* Testing Ancestral Sources v7.5.7

[NickWalker]

Updated this post to reflect release of 8th test version 7.5.7 on 29th October 2022. Changes in this version are below and links to downloads are at the bottom of this post.

I'm finally ready to begin the testing process for Ancestral Sources v7.5 and would appreciate help with this. The major change is a new facility to convert existing method 1 census source transcriptions created in the past, e.g. using Ancestral Sources, into rich-text versions and/or to change generic census sources into FH v7 Templated Sources. This is the area that I'd like some of you to experiment with if you could be so kind.

I've been using this to convert my own generic plain text census sources into generic rich text with great success. I'm embarrassed to admit that I have a large number of very poorly formatted census transcripts that I created many years before AS as well as hundreds created later with AS. The later entries which are well formatted each take just a matter of seconds to convert. Some of my earlier transcripts take a minute or two longer. There are various tools included which can help to speed up the process. Please do spend time reading the help guidance linked off the Census Source Conversion screen as this explains the range of tools available. You'll find the Census Source Convert link under the Tools menu in AS when in Census mode.

For example this conversion was instant (less than a second):

Source Convert - Instance.png (161.39 KiB) Viewed 2356 times

This version, despite the original not being formatted well and not even including titles, took around 1 minute for me to convert to the rich text version, including headings, formatting and hyper-linked individuals.

Source Convert - Complex.png (174.27 KiB) Viewed 2356 times

What's new in v7.5 (Beta Test)

• There is a new facility to help to convert census sources created by earlier versions of Ancestral Sources using plain source text into rich text. It can also be used to convert generic census sources into templated sources. This will only work for users of Family Historian 7 or later.
• When adding data to the census grid there is now a new toolbar and menu button that can be used to 'fill down' the data, in a similar way to Microsoft Excel. Simply highlight the first cell and then select down the column and click the fill down button and the data will be copied into each cell.
• When adding an image, on the Copy Image File dialogue there is an option for it to remember your response so that it doesn't show again for the current project. This setting can be 'turned off' in the new 'Project Settings' screen. This was requested by Colin McDonald
• Colin McDonald requested a 'Save & Close' button on the Image Viewer which has now been added. The image viewer is designed to be kept open while adding an image and to help with transcription, but this option may be useful to those who choose not to use the Image Viewer screen for this purpose.
• The source text setting 'Blank line after titles' can now also be used with rich text and not just plain autotext. This was requested by Colin McDonald.
• The 'Project Computer References' screen has now been replaced by a new 'Project Settings' screen which can be used to delete project specific settings more easily.
• I made a change to the main title in the autotext templates for baptisms after 1812 based on a suggestion from Richard Hyland.
• When adding a new child to parents, the surname wasn't suggested if the parent selected was female. DJY reported this on the FHUG forums and the name should now be suggested when the parents are selected on the add child dialogue.
• I fixed a problem introduced in v7.4.4 where scrollbars were not displayed on the main screen source text box.
• Corrected a spelling mistake in the 1950 USA census template.
• Fixed a minor problem reported by Richard Andrews where adding a witness and then changing the case of their name wasn't updated in the list box that displays the witnesses.
• Fixed an error that could occur when removing and then re-adding an individual to a census entry under certain circumstances. This was reported by David Cooper.

Changes in v7.5.1 (Beta Test)

• Conversion of plain text that used a Tab followed by | character as the column separator should be handled better now. Thanks to Brent Tapscott for pointing out this wasn't quite right.
• I added some additional functionality to the Source Conversion system so that it deals with with comma separated plain text tables in a more intelligent way. Thanks very much to Bill Henshaw for prompting me to do this.
• Fixed a serious error reported by John Morrison that caused repository information to not always be saved.
• Colin Spencer reported issues installing v7.5 on PlayOnMac. Not fixed yet - need more information
• Fixed a problem reported by Brent Tapscott where the {SOURCETYPE} keyword took it's value from the main form, rather than the census chosen on the source conversion form.
• David Cooper reported an issue with font scaling that caused the source filter panel to display incorrectly on the Source Conversion screen. This is now fixed.
• Removed the warning if the Fit button isn't pressed when saving on the Source Conversion screen. Recent changes I made just before release of v7.5 mean that Fit is used automatically at various times and so I agreed with Brent Tapscott's suggestion that it wasn't required anymore.
• If the last source in the list was converted on the Source Conversion screen and 'next source' was selected, it caused an error. This is now fixed. Thanks to Brent Tapscott for reporting this.

Changes in v7.5.2 (Beta Test)

• Quick fix for issue reported by Bill Henshaw with v7.5.1 that meant last character of line was missed off when using the new smarter comma separated plain text conversion.

