone
   5. Deletion / Unlink

Let's now discuss each of the steps...

Create index tree

(optional but recommended) Through the INXtree Browser and if you don't already have one, you should create a tree structure (= INXtree) with categories that you can then attach your Individuals to (or indeed any of the other supported object types). A small part of this structure might look something like this:

History
  Middle-ages
    Monachism
  Renaissance
...
Sciences
  Astronomy
    Astronomers
  Medicine
...

Of course, you don't have to define the entire structure before you start attaching objects to it. You can always expand it later, as the need for some new classification is revealed by the data you manipulate during your research. But it makes sense to start from a basic structure that is already developed enough, to avoid having to reclassify too many existing objects (which is easy enough to do, but takes time).

More recommendations on the design of your INXtree are available in Concepts.

Please note: there are limits to the size of your INXtree, not in terms of "lines" as this is stored in a database table, but in terms of leaves per node and maximum depth of the tree. Please refer to Database Layout and Database Statistics Page for more information. Both of these parameters can be tweaked at installation time (see Global Definitions File and the INSTALL document).

Define your approach

Do some thinking before you start:

• Are you embarquing on a large-scale project ? In this case, you should probably start by creating a dedicated Project to manage it. Please refer to Projects Management Workflow for more details about that process.
• Will your research focus on a single individual ? In this case, creating a single Individual record may be as good a start as any.
• Will you trace the history of entire families instead ? In this case, you should learn how to manage Family objects, attach children to them, and navigate the family tree.

Also, now may be a good time to decide on some conventions that you will use througout your database:

• How do you record locations for places of birth / death ? (current name, name at the time the event took place, language, abbreviations or not, etc.)
• How do you name unknown individuals ? (e.g. a spouse or child that you know existed, but whose name has not been preserved in your documentation). In Project Hirtius, only the "last name" part is required.
• Decide on a name structure convention for special cases (for instance where patronyms are concerned, since those are not supported explicitely yet).
• Make sure you know which calendar (Julian or Gregorian) your sources use when creating the linked events. In most cases, the choice is obvious, but during the transition period, this may require much closer examination. The application now offers the ability to specify which calendar was used to express an Event date (this is also the case for the Titles "worn as of" field).
  Please refer to Supported Eras for more on this topic.
• etc...

Create the central individual

In most cases, even in large projects, your research will focus in more details on one individual in particular. Start by creating that record. If no particular individual stand out, then pick one at random, typically either the oldest one or the most recent (so that you can then work your way up or down the family tree).

Fill in the creation form

Start by filling in the creation form with at least these fields:

1. name parts: this represents the official name of the individual. You should split it across the provided fields (prefix, first, middle, last, etc.). I'm well aware that this structure will not map every possible onomastic tradition. If it doesn't, either use the fields despite their name, or only use the last name field, the only required one.
   If the individual is known by more than one name (alternate spellings, translations, pen name, etc.), you will have the ability to add these once you've submitted this form and created the Individual's record.
2. sex: no comment.
3. birth and death information: the date and place of that person's birth and death. This information will be used to create (or edit, later on) the linked auto-events. The dates, if unknown, can be left blank. Partial dates are acceptable as well (e.g. "1467/00/00") if the exact day cannot be determined. The location field is required -- use "unknown" or some similar value if unknown, in which case the country should be set to "Unspecified (--)".
   If the person is still alive, check the box marked Is alive. This will disable the death event controls and prevent the creation of a linked death event. If you're editing an existing Individual record and you check that box, the existing death event is removed (without any further confirmation), including any attached metadata.

Once done, click on Submit to create that Individual's record, as well as the linked auto-event(s).

