Family Historian User Group

Hi,

Is it possible to organise the items in the Fast-add menu (for Facts) into an order which I prefer?
At the moment mine looks like this:


I'd like to order items 1Residence, 2Residence, 3Residence, 4Residence for starters.

Many thanks,

I suspect that they are arranged in order of normal time-frame, as defined in the fact definitons. Birth always seems to come first, death and burial at the end, census, occupation, residence etc somewhere in between. Within the facts which have a time frame of 'Life' (which will be most of them, and will include all your residence facts) it probably depends on the order in which you add them to the list. So try removing some of them and then adding them back in a different order.

That is a fascinating question, William.

After a little experimentation, it appears that the over-riding criterion that decides their order is their Normal Time Frame in the same order as the options appear in the drop-list, i.e. None first and Post-Death last.

Within the same Normal Time Frame, they are primarily grouped into Standard and Custom sets, and then sorted into alphanumeric order according to their Name within those two groups.
(i.e. the two groups are the Standard and Custom folder in the ProgramData settings folder.)

So, if your custom facts have the same Normal Time Frame, they should sort alphanumerically.
But I suspect 1Residence is Shortly After Birth, while 2Residence is Marriage, and the other two are Life.
If you change 1Residence to be Life then only 2Residence will be out of numerical order, unless you change that one to Life too. Then in the Facts tab they will all be listed in Date order.
Using Edit to change the Label of each fact does not help as the Name still determines the order.
The only other way I can think of to improve matters is to use the Change Any Fact Tag Plugin to rename those facts.

Thanks for your replies - I'm glad you think it's fascinating!
I shall investigate your thoughts properly tomorrow

My earlier suggestion about facts with the same time frame being displayed in the order in which they are added to the list was wrong (it was just a coincidence in the list I use). However I have two custom individual facts listed between standard individual facts, all with a time frame of Life, so I don't think Mike's theory about grouping standard facts before custom ones in the same time frame is universally true. It's odd.

I've now had time to consider this further - I've set all the time frames to Life....and the order hasn't changed.
It's not a huge issue - but my sense of order is offended! If anyone can think of a simple answer then that would be great, but it's not something to spend a lot of time on.

Thanks for your thoughts!

That is even more mysterious!

William, does the Name of each of those custom facts match their Label ?
It is their Name that determines their order on the Fast-Add Menu.
That is different from the Tools > Fact Types list that is in Label order.

I thought that the order of the Fact Sets might play a part, but it seems not.

The only explanation I could discover for facts not being in alphanumeric order within the same Normal Time Frame was the Standard versus Custom grouping but appears to be more devious than that.
Lorna can you post a screenshot or provide more details of the Standard fact that comes after Custom facts.

Have checked the names and labels and, no, they don't match up:
I've had the first two for a few years now and have only recently added numbers 3 & 4...I also wasn't happy with the descriptions I'd used and so adapted the labels to something more accurate.

Exploring further there is no alphanumeric sorting involved at all, and other criteria apply.
Within each Normal Time Frame the following criteria determine the Fast-Add Menu order.

1. Individual facts come before Family facts within each Normal Time Frame
2. Events come before Attributes within the two groups above
3. Standard fact set is followed by Custom fact sets in Fact Set precedence order (so I was partly correct)
4. Facts are listed in the order they appear within their fact set (.fhf) file

Lorna, that explains your Custom facts coming before a Standard fact assuming the Custom facts are Events and the Standard one is an Attribute.

William, to get your custom facts into alphabetical order will require their fact set file to be manually edited.
I can talk you through how to do that if necessary.

If you can that would be great - thanks!

OK, but after the England v Ireland rugby match.

Enjoy it!

I did

The file you need to edit is in the C:\ProgramData\Calico Pie\Family Historian\Fact Types\Custom\ folder.
If the Fact Set name is Custom then the file is Custom.fhf in that folder.
You will need to use a plain text editor such as Windows Notepad or WordPad but NOT a word-processor.

The file will start similar to this:
[.index]
Ver1=1
Ver2=0
Count=21
Item1=_ATTR-CERTIFICATES-IA
Item2=_ATTR-NOTES-IA
Item3=_ATTR-BIOGRAPHY-FA
Item4=EVEN-DEED_POLL-IE
Item5=EVEN-MARRIED-FE

where Count is the number of defined facts and each Item is in numerical order.
They identify _ATTRibutes & EVENts where the suffix -IA, -IE, -FA, -FE indicates Individual or Family Attribute or Event.
The rest of each identification label should be based on the Name of your custom facts (NOT their Label).

After the Item list, each fact definition block is in the same order as the list and will start with:
[FCT-_ATTR-CERTIFICATES-IA] where the label after [FCT- matches the Item identification label.

So you need to rearrange the order of the Item identification labels and the fact definition blocks.
Afterwards, the Item list must remain in numerical order, but the labels and blocks will be alphanumerical (or whatever order you require, bearing mind that for some of your facts the Name and Label are different).

BTW: There may be a few ROLE definitions outside their parent definition block lurking a the end of the file:
[FCT-_ATTR-REGNAL-IA-ROLE]
Roles=0
[FCT-EVEN-DEED_POLL-IE-ROLE]
Roles=0

Just leave them where they are, or if feeling brave, move them into the end of their appropriate definition block.

I suggest you make a backup copy of the .fhf file before you start just in case.
Perform the editing with FH closed.

Lorna, that explains your Custom facts coming before a Standard fact assuming the Custom facts are Events and the Standard one is an Attribute.

Yes, you are right! My list has standard events, followed by two custom events, then two standard attributes followed by a custom attribute, all within the 'Life' time frame.

Thanks very much, Mike...I got there after a couple of false-starts.
This Scot won't grudge England their victory this afternoon!