Family Historian User Group

Nick

First can I add my thanks to those of others for the fantastic work you are doing.

I am having some problems with flags.  I have set up my existing flags but there seems to be two problems.

One - when I run a flag check AS wants to reset all the flags which duplicates all the flags set in FH.

Second - when I add a new census entry although the flag is set it does not appear in diagrams - and this also happens when the flags have been set by the flag check.

ID:4462

If you have existing flags that you want to use then don't create new ones in Ancestral Sources.

E.g. lets say you have an existing flag that you've already set up in Family Historian called 1891 UK. Then in Ancestral Sources go to the Flag Settings screen and choose:

Country: UK
Year: 1891

Ancestral Sources will suggest a new flag name but you don't want to use this one so instead choose your existing flag (1891 UK in this example) from the flag drop-down list.

You will need to do this for each of the censuses you use. And then you'll presumably want to delete the other flag associations you may have created.

Hope this helps

Nick

Nick

I have used my existing flag names but I don't understand your sentence about deleting 'the other flag associations'

I believe I have only one association (with my existing flags for each census.

Nick

I think I have resolved the issue. I deleted all census flags and then carried out a flag check using AS. It has added all the flags and the icons on diagrams. It is also working correctly for new entries so everything seems to be OK.

From your answer isn't clear whether you mean that following my reply you've now made Ancestral Sources use your existing flags or whether you feel you already did that before.

To answer your question, if everything is now working OK then there's no need to delete anything. However, if it still isn't right....

When you go into the Ancestral Sources Census Flag Settings screen and look at the list at the top (this is a list of the flag associations) is the Flag Name shown next to each country and year identical to the Flag Name you use in Family Historian? Please can you triple check this.

From what you said it implies that Ancestral Sources is adding a different flag name to each individual as you said that it is duplicating the flags. If it were really duplicating the flags (i.e. adding exactly the same flag a second time to an individual) then you would get an error when Family Historian tries to load the file as an individual can't have the same flag twice.

If you are adding an entirely new flag name, rather than using the existing one then this explains why it isn't showing up in the diagrams as you will have created diagram settings which associate icons with the existing flag name in your file.

Assuming you are using the wrong flag names then either delete all the flag associations from the Ancestral Sources flag setting list and re-create them

If you are certain that you are using the correct flag names then I wonder if you could email me (there's an option to do this in the help menu) some or all of your GEDCOM family history file showing the flags associated with individuals including the ones added by Ancestral Sources and the ones already in your file.

Cheers

Nick

Andrew Braid said:
Nick

I have used my existing flag names but I don't understand your sentence about deleting 'the other flag associations'

I believe I have only one association (with my existing flags for each census.

Ah OK that's good - I'll leave my reply in case it helps anyone else who has this issue in future.

Cheers

Nick

Nick

Just for the record I did not change any associations but AS definitely did set all the same flags in duplicate and I did not receive any error messages. (It was easy to spot because they were in correct and reverse chronological order.) I deleted all the census flags in FH (which took about three attempts and I had to reload the file each time). I then carried out the flag check in AS and everything was OK.

Unfortunately I didn't backup FH in between the deletions so I cannot send any of the GEDCOM to you.

Sorry to keep pushing this but you are saying that Ancestral Sources has a fault which I haven't seen any evidence of. If it is a fault then I need to be able to see evidence of it as currently I can't see how it could happen and would need to fix it so as not to cause problems for others.

I think they must have had a different name (or more specifically flag tag which is based on the name) because Family Historian doesn't allow an individual to have the same flag twice. I know because I saw this error when I was testing

I wonder if you could send me the log file from your ancestral sources folder (in 'my documents') - it will be quite big if its done a lot of flag changes. There may also be backup files in the folder which AS creates.

Nick

I had a similar problem, but discovered that AS had created flags as '1901 UK Census' whereas my previous flags were just '1901 Census'. I deleted the old flags, re linked the same icons as before, and now have no problem. Hope this helps,  Jeremy

To be fair Jeremy AS was just suggesting the flag names for you. You could have chosen your previous flag names from the list when you set up the flags in Ancestral Sources. But it sounds like it all worked out in the end.

Andrew has kindly sent through his files and I'm getting to the bottom of what happened. I don't think Ancestral Sources has a problem but I will post a follow-up.

I just wanted to report that Andrew very kindly sent me his files and the findings were quite interesting (to me at least!). I will state immediately though: This does not appear to be a problem with Ancestral Sources.

For those who are interested this is the technical reason for the problems Andrew faced:

When a flag is created in Family Historian it gets recorded in the file with a tag and a name. For example create a flag called UK Census 1901 in Family Historian and the line produced when added to an individual looks like this:

2 __UK_CENSUS_190 UK Census 1901

The Flag tag is: __UK_CENSUS_190 and this has to be unique. Simon Orde told me years ago how flags worked and I summarised them here.

