* Map Life Facts substitute place?

[BEJ]

Please direct me to explanation of how to designate substitute places in Map Life Facts.

I have looked in the following sources without success:
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=6131&p=26685#p26685
https://pluginstore.family-historian.co ... -plots-tab

[Ron Melby]

https://pluginstore.family-historian.co ... -plots-tab

when you see this screen, go into the places field and get the list (first 4 letters, hit the plus go to the one you want to substitute) then in the substitute field, type away. done.

[BEJ]

Thanks for the response. So do I understand correctly that the substitute place cannot be selected from existing places, but must be entered (typed) manually? That doesn't seem right.

Attached is an example--I wish to assign a substitute place to Skarborg, , Sweden.

Screenshot 2021-04-04 14.53.11.png (310.06 KiB) Viewed 5370 times

[AdrianBruce]

... So do I understand correctly that the substitute place cannot be selected from existing places, but must be entered (typed) manually? That doesn't seem right. ...

That is how it works - you need to enter it manually.

My interpretation of the expected usage is

• A user finds that the place does not map accurately (e.g. because the place name is "Albert Park, Melbourne, Victoria Colony" and this maps to the Victoria in British Columbia, say);
• Realises (or hopes) that it would map correctly with the current name;
• Enters a Substitute, aka Standardized, version set to the current name (e.g. "Albert Park, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia");
• Maps that successfully.

In many such cases, there won't be an existing place to act as a substitute / standardised version, so you need to be able to enter it manually. Note that the substitute / standardised version can be accessed in the Place Record, accessed from the Places tab. It's labelled Standardized there in my v6 software - not sure what it is in v7, but they are the same thing.

[Ron Melby]

yes, OP it has to be done manually.

French, USA
what would be an intelligent auto replace algorithm? I assume the place you have does not map correctly, in which case, you need a correct mapping. I will repeat this because it bears repeating, my addresses and places are paired and have to pass sanity checks. if the address place is London it has to be within slightly less than 25 miles from each other. AND if that is the case, I see if I can reduce it to Limehouse, Marleybone etc to get it closer. While I suppose one could compute Damerau–Levenshtein distances between what you have and what is possible, the gazetter needed for MLF (Map Life Facts) would bring down the internet, it also would be considerable processor and time to do MLF. But first question, how do he know it is wrong? if Google maps gives a lati-long, such an undertaking is indeterminate, after all, its more or less what you sent in. If there is no data returned, how do you tell what is incorrect? my place and address layout is considerably different than yours, you can quote me, so MLF knows numbers, characters, spaces, commas and quotes (not sure about naked []) and it lightly shines them up removes extraneous stuff and ships it, saying give me latitude and longitude of that, he dont know street, city, township/district, county, nation...nothing, he does not accept patterns as places and or addresses, and if he did, what would constitute a violation of the pattern, and assuming magic occurs, and the violation is presented, how would it automatically repair? The exceptions that can occur are myriad, and as I said, indeterminate such that there is no repair algorithm that could be delivered to the consumer who has less than a couple million dollar cray, and it wouldnt be coded in lua. If by your question (but I may be reading a great deal into it) you want to standardize places (and possibly addresses throughout your files, that is a different undertaking and includes such things as work with data places, work with data addresses, doing some merging, a couple other plugins, one of which is rearrange address place parts.

btw here is french, mn, usa https://www.google.com/maps/place/Frenc ... 96.2017287 (it doesnt REALLY exist, it is Fergus Falls, MN for all intents and purposes.

[Ron Melby]

so read up on historic place names, you want skaraborg to be vastra-gotland now in your replacement and if all your skaraborgs are exactly typed the same, it will fix all of them in MLF, but like Norway, you will be changing it every few years when they rearrange fylke (NO) Much like Englands municipalities.

[BEJ]

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I want to match Skarborg with Vastra Gotland, which is already a fh7 place record. Seems like it would be easiest to just select it from a list of existing places, rather than type it in each time. I understand that is not an option.

[Ron Melby]

it would seem that you only need do it once, if you have to do that more than once, for SkarAborg, SWE then you need to standardize your places and addresses first, whole lot less hassle in the long run (not short run), you can quote me.

I believe I have around 2600 separate and distinct 'places' in my file, seems like a lot of scrolling that way as well, I dont know if MikeTate has the will to make a list on the fly as you type module.

Vær så god

[BEJ]

Tak.

[AdrianBruce]

... Yes, I want to match Skarborg with Vastra Gotland, which is already a fh7 place record. ...

