Use of 'Facts' Section

[Robin Helmond]

I am pondering the intended use of the sections for a Person Field. I want to add the military service for a person and wonder if it should be entered in the Notes section, where there is a heading for such information, or in the Facts section. There is no predefined Military topic in the Facts section, but it seems to me to be the appropriate place for such information.

I know I can create topics to suit myself, but I would like to work with how Reunion is designed to be used.

[theKiwi]

I would enter Military Service as an event - it has a start and end date, at least one place, and i'm sure a bunch of Notes (memo)

That way you can have a whole succession of events showing up for military service at different times at different locations that are all part of a person's timeline.

Roger

[Robin Helmond]

Thanks, Roger, that's a help. Sometimes a person's full military history is available, and one can enter a series of separate events. However, when that is not available, I suppose I can use the enlistment date as the event, just because the person enlisted for service. I think I have a better handle on entering military service now.

[ADfamily]

From my Google search, AI says The term "military" was never officially removed from the GEDCOM standard. However, the handling of military information within GEDCOM files has evolved. While the original GEDCOM 5.5 specification included specific tags for military service (like \_MILT), these were not consistently used or interpreted across different genealogy software. In the latest version, FamilySearch GEDCOM 7.0, there is no specific tag for military, but the EVENT tag can be used to record military information.

In Reunion, it probably fits better as Note, sadly. It's really an Event but doesn't display well (same as Occupation for example). It also depends whether your data file (Gedom) is exported/shared. Most other programs would expect Military Service as Event, but that leaves you with small Memo field in Reunion to enter details vs. Note field.

[theKiwi]

I think your AI search is wrong - the GEDCOM 5.5 standard does not include the use of \_MILT - nor even MILT. The underscore preceding MILT that AI turned up means it was a custom tag, but I have no idea what the \ was about.

Military service can be an event quite easily - there would/should always be a date or date range, a place, and notes. If the service was in different places then create multiple events for it, each one with its own date/date range, place and notes.

Notes can be used for much more than can be fit into the Reunion Memo field.

Roger