Further edit the Individual's record

Once the Individual record has been created, you should return to it and further edit it, documenting each object and sub-object as you go. For instance, you may wish to focus on the following items (in no particular order):

• birth and death events: by clicking on the [Edit] link next to the birth and death details, you can jump to the linked Events Edition Page in edit mode, and further document it. Most important here would be the bibliographical and source references, but you should also not forget to set at least one appropriate categories.
• comment at Individual's level: use it to introduce who the person is, what his or her historical significance is, etc.
• alternate names: by clicking on the [Edit] link next to the section title, you can jump to the Alternate Names Edition Page. From there, you can maintain the list of alternate names for the current person. Alternate names are not split into separate fields, but are stored as a single string for the whole name. They are qualified by a name type, such as "alternate spelling", "translation" or "pen name". The list of available alternate name types is managed from the Alternate Name Types Management Page. Once an alternate name entry has been created, you should also further edit it to at least reference its source.
• titles: by clicking on the [Edit] link next to the section title, you can jump to the Titles Edition Page. From there, you can maintain the list of titles worn by the current person. Titles are also stored as single strings, and as extra parameters you can specify the date they were awarded and wether they should be considered as nobility title. You can use this metadata to store nobility titles (e.g. "duc de Brabant"), official titles (e.g. "pater patriae"), academic titles (e.g. "Doctor of Medicine"), etc. Just as with alternate names, once a title entry has been created, you should also further edit it to at least reference its source.
• biography: by clicking on the [Edit] link next to the section title, you can jump to the Object - Event Edition Page. The default auto-events will already be visible there. From that page, you can then create new (regular) events and have them linked to the current Individual by clicking on [New], or link existing events (regular or auto-) to it by clicking on [Link]. This will allow you to record and document the most significant events of that person's life.
• categories: link the newly created Individual object to at least one relevant category, preferably to several of them.
• references: list here all relevant bibliography for that person.
• sources: list here all known sources for that person.

Further metadata are available from the Individuals Edition Page (such as See also, Lineage and Attachments). These will either be dealt with further down this document, or ignored altogether as they are not critical to the initial creation of the record and not specific to Individual objects.

Build family around him/her

Once the central individual has been created, and if this is relevant to your research, you can start building a family around him/her. You can do this in two directions: going "up" (i.e. towards past generations) or "down" (i.e. towards more recent generations) in the tree.

Here below are the pocedures to follow in both cases.

Extend tree towards the past (going "up")

1. first create both parents as separate Individuals
   • reach the Individuals List
   • click Add in the bottom-right corner
2. then create a Family object to unite both parents
   • reach the Individuals List
   • from there, click on Families at the bottom to reach the Families List
   • click Add in the bottom-right corner
   • select male partner
   • select female partner
   • provide all known details about the union (date, place, type [official marriage or informal union]) and submit
   (this can also be done by editing the Lineage from one of the parents edition page, as illustrated below)
3. further edit this Family to link the current Individual as their child
   • click [Edit] next to the "Children" section to reach the Family - Child Edition Page
   • click [Link] in the bottom-right corner to open the Individual Selector
   • select the current individual in the list

Extend tree towards the future (going "down")

1. first create the spouse as a separate Individual
   • reach the Individuals List
   • click Add in the bottom-right corner
2. then create a Family object to unite the spouse to the current individual (this can be done from either partner edition page, but it's easiest by clicking on Edit this individual some more... just after having created the spouse)
   • click [Edit] next to the "Lineage" section to reach the Individual - Family Edition Page
   • click [New Union] in the bottom-right corner to open the Individual Selector
   • select the partner in the list
   • provide all known details about the union (date, place, type [official marriage or informal union]) and submit
3. further edit this Family to add the children (the hypothesis being that the children's Individual record has not been created yet)
   • click [Edit] next to the "Children" section to reach the Family - Child Edition Page
   • click [New] in the bottom-right corner to reach the Individuals Edition Page (if you have to create several children in a row, right-click on [New], open in new window instead, to keep your window on the current Family object)
   • fill in the form to create a new Individual that will automatically get linked to the current Family object as a child

For each extra Individual that you create in this context (parents, spouse, children), you should follow the same procedure as the one described above for the central individual, documenting each of them as you go. Likewise, each Family object that you create should also be documented as much as possible in terms of bibliographical references and sources. Don't forget the categories either.

