Family Historian User Group

Mike,

I read through the help for Map Life Facts, but I still am not sure I understand a couple of things.

Is Map Life Facts going to use the long/lat info from the Place Records in FH and then plot them on its map?

If I plot a location in Map Life Facts and it ends up with a different long/lat than what FH already has, will Map Life Facts actually update the Place Record in FH?

If I manually move a location in Map Life Facts, is Map Life Facts going to actually update the Place Record in FH?

I'm thinking that the answer to the last two question is NO and that the database that Map Life Facts uses is independent of FH, but just wanted to be sure.

Thanks,
Bill

Hi Bill.
The default Plugin settings keep its Locations database separate from the Place Records, and stored in the Project's Plugin Data folder as in previous versions.

In the Location Plot Options tab it is possible to set Locations From: Place Fields only and Database In: Place Records. Then the values in the Place Records are shared by both the Plugin and FH. So the answer to all your three questions is Yes.

To prevent FH accidentally upsetting the Plugin plotted values it is advisable to tick Block Refresh for Non-tentative Geocodes in Tools > Preferences > Map Window.

WARNING: I have discovered some mistakes in the Location Plot Options tab if you change Locations From, or use Restore Defaults, while Database In: Place Records is chosen. But if changed back to Database In: Plugin Data Folder all should be OK.

P.S.: As usual, while experimenting keep good Project GEDCOM Backups, remember to use Undo > Plugin Updates when necessary, and use the FH Sample Project to practice on.

Mike,

Actually, I like that it will share the Place Records with FH. I do have a follow up question though.

I currently use [Address]~Place. It seems like if I use Database In: Place Records I can only plot places. Is there a way to plot both addresses and places that I am overlooking?

Also, I changed the options to use Locations From: Place Fields only and Database In: Place Records and I got the following error when I clicked on the Geocode Location Plots tab. I wasn't sure if that was one of the issues you already knew about.
Thanks,
Bill

You can only plot Addresses & Places in the Plugin, just as in earlier versions.

When sharing FH Place Records it restricts you to Place plotting only, because there is nowhere to store the Addresses in the Place Records.

When I have sorted out the 'mistakes' you will be able to switch between the two modes but they will remain independent of each other.

The error message you posted is NOT one of the 'mistakes'. Can you give some details of what led up to it. Is it in a Project inherited from V5 in which the Map Life Facts Plugin had been run before, or perhaps in a Project that has no Plugin history, or what?

What I did was to use my main project from V5 in the last beta of V6. I then installed the V6 update over V5. The Map Life Facts plugin had been run in V5 prior to the upgrade. Interestingly, when I downloaded and installed version 3.3 of Map Life Facts, it didn't remember any of my previous plotting. It shows all locations as No Data. The Plotted, Manual, and Invalid totals are all 0.

At this point I'd be happy to clear eveything from the plugin's database and start over. For places I think I'll use Database In: Place Records anyway. If that is the easiest way to get things straightened out, let me know. To do that would I use Erase Addr ~ Place Database?

Bill

It looks like I have more testing to do than I anticipated.
The Plugin should have picked up where it left off in V5.

In future you will still be able to plot Addr ~ Place locations in maps/web pages created by the Plugin.
At the same time you will be able to plot in shared Place Records for Places only.
You will be able to switch between them using the Location Plot Options becasue they are held in separate parts of the Locations database.

I suggest you hold off any further main Project trials until I have resolved the current issues.
In the mean time you can experiment with the FH Sample Project.

I plan to withdraw the version in the Plugin Store and maybe post an updated version here for you to try after Christmas.

OK... will do.

Thanks,
Bill

I believe I have addressed the problems raised, and quicker than I expected, so there is an updated Version 3.4 in the Plugin Store.

Mike,

I downloaded and ran version 3.4. I first got rid of the files in the plugin data folder left over from FH 5. I wanted to start fresh. I changed the defaults to Locations From: Place Fields only and Database In: Place Records. I was a little confused by the following.

The plugin showed:

83 Plotted
2398 Manual
3 No Data
2484 Total

In FH I have:

83 marked as tentative
2398 marked as not tentative
2481 total (this total came from File>File Statistics... I didn't actually count them all)

So, I looked at the 3 marked No Data and they all had an extra space between two parts of the name. What I mean is that between the , and the County name there were two spaces instead of only one.

