Pedigree Forge includes a large, and growing, number of pre-defined forms for transcriptions. Many of these take a tabular form, like census transcripts.
Some fields are suggested for you, based on common values. For example, “Scholar” is a value that commonly occurs in this field on census returns, and so is suggested as you start to type:
Pressing the [Enter] key will accept the suggestion, or pressing the [Esc] key, or continuing to type will allow you to enter your own value.
Spell checks are made in the transcript forms as the detail is typed. If there are spellings that are in the original, but aren’t “correct”, we can flag them as ignored, and they are showed as underlined in magenta— see the section on spell checking for how this feature works.
When working with censuses, information is often the same in one row as it is for the cell in the row above. In the example shown here, William Dryland was also born in Sellindge. Pressing the [Ctrl] and [D] keys copies the value from the cell above:
The transcript forms are “modal”, that is, whilst they are open, you can’t interact with the Pedigree Forge main window directly. However, some shortcut keys allow some of the most likely tasks you would need to do on the main window, without closing the transcript dialog:
[Alt] + [arrow keys]: Moves the chart canvas window view point, i.e. the background image being transcribed is moved left, right, up or down, relative to the transcript window.
[Ctrl] + [arrow keys]: Moves the transcript window (leaving the background image in the same place). This can also be achieved by clicking on the grey areas of the transcript dialog and dragging.
[Page up] or [Page down]: If the source contains multiple images, these keys will move to the next or previous source image.
[Esc] Closes the transcript dialog.
It is possible to make the source transcription window semi-transparent. This is useful if screen space is at a premium, as it allows the text below the dialog to be partially visible through the window itself. To enable this, click on the small arrow next to the source transcript dialog’s title and select “Toggle Transparent”:
