* Map Life Facts for farms

[cwhermann]

Looking for help/direction on move from RM7 to FH7.
I have a number of ancestors who were farmers and the farms would be 10-15 miles from the nearest town. My entry for places is four element town,count, state, county and I have entered place details/address for the specific location of the farm. Since I already have them set up, I would like to continue with the strategy of keeping the addresses out of the place fields once I make the move to FH7 if possible. Ideally, I would like to map to polygons of the farm land I have been able to load/create into Google Earth and Google maps using .klm files.
I have reviewed the KB, "Working with Places and Addresses", the help page of the Map Life Facts plug-in and previous posts in this thread.
If I understand correctly - looking at the images from Ron Melby's 2016 post - I could create a source for each event I would like to map where I would enter the Longitude and Latitude for that specific event. The defaults in the Map Life Facts plugin can be set to look at these coordinates to plot.
Am I understanding this correctly? I am also not sure if each source is also citation (Type 1) or if I could create a master source with specific information entered at the citation level. Also where do I enter the coordinates - do I create fields for them as part of the source template or do I just add them to a source/citation note. If added to the note, is there a specific format I have to follow? I know I would have to get the coordinates from Google Maps which is not a huge issue since I have already plotted most of them anyway.
Thanks
Curt

[tatewise]

Curt, I have started a new thread for this as it is heading in a different direction from the existing Map Life Fact thread.

I am not sure your proposal would work as things stand.
The Map Life Facts plugin can use Source records to hold Lat/Long values in its own labelled Note field format.
Usually, the plugin creates them for the Places/Addresses that are chosen for geocoding.
You would have to take care not to geocode any others, as that would create even more Source records.
It would need some experimentation to see if manually created Source records in the correct format would work.

There are no Citations created by the Plugin so you would have to add those by hand.

I'm not sure what advantage would be gained by using the Plugin since you already know coordinates.
The main purpose of the Plugin is to auto-geocode the coordinates from each Place/Address.
It can also produce Google/Leaflet style maps with plots of places, but from your description that would only be for one farm at a time, otherwise all the other Place/Addresses would get geocoded too.

It might be better to rethink your use of Place and Address fields such that the Farm name is part of the Place field, so that coordinates are held in the Place records along with all the others and use the FH Map Window for all geocoding.

[cwhermann]

Thanks Mike,
Looks like I had it backwards, I thought Map Life Facts was a plug-in that would allow me to use the mapping feature to map at an address (or specific longitude/latitude) level if I provided the coordinates, not pull the coordinates into the FH7 for a specific location.

The address system I utilize is based on the Section-Township-Range system used in the US Public Lands Survey System. A typical entry in the address field would be "Smith family farm, S32-T24N-R5W, Adams County" Although this is enough unique information for an individual to locate (within a mile) the farm on a map, I don't think there are any Geocode providers that would recognize the address and pull in the coordinates.

Hopefully, the FH folks are working on a feature to provide mapping at the address level based on either a specific address or longitude/latitude coordinates.
Thanks again for your guidance.

[tatewise]

I doubt if CP are working on providing mapping or geocoding for the Address field.
That is why FH users who want that detail of mapping have an increased number of Place columns and do not use the Address field at all. (Some other products do not support the Address field so migrating to & from them is a consideration.)

It is not important for the Address details to be auto-geocoded, because manually entered Lat/Long coordinates work well and also dragging plots in the Map Window is also supported. Thereafter, such coordinates are handled the same as auto-generated coordinates. The crucial point is that only Place records support those coordinates. So if you want to plot Facts in a particular location on the Map Window then they must have a unique Place field name, which means the farm address must be in the Place field not the Address field.

[cwhermann]

I reviewed the Working with Places and Addresses and created another couple of trial projects to play around with using the place record only for mapping. First, I just took several farm locations and added all the info to the place field and then entered the Long/Lat info. They mapped fine. It appears to me that as long as I am inputting the Long/Lat fields manually, it does not matter what I actually enter for each element in the place field or what order I put the elements in, the mapping function will map to the Long/Lat fields I enter.
I also ran a trial where several place records had my entered Long/Lat and the balance of them were just place entries without any Geocode mapping. When I selected map all places, the program left my entries untouched, but mapped the remaining records. I would like to confirm if this was beginners luck or do I need to make sure certain settings are selected to repeat as new locations are added.

I already have my RM database set up as 4 elements in the place: Town, County, State/Province, Country and my place details or address field set up as: Description, Survey info, County for farm land and House#, Street for other addresses. The description more closely resembles a street name and the survey info more closely resembles a house #. If these were rearranged and entered into one field, it would be consistent with a typical address: House#, Street, Town, State, County, Country.

The county info is there twice because some times the farm location is near the Place, but in a different county. Nice information to have, but not necessary for mapping and therefore could be added to a place record note.

If I understand how the Rearrange Address and Place Parts plugin works, I could bring the info over as is and rearrange in in FH7. The plugin would allow me to eliminate address element 3, move address element 2 into place element 1, move address element 1 into place element 2, and shift all the existing place elements "to the right" by two elements or comma positions. Just like magic!! If it ever became desirable to return to separate place/address fields, the same plug-in could be used "in reverse".

Other than loosing use of qualifiers and dramatically increase the number of place records, are there any other disadvantages to this I am overlooking? I would like to be able to export to website down the road.

[tatewise]

That is an excellent summary.
To prevent manually entered coordinates from being accidentally auto-geocoded in the Map Window it is recommended that you use Tools > Preferences > Map Window and tick Block Refresh for Non-tentative Geocodes otherwise the Refresh Geocoding option will try to auto-geocode and upset the manual coordinates if applied to those Places. See the Help page for those Map Window settings.

The Rearrange Address and Place Parts plugin will perform exactly as you describe.
However, you would need to handle the farms separately from all the other addresses.
Initially, I suggest all Places are selected and move Address part 1 to Place part 1, and Address part 2 to Place part 2.
That will handle all the House#, Street cases correctly but farms will have Place parts 1 & 2 the wrong way round.
So, then you select just Place names with farms and move Place part 1 to Place part 2 and vice versa.

A drawback that some users don't like is that the auto-completion when filling Place fields is not very effective.
When the Place only holds Town, County, State, Country then when you start typing a Town the rest gets auto-completed.
But when the first part is a House# or Survey info then the auto-completion is almost useless.

The display of Place names in Diagrams and Reports is also impacted. Especially in Narrative Reports for the option to show only part 1 after the first time full Place name is used. So initially the full Place name is shown and thereafter just the House#. See Report > Options > Main tab Use Short Form for Repeated Place names.

[cwhermann]

Thanks Mike,
Working with Places and Addresses is one of the best articles I have seen on this issue. I don't know who has "editing power" for the knowledge base, but I think your last two paragraphs about the impact on the Auto Complete function and the impact of Reports and Diagrams would be great additions.

[tatewise]

You can suggest KB improvements via the Contact Form link on its top blue menu bar.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Changes are done to the KB.

[cwhermann]

Thanks Helen