Elizabeth Shown Mills is a well known and respected historical writer who has also published
two books and one pamphlet on citing historical facts, particularly in genealogy.
See Mills(1), Mills(2), and Mills(3).
At least two major genealogy computer programs, The Master Genealogist (TMG) and
Legacy are ready to handle Mills style source citations out of the box.
Unfortunately, neither of these programs run natively on Mac OS.
Professional genealogists know that
the proper sourcing of data is the most important
thing in genealogical research, more important than the computer program
that is used to contain that data.
Many of those that adopt the Mills suggestions for a standard reference style
will not use anything but that style.
However, a system of judicious source type definitions coupled
with postprocessing of Reunion rtf report files to remove the
resulting nonsensical punctuation potpourri, one can trick
the program into achieving Mills style source formats. One
way to do this is described here.
The process is first to define Mills style source types and fields
and to use them according to a few rules.
Then an rtf style
report is generated, as usual, and then postprocessed with the
script fixrtf, supplied here (with instructions on how to install and
use it). Should the reformatting not catch everything yet, you have the
source code to potentially be able to remedy that, and supply fixes
as well as to report problems.
The scripts and definitions here use
UNIX shell and sed scripting. Don't worry, all this
is standard under the hood of Mac OS X and the programming has
been done for you.
Mills style sourcing is an art, not a science, and there often may not
be a single "best" implementation of a given Mills style. That is why it is
called Mills "inspired". The hope is that users will provide constructive
criticism of styles, suggest and even submit new ones for others to use,
look at, or to criticize. (but Mills inspired, please). I will add them
to the Mills Inspired Custom Models
here, time permitting.
- Download files.
Download
mills_template.familyfile
where all the currently defined source types and fields are predefined
and have an example citation.
Put it in your default Documents/Reunion files directory.
Open it and you can see the MI style sources that are defined.
All the Mills predefined source types have an example footnote and an
unprocessed source list report generated by:
List -> Sources... -> Source Tools -> Report this Source List...
and using the file name Mills_template_Sources.rtf.
Mills_template_Sources.rtf
(describe) and its postprocessed source report
Mills_template_Sources_MI.rtf
are here downloadable for reference. To see all downloadable files
you can click here.
Mills source types defined so far from Mills(1) are noted
here. The number noted, as
in [Defined 1]
is the footnote number for a sample of that
definition in the Mills_template_Sources example.
- Install the scripts.
This is only required once or when you need to download
new versions of the scripts.
Download the latest version of fixrtf and sedscript from
here
and put them in a directory of your choice.
(Right Click or Ctrl Click on the file name and select "Save Link As...").
Previous versions are kept there in case later modifications
should introduce any bugs. The version number of each file is
also in the header of each file so you can tell the version
of any given file. Rename them to
be simply fixrtf and sedscript.
It doesn't matter where they are as long as you know where
that is. e.g. in your home directory, usually named
for your last name, create a new directory called
reunion and download or move the two downloaded files there.
Open the Mac application terminal.app and change
your directory to where you placed the two files. If you
followed the example above, you do that by typing:
cd reunion
in the terminal.app window.
Then to give the shell script executable permissions
(only required the very first time after you download the files) type:
chmod u+x fixrtf
Now you can run the postprocessor in the terminal window by typing:
fixrtf
You can now also very easily execute the postprocessing script by
navigating to the directory in a finder window, and
double clicking on fixrtf. The system will recognize
it as a Bourne shell script and process it. Then you can
just close the terminal window when it is done. (If your system
preferences for some reason prevent it from opening in
terminal.app, right click on the file in the finder and
select open with terminal.app. Also note that if you want
to just look at the source content (text commands) of the file
you can open it with TextEdit.app).
- Using Mills Inspired (MI) Source Formats
Perhaps the easiest way to start using these sources is to
download the file
mills_template_blank.familyfile
which has all the currently defined Mills source type references
in it but no people.
These defined source types are used as you would use any
source type. Just fill in the fields for which you are prompted
as you add people to the empty tree.
You will see fields beginning with DEL-, for delimiter,
in some of the
source type definitions. This is how you will get the correct
punctuation into the postprocessed output file. They are placed
as prompts, where they belong, and are optional if the field
it precedes or postcedes is left blank. If the field they surround is not
left blank, you simply put the designated punctuation into the
field. e.g. DEL-LParen gets a left parentheses, "(", as its
content. The postprocessor makes sense of it, and removes
the extraneous commas inserted by Reunion in its reports.
The current delimiter fields are:
Field Name Delimiter
DEL-LParen (
DEL-RParen )
DEL-Semicolon ;
DEL-Colon :
DEL-Period .
