Bug in 2.18? - Crash on unlinking spouse

mcws · Post by **mcws** » 21 Oct 2003 23:04

Having spent my first two hours as a newbie adding a large complicated branch from a manuscript, with a diagram open to monitor progress, I had to delete a link to a spouse. FH just disappeared without a message. Needless to say I had been so foolish as not to have saved the work as I progressed, and all I could get back was the .ged before my session!

The sequence was: Person Indiviual window was active; then from Menu bar I selected - Edit, Unlik from...; In the new window I Selected Spouse Family to unlink from; clicked OK; and FH disappeared. There was nothing untoward with the rest of the programmes I had open on my windows XP - usual things - email, word, IE etc. So I imagine it was not Bill Gates's responsibility.

The spouse was one prexisting in the file I had opened not a new one added during my editing. I was therefore able to easily repeat the immediate sequence of operations on the same record having started FH again and reopened the old file, this time the unlink proceeded without a crash.

I dont know how to get any more diagnostics. Is there any where I can look?

Apart from this disaster I found the data input really nice and convenient. Also I solved a genalogical problem I had with the family, so I am not too unhappy with my first serious exercise with FH.

P.S. I have just found autosave under Tools, Preferences, Miscellaneous. The default as installed seems to be off. Would it be better for newbies to ship with the default as on?

ID:146

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 22 Oct 2003 08:16

Never hear of this one before. One possibility could be that the original file you imported had a problem. I will bring Calicos attention to this one and see if they can shed any light on the problem. In the mean time can I suggest you download and run GEDCHK to see if the file did/does have any problems

http://www.familysearch.org/GEDCOM/gedcheck.zip
Details for this program can be found at
http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Home/FA ... gedcom.asp

mcws · Post by **mcws** » 22 Oct 2003 10:48

Thanks. I thought it might be a new one.

I cant get gedchk.exe to work. On entering various .ged file names, the programme window closes - I searched the computer but no new .txt file was generated with the results.

It is so many years since I had to use the DOS-like interface, I cant remember all the tricks to entering valid file locations. However, I tried a range of likely and less likely possibilities without success.

It is at this sort of point I usually reboot XP, but everything else is working fine.

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 22 Oct 2003 11:43

Just downloaded it myself.

Instructions for GEDCHK
extract the 3 files to a folder.
rename GED55.GMR.txt to GED55.GMR
copy the gedcoms you want to check to the same directory.

You should then be able to run the program for each file.

Hope this makes sense.

mcws · Post by **mcws** » 22 Oct 2003 12:13

Thanks a lot, Jane. I use Dos programmes so infrequently I had forgotten this.

2 errors which dont look to important to me. I can send the whole text file if you wish, but the relevant bit seems to be:
SYNTAX ERRORS:
(Invalid line syntax or {min:max} occurrence exceptions)

1 syntax error was found.
SUBM ADDR context of record (@U1@ SUBM) occurred < 1 (minimum)

VALUE FORMAT ERRORS:
(This version of GEDCHK does not check for any value format
errors, except for minimum name, sex, and submitter information)

1 value format error was found.
The NAME in submitter record (@U1@ SUBM) may not be complete.

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 22 Oct 2003 12:31

Thanks for checking. I don't think that will be the problem.

Might have to wait until I get a response from Calico, probably be a couple of days though.

Please can you keep a copy of your gedcom as it was when you were working on it.

Just remember to keep hitting the save button. I also use the backup option when I am doing a lot of entries, just to be sure. I have my backup directory on a different physical drive on the machine as I long ago gave up trusting hard drives.

Post by **SimonOrde** » 27 Oct 2003 15:10

Michael

The only way that I am aware of that F.H. can crash is if the GEDCOM file you opened is already corrupt in some way - which in practice means has some kind of invalid links. The next version of F.H., 2.2, due soon, will have a 'Validate' function that checks for this. If you don't mind sending me the GEDCOM file that crashed (to SimonOrde@family-historian.co.uk), I would be very happy to use the Validate function to check it for you in case that is the problem.

mcws · Post by **mcws** » 27 Oct 2003 18:01

I have sent you the .ged. Thanks for looking into it.

I should say that my initial experience with FH of adding 800 new people to my file was much more pleasant than on the previous two programmes I have tried - Brothers Keeper and Kith and Kin Pro. So I am very pleased with my decision to migrate. Thanks for developing a very fine programme.

Post by **SimonOrde** » 27 Oct 2003 18:03

Following my previous email, I spent some time trying to reproduce the problem and have succeeded. So please ignore the previous email, this is a definite bug in Family Historian. Apart from the case mentioned in my previous email where you are working on a corrupt GEDCOM file, this is now the only way that I know to crash F.H. To reproduce the bug, all you need to do is unlink a person from a spouse when there is a diagram open showing that spouse and the children by that spouse (the bug will not occur if there are no children). This will be fixed in 2.2. Meanwhile, the workaround is to make sure that you close any diagram windows before unlinking spouses.

My apologies to Michael and everyone else affected by this.

mcws · Post by **mcws** » 27 Oct 2003 18:07

Great! Those circumstances sound entirely consistent with what I observed. Naturally I feel chuffed my report may have helped improve an excellent product.

Post by **SimonOrde** » 27 Oct 2003 18:24

P.S. I meant to say thank you to Michael for an unusually detailed and helpful account of the circumstances of the crash, which helped a lot when I was trying to reproduce it.

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