Changes in v7.5.3 (Beta Test)

• When converting generic to templated sources, the template source auto-filled fields were not displaying correctly. Thanks to Colin Spencer for reporting this.
• Fixed another issue related to comma separated conversion reported by Bill Henshaw
• The default font and font size for rich-text sources was not being honoured on the Source Conversion screen. The default option for AS has always been to use the same default font size set in Family Historian and this will happen on this screen from now on. The default for Family Historian is Tahoma 10. This was inspired by a conversion with Pyrenees Pirate on the FHUG forums.
• Fixed some scaling/resizing issues related to the the rich text control.
• Fixed a typing mistake with a tooltip as reported by Neil Grantham
• Fixed an issue where the individuals were not recognised on the Source Convert form when there was only one source in the list of sources.
• Creating a hyperlink to individuals in source text will now be the default setting for new installations of AS.
• Updated the help guide and made some changes to the program to make it clear that the asterisked name column on the Census Source Conversion screen is only relevant if the option to create hyperlinks for individuals is set. The asterisk will now only appear if that setting is used.

Changes in v7.5.4 (Beta Test)

• Improved the detection of the census country on the Census Source convert screen. If there are multiple census countries with census records on the date specified then it will look to see if the country name appear in the place record as well as the source title (as it did already). If not it will now use the previous country that was used in the current conversion session. This was inspired by an issue reported by John Morrison when converting Isle of Man entries.
• Changed the default setting for the source title name to be generated by Family Historian rather than Ancestral Sources when using templated sources.
• Response was incorrectly spelt reponse on the image copy screen.

Changes in v7.5.5 (Beta Test)

• Added a new option for age columns in census templates to expect year and month of age to be specified. This option has been set for the 1921 England, Wales and Isle of Man census templates.
• Census sources converted to templated sources will now use the 'Templated Source Title Generation' setting to trigger Family Historian to generate the source title if this option is set.

Changes in v7.5.7 (Beta Test)

• Improved the way the 'keep focus' works so it can focus on an individual who isn't added to an entry.
• The image viewer will now hide the side panel if viewing an image that has already been added to this entry.
• If the image thumbnails or 'Add/View Images' are clicked on the main form when the image viewer is minimized, it will now be opened.
• Minimizing the image viewer now turns off 'Always on Top' to avoid some potential issues.
• Corrected a problem that can lead to the reload message box not being visible if the image viewer is set to 'always on top'.
• If the reload message box appears when maximising a minimised main screen, the main screen will now open rather than staying minimised.
• Added a new 'Fit to image width' button to the Image Viewer and changed the increments for the zoom drop-down list.

The 64 bit version is available to test here: Ancestral Sources v7.5.7 64 Bit
The 32 bit version is available to test here: Ancestral Sources v7.5.7 32 Bit

Please report in this thread any issues you spot or email me (nick at ancestralsources dot com).

[Valkrider]

Nick

Just FYI neither the 64bit or 32bit will run in the current version of PlayOnMac. The 64bit says it is not running on a 64bit processor and will not install. The 32bit installs but crashes on running.

[jbtapscott]

Nick - I've downloaded 7.5 and have started "playing" with the convert option as I have some 600+ non rich text Census entries. Obviously, a long way to go testing wise, but one observation so far (and this may just need emphasis in the Help or possibly a code change):

I opened AS as normal and it remembered the last Census entry I made - a 1939 UK Register entry, so "Register" was the {SourceType}. I then selected the new "Census Source Convert" option, with new screen successfully opening. Using the filter Options, I was able to populate the dropdown list with details of the 600+ Source records that met the "plain text source text" criteria, and was able to select the first one to get the details in the panels / tabs below. All okay so far.

I selected the "Default" Auto Text option and the Rich Text Version tab showed the modified grid (at this stage I hadn't tried using any of the text formatting options). The "new" grid looked great, with everything where I expected BUT - the first line was "Register England 1871" rather than "Census England 1871" - in effect, the {SourceType} from AS had been carried through.

This may be something that just needs highlighting in the Help as I suspect you have no other way of setting the {SourceType} value to match the underlying Source record that is being converted.

[NickWalker]

Hi Brent.

I selected the "Default" Auto Text option and the Rich Text Version tab showed the modified grid (at this stage I hadn't tried using any of the text formatting options). The "new" grid looked great, with everything where I expected BUT - the first line was "Register England 1871" rather than "Census England 1871" - in effect, the {SourceType} from AS had been carried through.

I think that's just a bug and can be easily fixed in the next test version. Thanks for letting me know.

Nick

[NickWalker]

Nick

Just FYI neither the 64bit or 32bit will run in the current version of PlayOnMac. The 64bit says it is not running on a 64bit processor and will not install. The 32bit installs but crashes on running.

That's very strange. I'll investigate!

[David2416]

Hi Nick,

Have just downloaded to have a look around. The top left hand of the Source Convert Screen is not fully displaying as shown in the attached screenshot.