The key line is: ‘A flag tag can be 15 characters in total for the tag including the two underscores’

As an aside this means that you wouldn’t also be allowed to have a flag called UK Census 1902 as it would create the same flag tag __UK_CENSUS_190. This is why Ancestral Sources suggests having the year first when naming a flag (e.g. 1901 UK Census) as it helps to keep the tag created unique.

Andrew's file had flags like this:

2 __UK_CENSUS_1901 UK Census 1901

and this isn’t a correct flag tag as it is 16 characters long and this is what I believe caused his problems.

The puzzle is how these illegal flags got created in the first place. I suspect an earlier version of Gedcom Census (version 5.1) may be to blame as I didn't get the explanation from Simon about how flags worked until a version or two later and hadn't realised there was a limit to the flag tag length. So it looks like Andrew actually found a bug in an old version of Gedcom Census rather than the new Ancestral Sources! My fault ultimately and I've tried to help him to sort this out. Having said that I do think it would be useful if Calico could publish the details of any extensions they've added to GEDCOM for those of us who develop add-ons (though Simon has always been happy to answer my questions). I hope this doesn't end up being an issue for too many of you who used Gedcom Census 3 or 4 years ago.

I think the easiest thing to do if you find you have this problem is to search and replace through the GEDCOM file using a text editor such as notepad. Having first made a backup of course. Using the example above I would search for __UK_CENSUS_1901 and replace with __UK_CENSUS_190 (truncated to 15 chars).

If you're concerned about this then please just get in touch.

Nick

Why didn't FH complain about the illegal flag tag?

I suspect its just assuming that flag tags will follow the rules and so just loads them in. As Family Historian generates flag tags with 15 characters max and as it is a Family Historian tag and not one that would normally come from another application it isn't bothering to check. That's my guess anyway.

AS looks fantastic. Great work.

The comments on Flag TAG length raises the question whethe there is also a specific limit on the length of the flag name?

The reason I'm asking is that I have pre-defined my flags, including my Census flags, by editing the flags.fha file in FH settings (having backed up the installed version first, of course). That means I know we have standard flags across all my, and my wife's, FH gedcoms.

In a couple of instances, a well as the '1861 UK Census' flag, I have an '1861 UK Census Not' flag, where I know the individual does NOT appear in the UK census (he's overseas fighting the Chinese).  The associated icon is the normal  Census icon with a red cross through, which reminds me I've done the search and I know it isn't simply an entry I have not searched for.

To keep within the 15 character TAG limitation, I have edited the TAG definitions in Flags.fha, but kept the Flag name as before eg:
Do I need to modify the name in a corresponding manner (ie strip out spaces etc)??

And yes, I realise this approach might just cause problems in the future if Simon makes changes to Flags.fha, but it works for me.  I just have to check flags.fha each time there's a new release. (Some time ago I posted a wish list item for User-defined flags to be recorded in Flags.fha, based on this approach).

I expect there is a limit on flag name length but I think it will be a big limit e.g. over 200 chars. You don't need to strip out spaces, etc.

The important thing is to make sure the flag tags in your GEDCOM file are legal.

From V4 there's no need to edit flags.fha as you can mark flags to be available for all new projects you create.

'Written by Robin Price (04/16/10 - 13:23:39)
From V4 there's no need to edit flags.fha as you can mark flags to be available for all new projects you create.'

OK, so how do you do this please, I've had a look around all the menu options and can't find anything, or can it only be done when you create a new flag (don't remember seeing anything)?

David

Hi David,

This is a quotation from the help system:

'Support for shared record flags (between GEDCOM files or projects) has been added. New record flags are shared by default. To make an existing record flag shared, select the flag in the Work with Lists and Flags dialog box, and click on the new Flag Status button. Then tick 'Always include this record flag in flag lists'.'

My interpretation of this is that you can ensure that new GEDCOMs can inherit flags you've created.

Having not managed to find time to do much FH since V4 came out, I had missed the fact that this change had been included, so thanks for pointing it out, Robin.  And Simon for including it!

Having now played briefly with the new feature, existing flags are shared simply by selecting them (one at a time) from the 'Record Flag' drop-down list (Tools > Work with Named Lists and Flags).

The 'Flag Status' button becomes active and , when clicked, displays a dialogue with a tick-box for 'Always include this record flag in flag lists'.  Ticking the box shares the flag across gedcoms/projects.  

It does it by editing flags.fha in exactly the way I have been doing manually up to now.  But no longer ... I shall share my flags forthwith. Hurrah!

Thanks Robin. I understand now.

David.