Map Life Events in v5

sbroth · Post by **sbroth** » 29 Mar 2012 20:16

My family have moved around the world and travelled much. I have found 'Map Life Events' very good and useful at the individual level. I would like to see an option which uses the focus person, spouse and descendents places all on the same list/report and subsquent map.

It would provide a good Family snapshot summary of the places the family had lived, worked and visited.

thank you in anticipation

ID:6061

Post by **tatewise** » 29 Mar 2012 21:58

May I suggest you place this sort of request in the Plugins Discussion Forum, because the changes do not need to be performed by Calico Pie to Family Historian, only to a Plugin script that is in the public domain..

Plugin changes are something you can do yourself, if you are prepared to learn the necessary techniques.
Alternatively, another FHUG member may be interested enough to write the Plugin.

sbroth · Post by **sbroth** » 29 Mar 2012 22:50

'May I suggest you place this sort of request in the Plugins Discussion Forum, because the changes do not need to be performed by Calico Pie to Family Historian, only to a Plugin script that is in the public domain.. '

Being new here one goes through a learning curve however in the launch of v5 it infers, I guess, as a marketing tool the use of plug in's. To me a distinct relationship. I do take a wee bit of an issue with your comment, and as a customer(!), with '.... I suggest you place this sort of request in the Plugins Discussion Forum, because the changes do not need to be performed by Calico Pie to Family Historian'

Plugin changes are something you can do yourself, if you are prepared to learn the necessary techniques.
Alternatively, another FHUG member may be interested enough to write the Plugin.

Great that I can do them my self but how and where does one go to do it.

Heck my interest indicates a 'possible gap' an enhancement, a marketing advantage. Don't knock feedback such as this!

PeterR · Post by **PeterR** » 29 Mar 2012 23:14

sbroth said:
Great that I can do them my self but how and where does one go to do it.

Have you tried the Help button on the Plugins dialog?

You can also click on the More >> button to reveal more buttons, including How to Write Plugins.

Post by **tatewise** » 29 Mar 2012 23:16

Sorry if you took my comments the wrong way.

Remember, this website is not run by, nor directly associated with Calico Pie.
It is run voluntarily by and for Family Historian Users.

So in that sense, you are not a 'customer' of this FH User Group, and any 'marketing advantage' would only indirectly help this group.

As far as 'how and where does one go to do it' then first use Help > Family Historian Help > Search > Plugins Dialog and click List Topics.
Also use Tools > Plugins > More>> > How to Write Plugins and explore the Plugin Help.

There is also a growing bank of advice in the Knowledge Base at Plugins on this FHUG website.

Before long I imagine there will be FH training courses incorporating Plugins.

Cambiz · Post by **Cambiz** » 30 Mar 2012 00:10

As one who spent the evening trawling through Lord Of The Rings and World Of Warcraft sites that have guides to LUA to see if there was an answer to my 'how to update 20,000' web pages, before Mike kindly provided me with an answer, I'll state here that I find plugin writing daunting.

The guides I found by googling seem to start off with 'simply do this...' and then go so far above my head in the next sentence that they are a danger to satellites.

I'm hoping that over time that a number of plugins will be created and loaded to the store which will lead the way for people to adapt them to their own needs. For instance I saw Jane's excellent Ancestry plug in and have managed, by changing a couple of bits, to get it to look up records on the Cornwall OPC site. I would not have been able to do it from scratch.

Maybe some more 'skeleton' plugins (that addressed wishlist entries) should have been provided by Calico Pie with the release to advertise the possibilities, but I guess they had their hands full.

Jane, Mike and the other's efforts are brilliant and I'm indebted.

Post by **tatewise** » 30 Mar 2012 00:26

I accept that if you have never written in any form of computer programming language, then Plugins will be daunting.

Those of you who have written Visual Basic (VBA) scripts, or DOS Batch scripts, or a database query language, should be able to cope with Plugin LUA scripts.

As I said above, I expect a growing bank of advice in the Knowledge Base - it is early days yet.

I know that Jane has written some deliberately simplistic Plugins for the Plugin Store so that beginners can more readily understand the basics.

Bonzo · Post by **Bonzo** » 31 Mar 2012 18:22

Is there a good way of adding a 'living' place fact to FH so that it can be picked up by this plugin. As I have lived in different places that would only show up in censuse not yet released and no other events?

PeterR · Post by **PeterR** » 31 Mar 2012 18:42

The standard Residence fact should work OK.

Have you also tried the Map Life Facts plugin?

Bonzo · Post by **Bonzo** » 31 Mar 2012 19:21

Thanks Peter - I had looked through the facts list at least 3 times and did not see that !!!!!

I only recived my update disc a couple of hours ago and only tried this and the timeline - both excelent tools.

mnjjames · Post by **mnjjames** » 03 Apr 2012 20:04

Was trying out the Map Life Events on my Grt x 2 Grandfather, he lived his life in around the Black Country, was born in Darlaston, whih is where I have on the database, but for some reason, this comes out as Barlaston in North Staffs on the map, tried with some others with Darlaston as a Residence or event and it does the same. Any ideas why this should be?

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 03 Apr 2012 20:21

The map life events uses the default google look up for the string, if you download the Map Geo-code plugin
http://www.family-historian.co.uk/plugi ... try?id=159

you can over-ride your Place name to another one or to a full map point.

The Mike's Map Life Facts is a more advanced version of my Map Life Events which has a much more sophisticated approach and can automate lookups.

Post by **tatewise** » 03 Apr 2012 23:00

Martin, exactly what Place name is in your database?
Is it simply Darlaston or Darlaston, Walsall or Darlaston, Black Country or what?

When I tried any of those in both Map Life Events and Map Life Facts it plotted correctly SW of Walsall.

They only plotted Barlaston in Staffs if that was actually the Place name entered.

mnjjames · Post by **mnjjames** » 05 Apr 2012 18:48

Place name I have is Darlaston, Staffordshire.

Jane I will give what you have said a try.

Thanks all

Post by **tatewise** » 05 Apr 2012 19:45

What the Google Geocoder is finding is Darlaston Home Farm, Darlaston Park (in Darlaston Wood), Stone, Staffordshire which is a mile or two south of Barlaston, Staffordshire.

The Darlaston you want is near Walsall and is now in West Midlands not Staffordshire.

This highlights the problem of Geocoding using modern mapping with old place names.
It is why both Map Life Events and Map Life Facts offer alternative ways of defining your old place names in terms of modern place names, postcodes, latitude/longitude, etc, etc.

With the necessary history of place name changes, particularly UK Counties, it might be possible for future versions of these Plugins to make the correct substitutions automatically.
But don't hold your breath!

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