* Preferred Format for Places

[Gowermick]

After seeing the post on Places, I thought I'd attempt to tidy up my list of places, wishing to standardise my Places, such that each is in the form Town,County,Country.

Therein lies the snag, what is the standard/preferred way of entering the comma separators?

Should I enter Town<comma><space>County<comma><space>Country, or should I omit the <space>?

Sadly, when working with data places , they are listed in correct columns whatever method I use, so it is difficult to see at a glance which place uses which format. Ideally I'd like to omit the space, so that using Autocomplete is consistent, without the need to remember whether I need to use a <space> or not!
i.e To autocomplete at 'Yorkshire', I wish to enter '<comma>Y' rather than '<comma><space>Y', and to enter 'England', I wish to enter '<comma><comma>E'

[tatewise]

The main thing affected is how Place names (and Address fields) will appear in Diagrams and Reports, etc.

Also I think some Plugins and Functions will 'tidy' Place and Address fields to use <comma><space> separators.

If you only have <comma> separators then the whole Place (or Address) is treated as one word, so will not wrap at the end of lines, etc, and just looks a bit unconventional.

In Tools > Work with Data > Places/Addresses if a mixture of <comma><space> and <comma> separators are used for the 'same' entry, then it will appear more than once in the list, but a click on Edit shows what separators are used and allows them to be globally corrected.

When using the Rearrange Address and Place Parts Plugin the Address and Place fields are tidied, even if none of its mapping options are used. Each comma separator will always be followed by a space, and any trailing blank column parts will be removed, so is a way of automatically tidying those fields.

If you ALWAYS use <comma><space> then that is all you have to remember!

[Gowermick]

Thanks for that Mike, your reply also explains how some 'extra' spaces have appeared in my data.

I appreciate why the spaces are put there (word-wrapping etc), but to be honest, I wish they weren't there, as they make auto-complete a pain if some have them and some don't! (I assume that the plugin you mentioned will correct this - I'll give it a try)

All I need then, is to find a way to add the Country to those places where just the County is shown.
Any thoughts on how I can test that Place ends in 'Kent' rather than 'Kent, England'?
Mike

Edit: Looked at the plugin you mentioned, but fear it is far too complicated for just tidying up the separators in places. I'm worried it will screw up addresses at the same time.

[tatewise]

If this is the first time you have used the Plugin, clicking the PERFORM REARRANGEMENT of Parts button does nothing except tidy all separators to <comma><space> in both Place and Address fields.
If you have used it before then click RESTORE PLUGIN DEFAULT SETTINGS button beforehand.

To be on the safe side use File > Backup/Restore > Small Backup to preserve your Gedcom file before using Plugin.

Anyway the Plugin produces a Result Set of all the changed fields for you to review.
Also use the Tools > Work with Data > Places/Addresses to review the changes.
If you don't like the results then use Edit > Undo Plugin Updates before closing FH.

If there are only a handful of Place names with Kent then use Tools > Work with Data > Places to Edit the ones without England or Merge with ones that already have England.
Remember you can sort on the middle column to bring all the Kent values together.
Also these are global changes, not field by field.

It might be possible to use the Search and Replace Plugin, but it becomes complex if for example you have used both Ashford, Kent and Ashford, Kent, England because those two Place Records need to be merged. See plugins:help:search_and_replace:usage_examples#place_name_changes_in_fh_v6|> Search and Replace ~ Usage Examples > Place Name Changes in FH V6.

A way to list all Place names that end in Kent is to use a Place Query where the Row filter tests for ends with Kent, then you can edit/merge that Place Record.

[Gowermick]

Mike,
i'll give your plugin another try, following your advice.

As for the places without Country, it isn't just Kent, which I used purely as an example.

For instance, I have 12000 occurences of places in Yorkshire, some of which have Country, some not. I was wondering if there was an 'easy' way of adding England to those which don't already have it.

The only way I can think of is to replace 'Yorkshire, England' with 'YorkshireX', then find and replace 'Yorkshire' with 'Yorkshire, England', then find and replace 'YorkshireX' with 'Yorkshire, England', ensuring I match case and whole words only.

Can you see any problems with that?

[tatewise]

The 'problem' with any Place name changes is NOT the Find & Replace but the consequential effect on Place Records.