Source Convert Screenshot 2022-10-04 083911.jpg

edited to add: the top horizontal movement bar is not working, the vertical and other low horizontal bar both work.

Display resolution is Scale 100% (recommended) and 1920x1080(recommended)

It picked up the two 1831 Census entries that were not already rich text.

Regards David

[NickWalker]

Have just downloaded to have a look around. The top left hand of the Source Convert Screen is not fully displaying as shown in the attached screenshot.

Thanks David. Scaling issues cause so many issues! I have run this on two computers at different scaling and it has worked perfectly. I'll have a look at this. I've just had a thought as to the area I might need to look at: what do you have as the font and font size in Tools->Customise?

[David2416]

Just changed to Arial 10 and that has resolved!? But not the movement bar issue.

[NickWalker]

Just changed to Arial 10 and that has resolved!? But not the movement bar issue.

I think the default is size 8 Tahoma, but this will help me to investigate when I get home later.

Thanks

Nick

[jbtapscott]

I have worked my way through 20+ 1939 Register records and whilst most have successfully converted, I have found that those with the vertical bar as the column separator (which I used for a short while as an option setting within AS) do not. In essence, the bar is being treated as a column value rather than as the divider, although for the Header row conversion is okay.

Original Source Text:

Screenshot 2022-10-04 185020.jpg (16.37 KiB) Viewed 2180 times

Rich Text Version:

Screenshot 2022-10-04 185609.jpg (23.29 KiB) Viewed 2180 times

[ChrisRead]

Oh, I so wish I had this feature back in Nov/Dec 2021 when FH7 came out. I used AS to re-enter 10's of plaintext census' to generate Source Texts in RichText, and also re-did loads of parish register entries (to my own neater looking AutoText Templates). I now don't have any old plaintext census ones left to do, so can't really join in with this testing.

Carry on the good work Nick.

[jbtapscott]

Minor display issue / comment: When first opening the Source Convert window, setting and applying the filter and then selecting a Source record, the left-most column Name is spread across multiple lines. This does not affect the actual conversion process and, on displaying the next record, the name(s) are displayed on a single line:

Screenshot 2022-10-04 200043.jpg (28.81 KiB) Viewed 2153 times

[NickWalker]

I have worked my way through 20+ 1939 Register records and whilst most have successfully converted, I have found that those with the vertical bar as the column separator (which I used for a short while as an option setting within AS) do not. In essence, the bar is being treated as a column value rather than as the divider, although for the Header row conversion is okay.

Thanks again Brent. What I think is actually happening is that you have a tab followed by a | to represent a column break and AS is effectively treating that as two column breaks. I've now made a change so that In the next version this should work better.

Cheers

Nick

[NickWalker]

Just changed to Arial 10 and that has resolved!? But not the movement bar issue.

Hi David

I think the display issue is fixed in the next version. The top horizontal bar isn't a moveable bar. The height of the top panel is controlled by the up/down button and automatically when it reduces the panel size following selection of a source.

Thanks

Nick

[johnmorrisoniom]

Entering a census or marriage entry (The only ones I have tried so far).
Fill all the details in
Select repository and choose one to use
Add/View images and add a new image and save
When I go to save the source I get an error about no repository chosen.
If I choose OK, the source is saved without a repository
Click Cancel and re-choose the repository, save the performs OK
( I did once get an instance where choosing an image cleared the repository field)

If I choose image first and then repository there is no problem

[BillH]

Nick,

If the census template has a column heading defined which has a comma in it, then the grid created by the conversion ends up with two columns instead one. All the data in the columns after that point for all individuals in the grid ends up in the wrong column. For example, in the 1910 USA census template I have a column short title of "Industry, business or establishment". This ends up being two columns "Industry" and "Business or establishment". In the example below, the value "store" is the correct value for this column. The value "Emp" should be in the Employ Status column.

template definition.jpg (149.79 KiB) Viewed 2083 times

grid created by conversion.jpg (134.57 KiB) Viewed 2083 times

Bill

[NickWalker]

If the census template has a column heading defined which has a comma in it, then the grid created by the conversion ends up with two columns instead one. All the data in the columns after that point for all individuals in the grid ends up in the wrong column. For example, in the 1910 USA census template I have a column short title of "Industry, business or establishment". This ends up being two columns "Industry" and "Business or establishment". In the example below, the value "store" is the correct value for this column. The value "Emp" should be in the Employ Status column.

Hi Bill

AS converts your source text - the source conversion process doesn't look at your census template to carry out the conversion. If you've used commas as your column separators then this kind of result is expected as AS isn't going to be able to distinguish which commas are used to separate columns and which are part of the title. That's one of the reasons why there are various tools to quickly move data around in the grid. Can you paste in (or paste in a screenshot) of the plain text source text?

