Spanish Indexing and column headers

As I do the Spanish Indexing (and English for that matter), I find myself having to scroll up to the top header to find out what the column refers to. Especially on the Spanish one, the marital status has 6 different categories, and there is only one field to fill in on the Table Entry. It can be confusing to remember which column is which category. There are "+" signs in any of the 6 columns, but as a beginner, it is hard to remember the order.

It would be nice if there were a way to freeze the column header at the top (like you can do in Excel or other spreadsheet programs) so that it stays visible while you scroll down the page. This would also be nice on the English pages so that you can "check" where you are on the column of the page as you look at the Table Entry and the written sheet.

opee wrote:As I do the Spanish Indexing (and English for that matter), I find myself having to scroll up to the top header to find out what the column refers to. Especially on the Spanish one, the marital status has 6 different categories, and there is only one field to fill in on the Table Entry. It can be confusing to remember which column is which category. There are "+" signs in any of the 6 columns, but as a beginner, it is hard to remember the order.

It would be nice if there were a way to freeze the column header at the top (like you can do in Excel or other spreadsheet programs) so that it stays visible while you scroll down the page. This would also be nice on the English pages so that you can "check" where you are on the column of the page as you look at the Table Entry and the written sheet.

That's a good idea! I have (so far) only done 1900 US census records, but that would be useful for those forms, too, and especially at higher magnifications. It wouldn't surprise me if that feature would be useful for many if not most forms.

When I try to visualize what you're wanting, I see a single horizontal scrollbar that controls two panels, each of those panels having a vertical scrollbar. The upper panel would show the column headers, and the lower panel would show the current line and a few around it. Is that what you're thinking? (No, I'm not a developer on the project, just another user.)

In the mean time, I have heard talk about the highlights possibly being useful for keeping track of which column you're on. I haven't used the highlights feature myself, though.

Problem with highlighting is that you need multiple fields and from what opee said he only has 1 field just has to type in the entire row. But besides that highlighting works great as long as the highlights are correctly formatted.

rmrichesjr wrote:When I try to visualize what you're wanting, I see a single horizontal scrollbar that controls two panels, each of those panels having a vertical scrollbar. The upper panel would show the column headers, and the lower panel would show the current line and a few around it. Is that what you're thinking? (No, I'm not a developer on the project, just another user.)

In the mean time, I have heard talk about the highlights possibly being useful for keeping track of which column you're on. I haven't used the highlights feature myself, though.

Yes, I imagine a two panel-type view, or something similar that allows you to have the headers always visible and the rest of the record scrollable. (Glad my explanation was decipherable).

The highlighting allows you to see where you are moving in the record, but does nothing with the headers.

Though the fields that you input normally have the heading as the field name. But it could be wrong in this instance.

thedqs wrote:Though the fields that you input normally have the heading as the field name. But it could be wrong in this instance.

You have the field name headings where you do the data entry, but when you are on line 20 or 30 or 40, you cannot see the microfilm heading for the particular column because the image has been scrolled down. It would be helpful to see the top heading on the microfilm all of the time during the indexin exercise (or be able to turn it on/off.)