Family Historian User Group

Hi everyone

I’m having a few issues with random spaces appearing (and occasionally not appearing) in text generated by my custom source definition templates.

here's the footnote definition:

Deaths index (CR) Australia. <{town}, >South Australia. {date}. {name}. <Registration district: {Registration_district}. ><Registration number: {Registration_number}. ><{Volume_book_etc}. >Collection: South Australia Deaths Index 1842-1928. <u>www.findmypast.com.au</u> : accessed {accessed}.

Here’s the output:

Deaths index (CR) Australia. Buckingham, South Australia. 17 May 1898. JONES, Lydia. Registration district: Wellington. Registration number: 252/275. Collection: South Australia Deaths Index 1842 - 1928.www. findmypast. com. au: accessed 2 February 2022.

There are random spaces in the URL, and in the year range; 1842-1928 (it becomes 1842 – 1928). I can’t get a space to appear between the URL and the colon, nor between ‘…1928.’ and the URL despite them appearing in the template. Any thoughts?

Thanks
Wayne

Hi Wayne, I've removed your v7 references from your posting.

I can reproduce those symptoms and have a solution for them.

The hyphen (-) and dot (.) characters have a special significance and result in the spacing you have noticed.
To inhibit that effect, put an escape backslash (\) in front of each one.
See FH Help page Source Template Formats under The Escape Character and Special-Handling for Top-Level Text.

The Style Codes such as <u> & </u> or <i> & </i> appear to remove spaces adjacent to the codes.
That can be fixed by putting an escape backslash (\) in front of each space but should not be needed.

So the Footnote Format template code below fixes the layout problems:
South Australia Deaths Index 1842\-1928.\ <u>www\.findmypast\.com\.au</u>\ : accessed {accessed}.

However, the Style Codes removal of spaces should be reported to CP via http://www.calico-pie.com/osticket/open.php.

Hi Mike

Firstly, tanks for tidying up the potential confusion in my post. Most importantly, thanks for your quick and knowledgeable reply (as usual)! Thanks for pointing out the issues around the hyphen and full stop characters, and I'll lodge the support ticket with Calico Pie around the other issue later today.

Cheers
Wayne

I have a similar issue regarding spacing in source template definitions (which I must say in general are actually quite frustrating to understand and revise quickly on the fly!).

I am trying to write a source template definition wherein I can have two fields - one for the root URL of a website (eg, www.familysearch.org) which remains with the source record, and then a second field for the citation which contains the specific URL identifier for the record I'm citing (eg, /ark:/61903/1:1:J8L5-WPD).

However, I'm only getting one of two results when creating a source/citation using the template definition, either:

• there is a space between the URL root and identifier (rendering the complete URL invalid); or

• by putting an escaping backslash between the two fields (which are {URL} and {URL_Identifier}), but this simply prints the name of the second field.

Is there a way to achieve what I want here? Apologies if I'm not being clear!

It seems that Footnote Format metafield codes are unconditionally separated by a space character.

The workaround that I have found uses the =Text(...) concatenation function:
{=Text( %SOUR.~UL-URL% . %CUR~CITN.~UL-URL_IDENTIFIER% )}

That employs the data reference shortcut technique to refer to the metafields.

However, the introduction of a space separator could be reported to CP via http://www.calico-pie.com/osticket/open.php.

It seems reasonable that the Footnote Format should be followed explicitly with any actual space characters preserved, but none should be inserted where there are none.

Writing from a pre V7 perspective ...

I have never thought of:
a full URL (https;//www.fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=124851#p124850) as being
source (https;//www.fhug.org.uk/forum/) plus separate
specific citation (viewtopic.php?p=124851#p124850)
- following the source is
book (Edmonds, 1923, The Borsetshire Regiment in WW1, Nib & Canon, London),
citation is page (Edmunds, p45)
format that as a lumper seems most natural to me.

However my "full" citation is not "(p45)", but "(Edmunds, p45)". Your split of the URL is a bit like trying to make "(p45)" on its own the "citation" - it still needs the link to the source. In academic book citation that is often given by stating the author in the citation (Edmunds, p45), unless they authored more than one source, when you include the year of publication (Edmunds 1923, p45) to give a specific link to the list of references (with 1923a, 1923b etc. if the author was very prolific!).

I would never make "(p45)" a citation on its own, so why would you make "URL identifier" a citation on its own? (Or have I "over read" your post?) It needs the pointer back to the source.

So (/viewtopic.php?p=124851#p124850) fails as a citation - and is not very human readable or on its own usable, whilst (https://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/, viewtopic.php?p=124851#p124850) would not "fail" on grounds of specificity - it still remains not very human readable. But then for URL citations why put in the comma and the space - and break the full link - which is surely the only way a reader is going to use it?