[BillH]

Nick,

Here is my source text:

Name,Relationship,Sex,Color,Age,Marital Condition,Years married,Children Born,Children Living,Birthplace,Father Birthplace,Mother Birthplace,Year of immigration,Naturalization,Speak English,Occupation,Industry, business or establishment,Employ Status,Unemployed,Weeks unemployed,Can read,Can write,Attended school,Ownership of Home,Mortgage,Farm or house,Number of farm schedule,Military survivor,Blind?,Deaf and Dumb?
Andrew John Ajer,Head,M,W,47,M,22,,,Norway,Norway,Norway,1881,NA,English,retail merchant,store,Emp,,,yes,yes,,R,,H,5,,,
Ingeborg Anna Ajer,Wife,F,W,41,M,22,8,8,Wisconsin,Norway,Norway,,,English,none,,,,,yes,yes,,,,,,,,
Julius Sewell Ajer,Son,M,W,21,S,,,,Wisconsin,Norway,Wisconsin,,,English,none,,,,,yes,yes,no,,,,,,,
Norman A Ajer,Son,M,W,19,S,,,,Wisconsin,Norway,Wisconsin,,,English,none,,,,,yes,yes,yes,,,,,,,
Edwin Carl Ajer,Son,M,W,17,S,,,,Wisconsin,Norway,Wisconsin,,,English,none,,,,,yes,yes,yes,,,,,,,
Selma Julia Ajer,Daughter,F,W,14,S,,,,Wisconsin,Norway,Wisconsin,,,English,none,,,,,yes,yes,yes,,,,,,,
Agnes C Ajer,Daughter,F,W,11,S,,,,Wisconsin,Norway,Wisconsin,,,English,none,,,,,yes,yes,yes,,,,,,,
Ruth L Ajer,Daughter,F,W,9,S,,,,Wisconsin,Norway,Wisconsin,,,,none,,,,,,,yes,,,,,,,
Esther M Ajer,Daughter,F,W,7,S,,,,Wisconsin,Norway,Wisconsin,,,,none,,,,,,,yes,,,,,,,
Oliver Ajer,Son,M,W,4,S,,,,Wisconsin,Norway,Wisconsin,,,,none,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

I am using comma separators in the Text from Src field for my old census entries. It is probably hard to distinguish between the column separators and the commas in a column heading. Maybe it could be done based on whether or not there is a space following the comma. There is no space before or after a comma which is a column separator, but there will be a space after a comma in a column heading.

For example:

Occupation,Industry, business or establishment,Employ Status,

"Occupation is one column",
"Industry, business or establishment" is one column, and
"Employ Status" is one column

Bill

[NickWalker]

Hi Bill

As I said, this kind of thing is to be expected. If we had all used perfect column separators then the conversions would all take less than a second each. Commas in place names cause even more problems. A lot of my entries use tabs or | characters and these are easier to convert but I have some with commas too. I will have another think about how it could be improved for your scenario but I don't think there is a perfect solution to this.

[BillH]

Hi Nick,

I guess if there isn't an easy way to key off the fact that there is not a space after a comma column separator, but there would be one after a comma in a heading title, then I would probably have to consider just continuing the way I have been without using the grids. I have about 500 or 600 censuses that would have to be manually edited to fix the columns and I don't think I would want to take up that task.

I think the same idea might work for place names which have commas which you mentioned.

If it can't be done in AS, I wonder if I could find a way to edit my text from source for my census sources and replace any commas that have a non-space character before and after them with another separator character which could be converted more easily.

Don't worry about it too much, as I say I can just continue using plain text. I am perfectly happy doing that.

I don't know how many other people used comma separators, but they will run into this same issue if they use the USA, Norway, and potentially other censuses as well.

Thanks,
Bill

[NickWalker]

I will give it some thought and it may be that the comma followed by space is enough of a differentiator for me to use this. I had always envisaged this testing period would include people flagging up their examples of source text that doesn't convert well so that I could work on improving the process.

[BillH]

I had always envisaged this testing period would include people flagging up their examples of source text that doesn't convert well so that I could work on improving the process.

NIck,

Was there something else I should have posted? I posted the text from source field that I was having issues with.

Bill

[NickWalker]

No, your plain source text was enough thanks

[jbtapscott]

Error Message displayed:

Screenshot 2022-10-05 121051.jpg (27.33 KiB) Viewed 1971 times

This came about when converting 1939 Register sources. I had two filters in place: Title Contains "Register" and Title Does Not Contain "Electoral". Having worked through all records, I processed the last record and hit the Save button - error message was displayed. This final Source record was updated in FH with the changes that I had made.

[NickWalker]

Thanks Brent. I'll look at this error later - I've made a note of the error details so have removed the attachment from your post. I wonder if this error is simply because it's trying to move on to the next source to convert, but there aren't any. I don't think I ever tested that scenario as I have 100s left to convert!