If you don't wish to start with the empty tree version of Mills_template_blank.familyfile
you can define each Mills style reference, as needed, in your own familyfile
by looking at and copying the definitions of the required styles found in
Mills_template_blank.familyfile
(see the section below titled
How to define Mills style source types and fields individually).
At the time of this writing, Reunion does not offer a robust way to export and
import user defined source types, which, of course, would make this much easier.
See the wish list for Reunion below.
If you do add these styles to your own familyfile, note that some of Reunion's
default field types have been modified to be used in Mills style references.
Here is a current list of them:
- The source type field Title was modified to Not put quotes around the field,
and to be Text style: Italic. If this has undesired consequences for your currently
used source fields, you will have to define a new source field type, say, MI-Title,
and use it, as needed.
You should be sure to make the above field definition changes in your familyfile,
but first consider if that will cause unwanted consequences for you.
- Create an RTF Report
Create the desired report to an rtf file. This is standard for Reunion.
If it doesn't contain references, or these Mills style references,
there is no need to postprocess it.
- Postprocessing the MI RTF Report
If the created rtf report file contains references, it must be postprocessed to remove the
redundant and nonsensical punctuation.
Here is a sample execution of fixrtf:
macintosh:$ fixrtf
Your Reunion Report Default Directory is: /Users/username/Documents/Reunion Files/Reports
Would you like a list of available rtf files (this may be long) [y/n]:
Type the [case sensitive] rtf file name [without the .rtf] to process [Mills_template_Sources]:
/Users/username/Documents/Reunion Files/Reports/Mills_template_Sources.rtf
has been rewritten to:
/Users/username/Documents/Reunion Files/Reports/Mills_template_Sources_MI.rtf
according to the sed rules in the file /Users/username/reunion/sedscript.
macintosh:$
Here is what fixrtf does. It is a text script,
so there is no black box processing (you can inspect the commands in
the script).
First it looks for .rtf files
in the directory that Reunion uses for its Reports by default. That is:
/Users/lastname/Documents/Reunion Files/Reports
where lastname is your last name (the usual on a Mac).
If it finds none, it tells you so and exits. If it finds one or more,
it asks you if you would like to see a list of them (without the .rtf
file extension). This list can be long, but the most recent ones
should be at the botttom of the list. The default file names can
also be long, and contain blanks. To postprocess one of the files
type in its file name exactly as you see it, it is case sensitive,
and include the blanks where they are. The file name in the last
set of square brackets in the prompt is the default file name it
will use if you don't type one in and just hit enter at the prompt.
The default file can be changed in the
fixrtf file if you wish. It is Mills_template_Sources for
Mills_template_Sources.rtf at the time of
this writing.
After you type the rtf file name, the script reports what input file
it used, and what the postprocessed file name is. The output file
name is the same as the input file name but with "_MI" added to
the prefix, and the file is put into the same directory as the input file.
That is,
Mills_template_Sources.rtf
will be processed to
Mills_template_Sources_MI.rtf.
If the input file does not exist, the script tells you so, and
exits.
The fixrtf script uses the sed rules found in the sedscript file.
You can tinker with these at will, but also at your own risk of
creating a bad output file. Not really a big deal. Even if you
didn't save a good version of the scripts, you can always download either of
the script files again if your tinkering breaks things.
If you know, or want to learn by example, any Unix Bourne shell and/or
sed scripting you can have a
look at the downloaded files. If you understand how they
work, you can also edit and change them if you like.
For example, if you still get a nonsense punctuation
construct in the postprocessed report, feel free to
add a sed rule to sedscript.
- Viewing and Printing the Report
Now you can view and print the postprocessed report. Simply open
it by its name (default has _MI appended to the file prefix name)
to open it in your favorite rtf document viewer, and print it
if you like.
If you want to compare the unprocessed rtf file with the postprocessed
one you can open and print them both. This can be valuable in
identifying a punctuation field that isn't yet removed properly.
If there are punctuation errors, the sed script sedscript may need
to be generalized for another specific case that hasn't been
accounted for yet. Feel free to tinker if you like. Or report
the problem. Send in improvements if they would benefit everyone.
If the punctuation in the postprocessed rtf report is what
is desired, with no undesired substitutions and the rest of the
report remains as desired,
you are done. If not, more sedscript
work is in order. What has not been proven yet is whether
such a script will achieve 100% success in fixing the
mangled punctuation. Time will tell.
Once the scripts are installed and/or updated and you have
defined and used the required MI source types and fields
the sequence of steps required are simply:
Should you want or need to define the source types and fields yourself
in your own familyfile, here is how to do that.
Follow the instructions below to examine a Mills style source type
and fields definitions in mills_template.familyfile and
then define it in your own familyfile.
![[Figure 1.]](Figure1.jpg)
![[Figure 2.]](Figure2.jpg)