I guess we need to think what you mean by "match" two places.

If you have a place-record for Skarborg and a place-record for Vastra Gotland, it is possible to merge the two so that all instances of the place-name Skarborg are replaced by Vastra Gotland. So all events and attributes that start out with Skarborg as their place-name will end up with Vastra Gotland as their place-name. This will not alter the text of any source-records - indeed, nor should it if we are looking at transcriptions. However, I don't know if that's what you actually mean by "match".

If, on the other hand, you want to keep both Skarborg and Vastra Gotland as place-names for events and attributes and effectively say that they are synonyms, then that's a different matter. Using one as the standardized name for the other, will ensure that the two end up with the same co-ordinates, as clearly you want. But the facility to use one as the standardized name for the other does, as we understand, require the manual typing (or copy and pasting) of the standardized name. I confess that this usage isn't one that occurred to me, since normally we're talking about matching the same place at different points in its history (e.g. standardizing "Widnes, Lancashire, England" with "Widnes, Cheshire, England") and there, the two places, if they are both already in, will be adjacent so it's it's just a copy and paste.

[tatewise]

Also, BEJ may not be aware that the Map Life Facts place names and mapping can be synchronised with the FH Project Place records. Then any changes to Place name, Standardized/Substitute name, or Lat/Longitude in either the Plugin or the Place records will be synchronised with the other.
In the Plugin see Set Preference Options tab, Location Plot Options tab, Database In: Place Records.
But heed the Help & Advice: "If Place Records are chosen, it is advisable in FH Tools > Preferences > Map Window to tick Block Refresh for Non-tentative Geocodes otherwise Defined plots can be easily upset when using FH Refresh Geocoding.

[BEJ]

If, on the other hand, you want to keep both Skarborg and Vastra Gotland as place-names for events and attributes and effectively say that they are synonyms, then that's a different matter. Using one as the standardized name for the other, will ensure that the two end up with the same co-ordinates, as clearly you want. But the facility to use one as the standardized name for the other does, as we understand, require the manual typing (or copy and pasting) of the standardized name. I confess that this usage isn't one that occurred to me, since normally we're talking about matching the same place at different points in its history (e.g. standardizing "Widnes, Lancashire, England" with "Widnes, Cheshire, England") and there, the two places, if they are both already in, will be adjacent so it's it's just a copy and paste.

Yes, place names for a given location change over time. In the example, an 1800s farm identified in Skäraborgs county would now be found in a place called Götalands county. So, I wish to use the two place names as synonyms. I wish to keep both for historical accuracy. It seems that if I geocode the farm location in Skäraborg, the typed entry for Götaland in the Substitute field would essentially be a reference note, rather than a hyperlinked, plotted geocoded location. Make sense?

[BEJ]

Also, BEJ may not be aware that the Map Life Facts place names and mapping can be synchronised with the FH Project Place records. Then any changes to Place name, Standardized/Substitute name, or Lat/Longitude in either the Plugin or the Place records will be synchronised with the other.

I do synchronize Map Life Facts with FH. That’s one of the beauties of MLF—the ability to use Google Maps/Geocoding with FH.

P.S. I have disabled addresses in Map Life Facts, so am only geocoding FH7 Place records.

[tatewise]

In order to synchronise MLF with FH Place records, the only viable option is to geocode Place names only.
If you try to geocode Address fields then synchronising with FH Place records is not an available option.

I think you have misunderstood the purpose of the MLF Substitute field.
It is synchronised with the FH Place record Standardized field and performs the same function.
If that field exists then its place name is actively used by the geocoder in both MLF and FH instead of the Place field.
It is NOT just an inactive reference note. If you want just a note then put that in the FH Note field.

For example, you could have two Place records:
1) Place: Götalands county
2) Place: Skäraborgs county & Standardized/Substitute: Götalands county
They would both be actively geocoded using the current Götalands county map location, but the two Place name markers will use the two different Place names.

[BEJ]

Thanks for the reply. Clearly I do not understand the purpose of Substitute/Standardized Place. And not for lack of searching for an explanation. I’ve reread the place chapter in Getting the Most from Family Historian 6, reread the Map Life Facts help sections, and searched the FH7 help files. All of those sources give some details on HOW to use Substitute/Standardized Place, but not WHY. For instance see the only FH help reference to the topic in the attached screenshot (https://www.family-historian.co.uk/help ... place.html)

What is the purpose of Substitute/Standardized Place?