(Family Historian User Group Forum, Topic 124851 Posting 124850) "works" as a citation (source pointer, Where within) but in these days of "internet savvy" readers, I think there is a place for the full URL in the citation - possibly as a hyper link on (Family Historian User Group Forum, Topic 124851 Posting 124850)?

sbell95 wrote: ↑

11 May 2022 08:25

... I am trying to write a source template definition wherein I can have two fields - one for the root URL of a website (eg, www.familysearch.org) which remains with the source record, and then a second field for the citation which contains the specific URL identifier for the record I'm citing (eg, /ark:/61903/1:1:J8L5-WPD). ...

My concern about that proposed format is less about its style than about its robustness. I retain a healthy scepticism about the ability of organisations like FamilySearch to keep ARK type etc URLs as permanent as they would like to claim. (Apologies to those who understand this already but URLs containing ARK are supposed to be permanent, and to always point towards the page in question, whereas most other URLs are at risk of failing at some point sooner or later. Often sooner...)

It seems to me that an ARK URL on FamilySearch etc is going to be more robust if the whole URL is quoted, whereas just using the part after .org is less robust because if the bit after .org depends on the bit before, then things might go awry if you alter the URL for the bit before.

I can't describe an exact failure mode because this is just me working from the instincts developed in supporting IT systems over my career. But, if it was me, I'd have www.familysearch.org in the Source Record and the full www.familysearch.org./ark:/61903/1:1:J8L5-WPD in the citation bit.

AdrianBruce wrote: ↑

11 May 2022 10:22

I retain a healthy scepticism about the ability of organisations like FamilySearch to keep ARK type etc URLs as permanent as they would like to claim.

Well, I think you're right to be sceptical about it, but in fairness to Family Search, they don't promise it will be permanent. They state: "A persistent identifier is an identifier that is intended to be long-lived", and later, "While FamilySearch commits to maintaining the identifier, there are no promises made about the state of the resource. Clients accessing the resource using the persistent identifier may find that the resource has been moved, deleted or restricted." (Source: https://www.familysearch.org/developers ... dentifiers)

Interesting though it is, I think this discussion is diverging from the problem being investigated.
The problem is the space being forcibly inserted between adjacent metafields in the Format expressions.
It is largely irrelevant that the example happens to use two component metafields of a URL.
The problem afflicts any types of metafield. I've 'improved' the Subject to reflect the topic better.

Thanks for your solution @tatewise, and everyone else's thoughts.

URL semantics aside, the only reason I had thought to split it in this fashion is that the resulting footnote/short footnote/bibliography entry is all that is going to be seen in the end (as opposed to my fields in each source record). But I take the point that it is probably safest to keep a whole URL together and not split it into its host and path components. And that also resolves my issue with source template definition spacing (in this instance, anyway!).

Hopefully not continuing down this tangent too far... but is there a FH7 style/other code to apply URL formatting in source templates? I am loath to use <u> tags, but that may be the only solution if hyperlink/<a> tags aren't available?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by URL formatting and where you want it to appear.
Since you mention the HTML <a> anchor tag, I guess you want it to become an active hyperlink.
Then it would have an underline and coloured depending on whether the cursor hovers over it, etc.

These formatted Citation texts appear in Reports, so is that where you want the clickable hyperlinks?
Why would you want them in the FH Report displays?
Perhaps you are printing to PDF, in which case the URL will usually become hyperlinks automatically.

I have a Citation level Field in many of my templates called Credit Line where I enter the source of the source in database, this portion of the template reads ; citing {Credit Line}. In most instances this works great, but I have an instance where a portion of the entry in the field should be italicized. I looked through the help and KB and the both provide info on applying style codes to the entire field, but I did not see anything on using the codes on just a potion of the field.
I would like it to read
; citing Social Security Death Index, Master File, Social Security Administration, Washington, D.C.
I entered the field as <i>Social Security Death Index, Master File<i/>, Social Security Administration, Washington, D.C and the <i> and <i/> operators showed up in the sentence. I also tried <<i>Social Security Death Index, Mast File<i/>> and the same thing happened.
Is there a way to italicize inside the field itself?

sbell95 wrote: ↑

11 May 2022 08:25

I am trying to write a source template definition wherein I can have two fields - one for the root URL of a website (eg, www.familysearch.org) which remains with the source record, and then a second field for the citation which contains the specific URL identifier for the record I'm citing (eg, /ark:/61903/1:1:J8L5-WPD).

Is this what you are looking for: There is a missing . in the above - finger slipped on the mouse.

For Mike and interested parties:
The important bit is the outer pairing <...> i.e. not just in the specific concatenation:
<... Your Fields ...>
This will remove the spaces wherever they occur in your template statement.
Dave

@Curtis: No, it is not possible to apply formatting such as italics to a portion of a field.

@Dave: That is a neat trick using < chevrons > to remove the space between fields.
However, only one set of chevrons is needed, i.e. <{URL}{URL_Identifier}>
Also, it does not resolve any of the other issues involving dot, hyphen, and space characters.

Thanks Mike,