* FH GEDCOM 5.5.1 compliance

Questions regarding use of any Version of Family Historian. Please ensure you have set your Version of Family Historian in your Profile. If your question fits in one of these subject-specific sub-forums, please ask it there.
User avatar
tatewise
Megastar
Posts: 27078
Joined: 25 May 2010 11:00
Family Historian: V7
Location: Torbay, Devon, UK
Contact:

Re: FH GEDCOM 5.5.1 compliance

Post by tatewise » 17 Mar 2022 10:29

GEDCOM Specification 7.0.1 promotes the FORM Format tag for Place and Media in a similar fashion and formalises extensions using the SCHMA Schema tag. It also extends the PLAC Place structure further.
IMO the sooner GEDCOM 7.0.1 is adopted and fully supported the better.
Mike Tate ~ researching the Tate and Scott family history ~ tatewise ancestry

User avatar
wildbill
Platinum
Posts: 34
Joined: 16 Nov 2021 18:16
Family Historian: V7

Re: FH GEDCOM 5.5.1 compliance

Post by wildbill » 17 Mar 2022 11:16

Regarding boundaries I discovered this geocode.txt file which ships with the program and appears to define that to some degree.

Questions now are how do FH utilize this file and can it be user edited to any additional benefit?

Image

User avatar
AdrianBruce
Megastar
Posts: 1961
Joined: 09 Aug 2003 21:02
Family Historian: V7
Location: South Cheshire
Contact:

Re: FH GEDCOM 5.5.1 compliance

Post by AdrianBruce » 17 Mar 2022 11:53

wildbill wrote:
17 Mar 2022 11:16
Regarding boundaries I discovered this geocode.txt file which ships with the program and appears to define that to some degree.

Questions now are how do FH utilize this file ...
If this is a file defining "geography" in some sense, as supplied by an outside "authority" (whether that's the software company or whatever), I would advise anyone to be very, very wary of such authority-produced stuff. It's great if the producers agree with you, or you know so little about that area that you are prepared to swallow the data uncritically. But otherwise?

I have experience of working with FamilySearch FamilyTree, which has a set of standardised place-names. The problem is where the place-name team followed paths that I don't agree with - for instance, all place-names in the UK from 1801 terminate in "country, United Kingdom". While I can cope with that, what I can't cope with is the inconsistency of then ignoring "Great Britain" from 1707 to 1800 and just terminating places with (say) "Scotland" up to 1800. Oh, and the counter-factual pandering to nationalists by ignoring the fact that Ireland was in the UK from 1801 to 1921.

It's actually rather sad because I have huge sympathy for anyone in the FS place-name team who tries to keep their data up-to-date - I doubt any of the current team are responsible for any of those decisions.

Basically, because of all these issues, I'm not sure that system based interfaces to geographical authority files are a sensible use of Calico Pie's time.
Adrian

Post Reply