[ColeValleyGirl]

You specify a standardized place for somewhere that doesn't geocode properly without one.

Failure to geocode may be because a place has changed names (and you've recorded an earlier name as stated in a source) or because your 'standard' for naming places doesn't match what the geocoding engine can cope with.

The same standardised place can be used for multiple places -- typically if the name or jurisdiction changed over time.

[tatewise]

What is it about the Standardized field description you posted that is not clear?

Auto-geocoding is normally based on the Place field. However, if the Standardized field is not blank, geocoding will be based on it instead.

It then goes on to explain why:

Some historical names may not be recognised, or may be incorrectly geocoded. In this situation, you can either simply specify the correct latitude and longitude yourself; or you can supply a modern, Standardized name which will be correctly geocoded.

i.e.
Skäraborgs county is a historical place name that may not be recognized by current modern place name geocoders.
So set the Standardized/Substitute field to the modern Götalands county name and it will be geocoded instead.

[AdrianBruce]

... Yes, place names for a given location change over time. In the example, an 1800s farm identified in Skäraborgs county would now be found in a place called Götalands county. So, I wish to use the two place names as synonyms. I wish to keep both for historical accuracy. It seems that if I geocode the farm location in Skäraborg, the typed entry for Götaland in the Substitute field would essentially be a reference note, rather than a hyperlinked, plotted geocoded location. Make sense?

Having both Skäraborg and Götaland as different place-names, for use at different times, makes perfect sense to me.

I just experimented with some names from FamilySearch's Standard Place names - I entered "Abberud, Beateberg, Skaraborg, Sweden" as a place-name in FH (FS claims this is a farm - I'm making no promises about the truth of that!)

MapLifeFacts will Geocode that happily as it stands (no Substitute needed) and it appears to code to somewhere on the map near Beateberg. (I tried entering "Skäraborg, Sweden" directly into Google Maps and it brings up "Västra Götaland County, Sweden" on the map anyway, suggesting that Google does a substitution itself.)

You can insert a Substitute of "Abberud, Beateberg, Västra Götaland, Sweden" (the whole thing) and it still appears to code to the same place. In this case, though, MapLifeFacts is actually geocoding the Substitute - it just happens to be in the same place as the original.

(I did insert a Substitute of just "Västra Götaland, Sweden" and that geocodes to the centre of Västra Götaland county, logically enough).

[AdrianBruce]

To pick up on a theme from above - we don't need to use a Substitute for "Abberud, Beateberg, Skaraborg, Sweden" because it geocodes perfectly well as it stands, thanks to the way Google maps work. (I have no idea, on second thoughts, whether there is behind-the-scenes substitution or whether there is only one Beateberg in Sweden...)

I might very well use a Substitute of "Abberud, Beateberg, Västra Götaland, Sweden" for that place-record as a defensive move in case Google acquires another Beateberg in Sweden in the future, but right now, it's not necessary.

Substitutes are not there to record history - that's what the place's notes in the Place-Record are for.

[BEJ]

Ah ha. Thanks for taking the time to experiment.

Having both Skäraborg and Götaland as different place-names, for use at different times, makes perfect sense to me.

Here's what I'm leaning towards. I want to record places that may have changed as they are presented in the historical record to avoid my misinterpreting a location. So, I will enter separate place names for each variation I find. This is somewhat contrary to your following advice.

Substitutes are not there to record history - that's what the place's notes in the Place-Record are for.

That way I can view all historical place names I've encountered in the Places Record List.

I manually check all long and lat coordinates so it's not a big deal to look at geocoding for each place. In fact, I may not use Substitute/Standardized place at all---I want to preserve the specific, individuality of each name. I will play around with this in the next few days and report back.

I will also then respond to @tatewise and @colevalleygirl, once I've had a chance to digest their responses above.

[AdrianBruce]

Yes, when I say that Substitutes are not there to record history, I mean that I wouldn't use them simply for that purpose. If you record place-names as they are at the time of the event (which is what I do and what you appear to want to do) then you may end up using Substitutes where the geocoding doesn't otherwise work. That would, of itself, suggest something about the history of the place in question, but that's almost an incidental. I'd be more likely to record the history explicitly elsewhere - for instance, in the Notes for the county place name (assuming that I had one).

You are wise to check what comes out of the Geocoding process. On at least one occasion I didn't and my Australian places in Victoria (which didn't have "Australia" in the name because it was pre1901) got coded as if they were Victoria in British Columbia.