Family Historian User Group

One of the features I like about Gedcom Census is the function which reports '[name] was born in [year] (calculated) and in this census would be aged [age n or age n+1] (calculated)'.

It allows one to see at a glance whether or not the new census being entered matches up with previous records, or not.

I have recently started to experiment with the birth date calculator kindly linked to by Jo at http://www.ourscots.com. And I have discovered that once I enter into Family Historian a birth event with the year date range from the calculator, the Gedcom Census age estimator doesn't report the 'in this census would be [age]' anymore.

I tried using the up/down arrows in FH to move one of the plain year calculated dates into the top position, but that doesn't seem to work.

In an entirely unrelated issue, a forum topic came up a recently where people discussed how to enter records where the woman's maiden name is not known. I had experimented with a 'name' of firstname // married name, so I could record the name as it appears in the records while still indicating this was not her maiden surname, but that too seemed to confuse Gedcom Census and resulted in some strange displays in the CG 'all individuals' box.

The obvious solution seems to be to put the calculated full date range, or the name as it appears in the record, in a note, rather than making use of Family Historian's date range or adding a separate name line -- but I'd appreciate a couple of words from Nick on the best way to record the data that will make Gedcom Census happy, and suggestions from everyone else about how you record this data.

Thanks.

Jan


ID:2752

When I wrote the code to show an estimated age I didn't do the extra work required to be able to estimate based on a date range for a birth. I'd forgotten about this to be honest (I don't tend to use date ranges for births in my own tree). I'll have another look at how difficult this would be to add to the new version I hope to release very soon. I keep getting distracted and adding new things to it otherwise I would have already released it by now.

I'd not come across the concept of putting a name after the /surname/ part though I do note this is acceptable in the GEDCOM standard so I ought to allow it really. As you mentioned, GC doesn't display this properly at the moment. Again I'll look to fix this for the new release.

I really don't think you should base your recording methods around what will keep GC happy. Just nag me (nicely!) if GC doesn't do what its meant to

Personally if I don't know a surname I just leave the // blank but the alternative of putting the surname in brackets that some people use seems a reasonable way to do things, e.g Mary /(Bloggs)/

Best wishes

Nick

Greetings, Nick --

As you might guess, I don't usually make use of the date ranges in my own tree either -- but now that I know more about the rounding that went on with the 1841 census, I feel I should at least make note of that rather than calculate an age which could be as much as four years off.

Jane has mentioned certain features in FH about estimating when one has no firm date, but I haven't yet learned those.

And some of the difficulty I have with the way things work are problems with the GEDCOM standard itself, so FH and GC are not to blame.

I know a little bit about programming, but only enough to be dangerous, so I will not presume to say what GC should or should not do -- I have no idea if an idea which seems simple to me will cause you all sorts of unforseen problems (e.g. the age left completely blank in our previous discussion). Therefore -- barring those cases where GC leads me to expect it will act in a certain way, yet does something else, which might be an error condition you need to know about -- I prefer to leave it to you to say what GC should do.

Best,

Jan