In FH all Place Records MUST have a unique name.
So if the record Ashford, Kent exists and the record Ashford, Kent, England exists, they must be Merged.
Especially if there are any details in the Place Records such as Lat/Longitude, Media, Notes, etc.

Even running the Rearrange... Plugin may experience that problem if you have a mixture of the 'same' Place name with different separators. Its Help & Advice explains how to deal with that situation.

If you KNOW FOR CERTAIN that you simply want to change all instances of say Ashford, Kent to use the Ashford, Kent, England record and discard the Ashford, Kent record, then we could explore that. If there is no Ashford, Kent, England record then it is just a simple rename.

So you need to identify what details you have in your Place Records before hand and what the changes entail.

Even using your YorkshireX technique it may change YorkshireX into Yorkshire, EnglandX and then you would have to change EnglandX to England but it all still suffers the Place Record merging problems.

[Gowermick]

Mike,
I have been working on this this afternoon, and have come up with a strategy that works:
Remove England everywhere, so I'm starting with a known position, then add ,<space>England to every English place.

Steps are:
1. Find & Replace ,England with <blank>
2. Find and Replace ,<space>England with <blank>
3. Remove all places with 0 links, by merging them all with any place, using work with data Places
4. For each county, find and replace County with County,<space>England

Bit clunky, but better than editing 1000's places by hand, more importantly it seems to work ok

i.e. From the counties I've done so far, every English place now has ,<space>England, and none have ,England or no country at all.

[tatewise]

Since you probably have little if any data in Place Records, then that is a neat solution.
I think it demonstrates the usefulness of Tools > Work with Data.

[Gowermick]

Mike,
Depends on your idea of little, but I have just checked and I have 4250 place records, far too many to consider editing by hand.

Correction, that was highest Record_ID, but as the record ID's are not re-used, that figure was too high, and file statistics show I have 2010 places

[davidm_uk]

@Gowermick
In the other thread on sorting place names you commented:

"David's scheme though, is not the usually recommended way of using places, as he includes Addresses in his Places data. Used the usual way, 3 columns would suffice for Places."

The only reason that I've adopted this approach is so that I can add media (photos) to places right down to address level, e.g. a photo of the house where my ancestors lived at Mead Cottage, 40, London Road, Woolcroft Green, Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England. Hence the 7 place fields.

I know that some others on here have done the same thing for this reason, I wasn't the first. I agree that it's a bit cumbersome and slow when adding places to new facts, and I usually have to resort to looking at the whole Place list and choosing either the correct one, or the nearest one (in matching terms) then selecting that and then modifying that in the fact entry to create the new place.

[Gowermick]

David,
I understand where you're coming from, and my comment was certainly not meant as a criticism, more an observation.
I have yet to add media to FH, so am not conversant with the problem you outlined.

From what you say though, it certainly makes hard work of data entry. One tip I can offer concerning addresses, is to enter them the continental way i.e. Street, then House Name/Number, that way all people in same street can be identified more readily, as their addresses will be alongside each other in the Address list. Whether this will help you entering addresses I'm not sure, but it certainly helps with Auto-Complete when entering addresses.

Using the address In your reply as an example, I would enter it as London Road,40,'Mead Cottage',Woolcroft Green, etc.etc.....

Mike L

[tatewise]

Mike L,
Whilst discussing options in the Address and Place, yet again (14220) thread, I have realised you can have <comma> only separators in Place (and Address) fields, and yet get <comma><space> separators in Narrative Reports.

The main point is that the {place} (and {address}) codes in Sentence Templates will automatically 'tidy' the field by removing redundant blank parts and replacing each separator with <comma><space>.

So you can have your <comma> separator cake and eat <comma><space> in Narrative Reports.

I am sorry if I have mislead you, and caused any unnecessary work.

I think a quick Find and Replace to change each <comma><space> into <comma> should work providing you restrict it to Places and Addresses only.

[Gowermick]

Mike,
I like your thinking, but the snag is that something, plugin or whatever, doesn't like just a comma, and insists on inserting the space anyway. I have never knowingly added these extra spaces, but they got there somehow.
Much as it pains me, I think I'll have to standardise on <comma><space>, so that rogue spaces don't creep back in at some future date.
The main problem was the inconsistency, so once I've removed that, it should be fine.
Mike L