Create a Book → Optimizing Book Output
The goal of genealogy books is to organize all data into a readable document, because reading such text is more interesting than tables of data. The "Generations LaTeX Book" script controlled by Book Style records can do a lot, but no computer program can rewrite your content to optimize grammar and spelling. The solution is to prepare your data styles to work well in the book. This section has suggestions for editing your data to enhance the quality of the book created by GEDitCOM II.
The best way to optimize a book is to view all individuals to appear in the book using the "Generations Book Preview" interface format (choose it from "Browser Styles" in the "Extensions" menu). This format displays individuals in a style very close to the book output. The display is not exactly the same as in a book because the book uses the LaTeX typesetting language, while the format is using GEDitCOM II interface format methods, but it is close enough to help your optimization process.
As you open each individual, you will see their description analogous to their section in the book. Read each section and check for optimum output. For any section that does not read well, click the "Edit" button in the left margin, which will open a new window where you can edit tha data for that section. The editing field will have hints for optimizing the output. Potential sections for the book with no data, will also have an "Edit" button. You can click that button to enter new data.
The following sections give details on the optimization process, which can be done in the "Generations Book Preview" interface format or in any other format, if preferred.
The most interesting sections of the book might be notes on individuals and their events. All such notes will be output in the book (unless you choose to omit them). To have them appear in the best style, all notes should be written with the following guidelines:
<!--TeX ... -->
comment element. See below for details.You might have notes in your genealogy data that you do not want to share with others in the book or unflattering portraits. To handle this situation, you can set the "Distribution" for any Notes record or multimedia object (see main help on those records for details). The book script and book settings lets you choose which notes will appear in the book.
GEDitCOM II lets you enter notes using HTML content by enclosing the notes in a <div> ... </div>
element. It is not possible to translate such content into LaTeX commands and therefore such notes will not be output to the book. If such notes are important to the book, however, there are two alternatives:
<!--alt ... -->
comment within the HTML content. The text within this comment will be processed into the book exactly like other plain text notes.<!--TeX ... -->
comment within the HTML content. The text within this comment will be output to the book as is. You are responsible for insuring the text has valid LaTeX content.If you include both an alt
and a TeX
comment, the TeX
one will be used for the book. For example, imagine you want to include a short table of data from a census record. A set of notes that uses HTML in GEDitCOM II, uses LaTeX typesetting for a book, and has alternate plain text notes for possible use in other scripts could be:
<div><!--name New Notes --> <p>Excerpt from the 1901 Irish Census</p> <table border='1' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='3'> <tr><th>Name</th> <th>Relation</th> <th>Age</th> </tr> <tr><td>Patrick Hurst</td> <td>Head</td> <td>42</td> </tr> <tr><td>Bridget Hurst</td> <td>Wife</td> <td>35</td> </tr> <tr><td>Edward Hurst</td> <td>Son</td> <td>12</td> </tr> </table> <!--TeX Excerpt from the 1901 Irish Census: \begin{tabular}{|c|c|c|} \hline Name & Relation & Age \\ \hline Patrick Hirst & Head & 42 \\ Bridget hurst & Wife & 35 \\ Edward Hurst & Son & 12 \\ \hline \end{tabular} --> <!--alt Excerpt from the 1901 Irish Census Name Relation Age Partick Hurst Self 42 Bridget Hurst Wife 35 Edward Hurst Son 12 --> </div>
The following data fields are assumed to have data in a specific style:
All sources cited by source links will be referenced in the book and listed in the bibliography. For sources to have complete information, you should fill in all fields in the source records (normally title, authors, publisher, and date; see main help on source records for details). You should also specify the type of source from the pop-up menu.
Sources in a book are formatted using BibTeX, which is a component of LaTeX documents designed for handling bibliographies. To optimize the created bibliography, you should go through sources and do the following:
.bib
file used by BiBTeX and LaTeX to format the bibliography.Both these optimization steps create custom GEDCOM tags. As long as you are working in GEDitCOM II, everything will work fine. But, if you export to a GEDCOM file to share with others using different software, that other software will ignore these useful settings. Your options are:
_TYPE
custom tag. Software that ignores this setting will not miss anything because GEDitCOM II fills in all standard GEDCOM tags used for source records.
_DATE
tag. Other software will ignore the tag and therefore lose information about the source year. If it is important that you be able to export to a GEDCOM file to share with others and retain source years, the years should be appended to another field (such as the publisher field) instead of putting in the date field. While this works, you have to put up with all the warnings issued while creating books and possibly sub-optimal formatting of the bibliography.Portraits will be included in the book when available. If the picture that appears is not appropriate, you can pick a better portait for that individual or check the "None of these objects is a portrait" option for the individual.
If you want to keep the picture as a portrait but omit it from the book (e.g., it is the only portrait you have, but it is unflattering), you can omit selected portraits be setting distribution for the multimedia object. The method is identical to the method to omit certain notes.