Bold (highlight) the "focus" person in attachment tool

LegacyUser

David Roderick McLean said: Manipulating the "focus" person is the key to understanding and using the attachment tool. Many users do not understand this and get confused.

It would be very helpful if the system automatically bolded the focus person on each side to make this powerful function more obvious.



PS: I guess that means to unbold the names on the record which are not the focus person.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Good ideal, However, as used in the source linker, the term "focus person" always refers to the two names just under the blue bar as can be seen when clicking on "Change" in order to change the focus person. These two focus people are usually the same if the source is straight forward but sometimes the source linker is not able to line them up automatically and the two focus people will be different.

Are you actually requesting that the name which was the primary name in the source from which you originally entered the source linker be bold? So that people can keep track of where they came from?

A related piece of confusion with the source linker is, as I have found in answering a lot of questions here, is that many people overlook or ignore that "Change" link and can't get the two sides to line up properly without using it. I don't know how to solve that problem.

A third piece of confusion is people not understanding that each line on the left hand side represents a different source they are attaching. For example in the image you posted, six different sources have been attached to six different people. This can be shown by changing to focus person to be each one of the six then going to record from the link towards the top of the page. You go to the version of the record for the current focus person, not the source record you originally came from.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Yes.

The source-linker is person-centric and the source(s) attached to a person's source page are unique to that person (if attached via the source linker).

The idea is a very good one, but does not apply very well with the current way sources are handled by FamilySearch.

LegacyUser

David Roderick McLean said: Question from above: Are you actually requesting that the name which was the primary name in the source from which you originally entered the source linker be bold?

No. I was not suggesting that the primary person in the source be bold. I just want it to be clearer to users that the focus person (I guess you are right that it is always the person below the line) is highlighted. When I have taught people how to understand the source linker (especially for marriage records); it is not intuitive to new users how to switch the focus person to the bride or groom to link the correct parents. Highlighting more the focus person would make this more intuitive to new users.

Thanks for your comment. I learned something!

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Well, your point is well taken. There are records, like the marriage records, but in some cases, census records as well, when the focus person may be changed in order to attach the source to a (the correct) person in the record.

And that is very hard to do at times, especially when a search (Find function) does not turn up an existing profile for the person in the tree.

From that point of view, it is important to note the focus person for that source linker action. I fully agree that the focus person is not always clear and sometimes (it has been a while) the focus person is aligned with the wrong person in the massive tree. (I don't know if that particular problem still occurs or not.)

I believe, but do not know, that an inexperienced user can end up causing problems because they think that people are lined up when, in fact, they are not.