* AS {SOURCETYPE} tag usage question

[Gary_G]

Is the {SOURCETYPE} tag the only field that AS uses as a "live" configuration parameter?
Are there other fields that I should consider having in my "generic" template to correctly configure AS behaviour?
[I understand that I need to map the available AS tags to my other template tags if I want to have them populated.]

[NickWalker]

I'm not sure what you mean by "live configuration parameter". All of the keywords are 'read only'. If you have selected the marriage source type in AS, then the {SOURCETYPE} will be Marriage, etc. The only one that is slightly different is the census source type where the {SOURCETYPE} will reflect the value selected in the 'Type' drop-down so if you're just using the built in census templates this could be 'Census' or 'Register' or 'Electoral Register'. You could combine this with functions if you wanted these source types to be displayed differently. e.g. this would display 1939 Register rather than just 'Register'.

=IF[=EQUALS[{SOURCETYPE}%Register]%1939 Register%{SOURCETYPE}]

Reminder that the full list of keywords and functions are here: https://ancestral.fhug.org.uk/webhelp/h ... /hs200.htm

[Gary_G]

Nick;

Guess I'm not doing a great job of try to explain what I'm trying to understand. Let me describe it a different way...

My custom État Civil template looks at a {Source_Type} tag (type enum) to decide whether it is to generate a citation for a Birth, Marriage, Death record etc. It has the following enumerations; born|baptized|banns published|married|divorced|died|buried.

Based upon what you've said, all fields, including the AS {Source_Type}, are only written by AS. If so, then the AS configuration parameter area; Tools > Source > Source Identification, seems to need to be set so that it populates the AS {Source_Type} with a value that my template understands. That is; one must configure AS to map 5 values in the AS set, "Birth|Baptism|Marriage|Death|Burial", to the corresponding values in templates set. Do I understand this correctly?

[NickWalker]

No the {SourceType} value is generated by Ancestral Sources, that can't be changed so you would need to use nested formulas to achieve what you want.

This would display born, baptized, married, died, buried rather than Birth, Baptism, Marriage, Death, Burial

=IF[=EQUALS[{SOURCETYPE}%Birth]%born%=IF[=EQUALS[{SOURCETYPE}%Baptism]%baptized%=IF[=EQUALS[{SOURCETYPE}%Marriage]%married%=IF[=EQUALS[{SOURCETYPE}%Death]%died%=IF[=EQUALS[{SOURCETYPE}%Burial]%buried%=LOWER[{SOURCETYPE}]]]]]]

[Gary_G]

Nick;

Thank you. I see what you're doing. I'll copy the function in the AS template and that should do the correct mapping.

I was totally confused by the presence of the "Tools > Source > Source Identification" section in AS. What is it's intended purpose?

[NickWalker]

As the help says:

Source Identification: You can specify how Ancestral Sources should recognise sources in your file as being for a particular source type. This is used to identify relevant sources when using recording method 2 or when adding images to existing sources. You can specify rules for all source document types, i.e. census, baptism, etc. For example, by default sources are considered to be for census records if the source title includes the word Census or if the source type is Census. You can add to this filter list if necessary. For example if all your census sources have source type CensRec then you would select Source type is: from the list and then type CensRec into the box next to it and click Save. You can also remove filters from the list by selecting them and clicking on Delete. Most users should find that the default settings do not need to be changed. Note that if more than one filter applies then sources that match any of the criteria will be selected. e.g. by default sources that have the word 'census' in the title or are of type 'census' will be displayed when viewing sources for census records.

Someone using method 2 would be presented with a list of all their existing sources to select from, so the source identification attempts to filter that list. Method 2 only supports generic sources which have a Source Type and a Source Title both of which can be used by AS to try to filter the list of sources.

[Gary_G]

Now I see. Doh!

This Method 1 / Method 2 terminology is something unique to FH and something that still trips me up. If I understand correctly this is basically what I would refer to as Splitter vs. Lumper.

That's why I didn't get it earlier and thought the tag was being used as some sort of input/filter. It is, after a fashion, but not for what I thought it was for. From what I just read in the documentation, a Splitter (Method 1) doesn't need to worry about the AS options to which I referred.

Am I ever happy I decided to switch things over to Splitting. It seems much less complicated. A Lumper would have to be careful to set up his/her sources in a certain way so that the filtering capability of AS could sense the type and construct a source short-list to present for selection.

Thanks, Nick. I learn something new every day.

[NickWalker]

I got Family Historian for Christmas in 2003 and very quickly realised I needed to write a program to help me to create my census sources - I'd previously used Family Tree Maker and that had an inaccessible file structure - I was attracted to FH because I could manipulate the GEDCOM. When I then mentioned this program on this forum various people said they'd like to be able to use it so I made it public. Then some people said they liked to use what we'd now call 'lumper' sources so I added another mode to help those people out. I then came up with the descriptions of 'Method 1' (for the way I did it) and 'Method 2' for this alternative method. The word Lumper was first used on this forum over a decade later in 2017 (I just did a search to check) and until then method 1 and method 2 had been how they were always described in the FHUG. Lumper and Splitter are better terms for it, but I didn't have the imagination to come up with those words myself back in 2005