For all three there was also another entry in the plugin for the same place with the extra space removed. This led to the plugin showing 3 more places than I actually had in FH. Removing the extra spaces for all three places in FH and re-running the plugin removed the extra entries and reduced the No Data total to 0.

This was confusing. Is this something the plugin does intentionally? I would think it is best to not have two entries like this for the same place and to just leave it with the extra space so it matches FH. It plots fine in FH and I would think the plugin would plot fine as well. What do you think?

Thanks,
Bill

Mike,

I was testing a bit further with mapping for individuals and dropped down the list of individuals and the first 8 were very strange.
I looked at the record window in fh and these record id's are all for individuals that show as [unnamed person].
It would probably be better if the plugin could have an [unnamed person] entry with all 8 listed under it or something like that.

Thanks,
Bill

Thank you for your excellent feedback as usual Bill.

I have found where the Plugin is upsetting the space characters, and will fix that for the next version.

Likewise, the suggestion of using [unnamed person] is good, and I will try and fix that too.

Is "[unnamed person]" a generic title allocated by FH6 or is it something you have entered, BillH? If it is specific to your family then others may have used different identifiers. Would the suggested changes cope with all possible variants.

[unnamed person] is a generic message inserted by all versions of FH whenever there is no Name.

Might it be significant that for five of the eight [unnamed person] records, the Full Name column also shows "[unnamed person]"?

I don't think it will affect the Plugin, but it would be nice to know the difference between the two styles of Full Name entry.
In the Plugin the 3 with blank Full Name have nothing before the [RecId], whereas the other 5 have a comma.

Mike,

It looks like the difference is that the ones that show [unnamed person] in the Full Name field all have a Name with a source citation linked to it. The ones without do not. Here is a screen shot.
Bill

Yes, that explains it Bill.
The Names with the Source Citations are forced to retain the empty NAME field Tag and produce the name ", " with no forename and no surname separated by a comma & space.
The other Names lose their empty NAME field Tag altogether and produce the entirely blank name "" string.
I have tested that both work OK in my revised development Plugin, along with the multiple spaces in Place names, and some improvements in handling Unicode characters.

Try the attached Plugin V3.5, incorporating the fixes mentioned above, before I publish to Plugin Store.

Mike,

Looks good. Both the extra space issue and the unnamed person issue are fixed.

Thanks,
Bill

It should also make a better job of plotting Place names with accented Unicode letters.
I recall that some of your ancestors hail from Norway, so try some Norwegian accented letters.

I am now using Locations From: Place Fields only and Database In: Place Records as my default settings.

I've gone through all my places in FH on the map window and corrected them all to have the correct lat/long values except for a few places that I can't find anywhere. So... I didn't want to geocode anything in the plugin because I didn't want to upset all the work I've done in FH.

So, I thought I'd switch the options in the plugin to use Locations From: [Address] ~ Place and Database In: Plugin Data Folder. I thought then I could re-geocode some places in Norway without upsetting what I have in FH. When I changed the settings like this, I got the following popup window.
This scared me sufficiently to cancel out of making the changes. What exactly could be lost and where is it lost. What is in FH wouldn't be upset would it?

I have an unrelated question as well. What is the difference between Place Fields only and ~ Place only? Seems like they both will will plot every Place associated with any Fact.

Thanks,
Bill

Thanks Bill.
Yes, that warning is a hangover from when Source &/or Repository Records were the only form of FH records used.
I need to amend that in the case of Place Records that survive intact when switching options.
The exception is when opting into using Place Records, when Plugin Database plotted values will overwrite those in FH, as explained in the Help & Advice under the F.A.Q. for How can V6 Place Records be synchronised with Plugin Locations?.

The difference between Place Fields only and ~ Place only is also explained in the Help & Advice under the Options tab Location Plot Options.
Place Fields only values are held in a distinctly separate section of the Plugin Locations Database.
Address Fields only values are held in a similarly separate section.
All the Address ~ Place values, including ~ Place only, populate a single third separate section.
Thus it is not possible to associate just the ~ Place only subset of this third section with a different storage option.

It is even quite tricky to associate the Place Fields only section with Place Records whilst storing the other sections elsewhere.

You can migrate all the Place Fields only values to the Address ~ Place values section on the Database Management tab.
Might a reverse migration be of any interest?

P.S.
I think there is little risk in geocoding in the Plugin upsetting values in FH Place Records.
Presumably all your carefully crafted FH values are in non-Tentative records, which are Manual plots in the Plugin.
Even if you choose Plot All Locations there is an option to exclude all Manual plots.
If you choose Plot Some Locations then you select which type of plots to geocode, and each location must be confirmed beforehand.
Plot This Location does just that with the chosen location, and by entering various Substitute values, a whole variety of locations can be plotted and cleared at the end.
You could even create a Place Record not linked to your Place fields just for these experiments.

However, it would be wise to create a Small GEDCOM Backup beforehand, just in case!

Oops... sorry about that Mike. I should have read further. I read through the help, but I missed the FAQ.

Yes, all my FH values are in non-Tentative records and I do have the option set in FH to Block Refresh for Non-tentative Geocodes. If I understand correctly, if I were to try to geocode a place that is marked as Non-tentative in the plugin, the value won't actually get changed in FH. Is that correct? I haven't actually tried to do this yet. Haven't got to that point.

Yes, I did create a Small GEDCOM Backup before I started playing around.

So... I changed the options to use [Address] ~ Place and Plugin Data Folder. I then went to the Database Management Tab and clicked on Copy Place Database. I then went to the Geocode Location Plots tab and it shows the following:

80 Plotted
2189 Manual
943 No Data
3212 Total

If I switch back to Place Fields only and Place Records it shows:

82 Plotted
2399 Manual
0 No Data
2481 Total

A couple of things come to mind.

1. I told the plugin to copy the Place database, but in the resulting Address ~ Place database there are also addresses. Is that what is supposed to happen? I thought I had deleted the databases in the ProgramData folder a few days ago, but maybe I didn't get everything? Would these addresses be left over from a long time ago?
2. Why did the Plotted total drop from 82 to 80? This seems to imply that 2 tentative places became non-tentative.
3. I had 2399 places that had been plotted in FH and had lat/long values. Why did 210 of them get moved from Manual to No Data?
4. In FH I have 811 addresses and 2481 places for a total of 3292. It looks like only 3212 got copied to the Address ~ Place database. Again, are these leftover addresses?

Thanks,
Bill

No, your assumptions are wrong about non-Tentative/Manual plots.
As it says in the Help & Advice FAQ:
"Once merged, any changes via either ƒh Place Records or Plugin Place only Locations will be synchronised."
My P.S. was describing how many hurdles you must jump to geocode Manual plots by accident.

To answer your other points:

1. As soon as you select [Address] ~ Place, every Address & Place pair, even if the Address is blank, will be added to the Plugin database. That is how it always worked. They will all be No Data entries. If this did not happen, how could you geocode them?
2. I suspect this is to do with the double space characters in a couple of your Place fields. Just the Place Fields only section retains all space characters to synchronise with Place Records, whereas elsewhere they are pruned to single spaces. I will amend the Plugin to prune spaces when using Copy Place Database.
3. Effectively, the Place Fields only section is copied to ~ Place only values, not [Address] ~ Place. So I suspect 210 Place names always occur in conjunction with an Address field, and never on their own as ~ Place only values.
4. [Address] ~ Place values are not a sum of Address fields and Place fields. Let me give a very simple example. Let us say you have 6 Address values and 6 Place values, i.e. 12 in total. But in your database each Address is only paired with one Place, so there are only 6 Address ~ Place pairs. Thus, there will only be 6 Plugin locations listed, not 12. There is no particular relationship between the number of Addresses, number of Places, and the number of Address ~ Place pairs. It could be as low as the larger of the number of Addresses or Places. It could be nearly as high as the number of Addresses plus 1 times the number of Places plus 1, although that is unlikely.
5. To get a better idea of what is going on, use the ~ Place only option, and then Erase Addr ~ Place Database, before using Copy Place Database.