Navigating the family tree

Once the family tree(s) that are the focus of your research have been created, how do you navigate them ?

Starting from an Individual

You would typically start from one individual or another. There are many ways for you to access his/her record -- here are the most common ones:

• Browse the Individuals List until you locate his/her name, then click the object ID in the first column to open the record in view mode
• Search for that individual either through the Basic and Timeline Search Page or Advanced Search Page, then click the object ID in the first column to open the record in view mode
• Jump straight to the individual's record in view mode using the Go box (in the footer of most pages) if you know by heart that individual's object ID and the correct prefix to use ('I' -- see Objects and Metadata Types).

Using the Lineage table

Once on the requested Individual's edition page, scroll down to the Lineage section. It will contain an HTML-based representation of that individual's family tree, spanning at most 3 generations, centered on the current individual (rendered in bold font).

On the top row, you have the parents for both members of the couple (if applicable). Then the current individual with his/her partner. Then all children being born from that union (if any), one per line. If the individual was united to different partners, each of these unions gets its line (the current individual's name doesn't get repeated), followed by all children born from that union(if any), one per line.

All cells in the table are color-coded by sex (pink for girls, blue for boys -- how strange).

Here is what such a table might look like:

Lambert Vanden Bosch (I25)		Aldegonde Moers (I26)		Jérôme Moers (I30)		Marie America (I32)
Herman Vanden Bosch (I28)				Marie-Isabelle Moers (I29)
Jérôme Henri Vanden Bosch (I33)

Please note: the links in the table above have been edited to not point anywhere.

You can use the following features of this table to navigate the family tree:

• Each listed individual is followed by his/her object ID between paranthesis. Click on it to jump to his/her edition page.
• Each union is represented by a green plus sign ('+'). Click on it to jump to the edition page of that union (Family object).

Once you reach that other individual's edition page, scroll to the Lineage section again, and navigate further up or down the tree. There is as yet no way in Project Hirtius to display the entire family tree of a given individual, allowing you to jump any number of generations in one go. This feature is planned for a future release.

Starting from a Family

Another possible starting point is the Family object. Here are a few ways you could locate the requested record:

• Browse the Families List until you identify the suitable record based on the partners names, then click the object ID in the first column to open the record in view mode
• Search for that family either through the Basic and Timeline Search Page or Advanced Search Page, then click the object ID in the first column to open the record in view mode
• Jump straight to the family record in view mode using the Go box (in the footer of most pages) if you know by heart that family object ID and the correct prefix to use ('F' -- see Objects and Metadata Types).

Using the Children table

Once on the requested Family edition page, scroll down to the Children section. It will contain an HTML table that lists all known children born to that couple.

Use the first column ('ID') to jump to that individual's edition page.

All cells in the table are color-coded by sex (pink for girls, blue for boys -- how strange).

Once you reach that other individual's edition page, scroll to the Lineage section, and navigate further up or down the tree (see above).

A few words about auto-events

Auto-events are Event objects created automatically for you each time you create an Individual or Family object, and linked with the object that caused its creation. Auto-events have already been described briefly in Concepts and on the Events Edition Page.

Here however, seeing how interlinked they are with the two main object types storing your genealogical information, I would like to describe in more details the specificities of their management.

Let's focus on each of the steps...

Creation

Auto-events will be created in the following situations:

1. Creating a new Individual: one or two new auto-events are created, depending on the value of the Is alive flag:
   • Birth event (type 'BIRT')
   • Death event (type 'DEAT')
2. Removing the Is alive flag on an existing Individual: a single new auto-event is created:
   • Death event (type 'DEAT')
3. Creating a new Family: a single new auto-event is created:
   • Couple creation (type is either 'MARR' or 'UNIO', as chosen by the user)

The following fields will be automatically set at Event creation time:

• description #1: the contents of that field is automatically built based on a template text (defined in the Global Definitions File) and the Individual(s) name(s).
• date: the event date is filled-in by the user on the Individuals Edition Page.
• location: the event location is filled-in by the user on the Individuals Edition Page.
• country: the country for that location is selected by the user from a drop-down list on the Individuals Edition Page.
• automatic?: that flag is automatically set to "yes" by the program for all auto-events (this is what identifies it as an auto-event).
• event type: in the case of birth or death events, the appropriate event type is automatically set by the program. In the case of couple creation events, the user should manually select the event type from a restricted list ('MARR' or 'UNIO').

