Family Historian User Group

Looking forward to it, however, I have a concern. The advance notice on TWRs site re Map Window has a statement "If any of your Place records have no latitude and longitude, these will looked up automatically from the Internet (this is called 'Geocoding'). Uncertain geocodes are indicated with a red background box. Errors can be easily corrected by dragging markers, or by dragging places from lists onto map locations."

I am concerned with the 'automatic Geocoding' of places without lats and longs. I hope that this is NOT fully automated, as on another package I use, the auto-geocoding totally messed up about 13,000 places, and was very USA centric, whereas my places are 'worldwide'. Thank goodness for backups! I now have approximately 2,200 places manually and accurately geocoded in a mysql database, which i would like to import into FH6, before adding others. Is this possible? How is the MAP data stored in the gedcom? The current format I have is:
0 _PLAC 'Alston', Bedford District, Eastern Cape, South Africa
1 MAP
2 LATI -32.89940023221645
2 LONG 26.024551391601562
2 ZOOM 15
2 PLEV 2
0 _PLAC 'Alstonfields', Bedford, Eastern Cape, South Africa
1 MAP
2 LATI -32389940023221645
2 LONG 26.024551391601562
2 ZOOM 0
2 PLEV 0
0 _PLAC 'Atherstone', Grahamstown district, Eastern Cape, South Africa
1 MAP
2 LATI -33.2974964518822
2 LONG 26.3810491561889
2 ZOOM 12
2 PLEV 2
etc.
What will I have to do to convert this data? Help please.

PaulTT

Paul, that GEDCOM MAP LATI LONG format looks OK although not sure that number of digits is supported.
The ZOOM and PLEV will be UDF.

FH requires the _PLAC records to have a Record Id e.g.
0 @P1@ _PLAC 'Alston', Bedford District...
and the names much match EXACTLY with the PLAC fields.

I think auto-geocoding is inhibited by default unless Place records are specifically marked as Tentative.
But you control which records are chosen for geocoding.

Best to experiment with test data, and make sure you have good backups of your Projects before installing & running FH V6.

tatewise wrote: I think auto-geocoding is inhibited by default unless Place records are specifically marked as Tentative.

You need to select 'Block Refresh for Non-tentative geocodes' (not selected by default).
Alternatively just un-select 'Enable Auto-Geocoding'.

Thanks Mike and Lorna,

I will 'play' with a sandbox setup before committing my 40meg gedcom, but I am relieved that we can switch off the auto-geocoding feature! I export my data to a TNG based website, which is where my manual geocoding took place, and a php script to regenerate the _PLAC gedcom sections shown above.

6 days to go !

Rgds

PaulTT

Have you tried the Export Gedcom File Plugin?

It has preconfigured options for export to TNG, and I believe is more convenient to use than the Export Gedcom to TNG Plugin.

Export Gedcom File will also be updated soon after FH V6 release to cope with full Unicode/UTF-8 and Place Records.
I am not planning to update Export Gedcom to TNG for those features.

Not yet - I will go and have a look, thanks

For Mike Tate...
I downloaded the Export Gedcom File V1.4 and it has crashed on my data on first attempt. Where would you like me to send screenshots, etc.
Paul TT
paul@tantrem.com

Paul, I have just spotted a little housekeeping is needed:
To save you telling us each time, could you please set your FH Version so it appears in the right-hand panel.
At the very top of this FHUG page click User Control Panel, then on the Profile tab select Family Historian Version at the bottom and click Submit.

Regarding the Plugin, I am sorry about the crash.
Please start a new topic in the Plugin Discussions Forum and post screen-shots there.