For a complete description of these fields, their general meaning and the format they expect, please refer to the Events Edition Page.

View

Whenever they are displayed, auto-events can easily be identified as such (i.e. you can easily differentiate them from regular events):

• in lists, they will be marked with the "Æ" token.
• on the Events Edition Page (whether in view or edit mode), they are identified by the fact that the automatic? flag is set to "yes" (there are other clues as well, such as fields being displayed as "disabled" or read-only -- see below).

Edit / Update

It is perhaps in the context of edit / update workflows that the specificities of the auto-events will be felt the most.

To begin with, the list below explains how each of the special fields will react:

• description #1: that field is displayed as "disabled" on the Events Edition Page (i.e. read-only). It's contents is automatically recomputed and updated whenever the individual (birth or death event) or one of the individuals (couple creation event) name(s) is/are modified. By contrast, description #2 is not controlled by the parent object and as such can be freely edited by the user.
• date: the event date is only stored in the Event record, and as such can be freely modified from either the Events Edition Page or Individuals Edition Page (or Families Edition Page, as appropriate).
• location: the event location is only stored in the Event record, and as such can be freely modified from either the Events Edition Page or Individuals Edition Page (or Families Edition Page, as appropriate).
• country: the country for that location is only stored in the Event record, and as such can be freely modified from either the Events Edition Page or Individuals Edition Page (or Families Edition Page, as appropriate).
• automatic?: that field is always displayed read-only and can never be modified once the record has been created. There is no way to transform an auto-event into a regular one, but you can of course clone the auto-event into a new regular one (see below), before possibly removing the original auto-event (see even further down).
• event type: in the case of birth and death events, the event type is fixed and can't be modified by the user. It is displayed "read-only" on the Events Edition Page. In the case of couple creation events, the event type can be modified by the user from a restricted list ('MARR' or 'UNIO'), either from the Families Edition Page or Events Edition Page (the actual value is only stored in the Event record, obviously).

Then, we also need to highlight what happens when the Is alive flag is modified after the initial creation of the Individual record. There are four possible cases, two of them trivial:

1. Is alive was true and remains so: no consequence as regards the death event (it does not exist).
2. Is alive was false and remains so: no consequence as regards the death event (it exists and remains unaffected).
3. Is alive was true and is set to false: a new death event is created. Make sure to further edit it to document it properly.
4. Is alive was false and is set to true: the existing death event is deleted (without any further confirmation), along with all its metadata (bibliographical references, source references, attachments, etc.). Beware, as this situation is less likely to be legitimate.

Clone

Can you clone auto-events (just like you can regular events) ? Yes, you can.

The only specificity that you need to be aware of about this process is that the new Event object resulting of the clone will be a regular Event. It won't be owned by or even linked with the father object of the source event.

Of course, once created, you can link the new Event to any other object in the database using the Object - Event Edition Page from that object edition page.

Deletion / Unlink

As a general rule, auto-events can't be deleted or unlinked (i.e. detached from their parent object) on their own. The corresponding action links will be disabled in the Project Hirtius user interface. The only way to remove them is to delete the parent object that owns them, which will in turn delete all linked metadata (including the auto-event in question).

The only exception to that rule is the fact that setting the Is alive flag on an Individual post-creation will delete the existing death event (and all linked metadata), as explained above.

Regarding the inability to unlink an auto-event from its parent object, it may be worth repeating that, as a workaround, auto-events can be cloned into regular Events (see here and here).

See also:

• Individuals Edition Page
• Families Edition Page
• Events Edition Page
• Individuals List

Project Hirtius, © Les Ateliers du Héron, 2012.
Last updated: Friday,May 31, 2024.