* Possible error in Clean up Surname Capitalisation Plugin

[johnhanson]

I am trying to run Jane Taubman's Clean up Surname Capitalisation plugin

When I started family history over 40 years ago Capitalising surnames was the norm.

People keep saying to me that the FH help advises not to - changing 40 year habits is not easy!

So I thought I would try Jane's plugin to change mine (in a copy of the main database.

I downloaded and ran it and it produced this result

image.png (12.71 KiB) Viewed 440 times

I am reluctant to continue - I suspect that the full list is there but can't be certain

There are 41,000 plus people in the database

[jelv]

As it's on a copy I think I'd give it a go. You can always delete the project and copy again if it goes wrong.

[Mark1834]

That is how it is designed to work. The plugin description in the Plugins Window tells you that it "allows over-ride at runtime by prompting the converted surnames for confirmation."

Options for this type of simple plugin are rather limited:

• Make all changes unconditionally. Quick and simple, but names can be complex, so not all changes would necessarily be correct on surnames that are other than a single word.
• Present the full list of new surnames for user review and manual changing of individual ones before committing the change. That's the option chosen here.
• Prompt all changes one by one. Thorough, but slow and impractical.
• Output the proposed changes to the Query Window where it would be easier to review or export, say to a spreadsheet, but there is no mechanism for correcting any of the proposed changes.

It would be possible to build a more sophisticated version, with multiple options for how it processes different name structures, but it would then be a new and much more complex plugin.

A simpler option for the user to implement if they have a large database is to run a simple query listing full name, surname and Record ID on the project before and after conversion. Output the two files to spreadsheets and copy one into the other, collating entries on Record ID.

[jelv]

Mark, I think his point is that the list is truncated half way through a name (N.B. the scroll bar is at the bottom).

Edit: I suspect it's gone over the maximum length of a text box.

[Mark1834]

Ah - ok. Assuming the plugin does actually change the listed names, the solution would be to delete the truncated last entry, then repeat with successive plugin runs until all the names are converted.

Ideally, the plugin should identify why it has failed, but this type of simple plugin doesn't necessarily have a full suite of error handling functions.

[johnhanson]

Mark
It isn't erroring
I suspect that it just isn't displaying all of the material but I would rather make sure than run it multiple times

I would think something like 7 or 8 times bearing in mind where in the alphabet it has stopped

As an ex programmer I never like things that don't display properly

[Mark1834]

Another possibility is that it will convert all the names in one pass, but is only capable of displaying some of them. In that case, there is no option to review the rest of the names. I'm away from the desk until this evening so can't review the code to see what it is doing, but I agree that it shouldn't leave the user guessing as to what is happening.

It's Jane's plugin, so I'll expect she'll comment when she's back on the forum.

[tatewise]

FYI:
The plugin is using iup.GetText(...) which displays a modal dialog to edit multiline text.
The idea is that the user reviews and corrects each surname listed.
However, in Lua the default maxsize is 10240 characters, so I believe the dialog is being truncated.
So it is currently not possible to review and correct beyond the surname Dodgeon.
If maxsize is set to 0 then it will be the current length of text, and then all surnames should be listed.

Although the plugin claims to have been updated for FH V7 it does not set its Type to Standard and does not cope with UTF-8 accented or foreign language characters.

IMO: This plugin needs a minor overhaul to correct these issues.

[johnhanson]

Mike
Thanks for the comments

As this is one of Jane Taubman's how can I get it changed?

[tatewise]

John, you can edit the plugin yourself to make any necessary changes.
One of us could advise what changes to make once you are familiar with the editing process.

Alternatively, you must wait until Jane notices this thread and updates the plugin in the Plugin Store.

[johnhanson]

Yep
Should be able to do this if someone tells me what to change

Then Jane can catch up later

[tatewise]

Ok, the following two changes should be sufficient, unless your Surnames use foreign language characters.

Near line number 16 add three lines after iup.SetGlobal("CUSTOMQUITMESSAGE","YES") to cope with UTF-8

Code: Select all

require("iuplua");
iup.SetGlobal("CUSTOMQUITMESSAGE","YES")
iup.SetGlobal("UTF8MODE","YES")
iup.SetGlobal("UTF8MODE_FILE","NO")
fhSetStringEncoding("UTF-8")

Near line number 85 change how iup.GetText(...) is called to specify its max size as the length of the Surname list

Code: Select all

local strNames = table.concat(tblSurname,'\n')
strList = iup.GetText('Please check the Case on the Surnames Below', strNames, #strNames+1)

BTW: I tried setting the max size parameter to 0 as defined in the IUP documentation to use the current length of text but that crashes FH without any error messages.

[Mark1834]

Minor clarification, which I’m sure I’ve made before…

Plugins need the additional UTF functions to process non-Latin characters, not “accented or foreign ones”. It’s not necessary for the common Western European diacritics, and what’s “foreign” viewed from a desk in Devon or Cheshire may not be foreign to the large number of readers who are from a different Parish!

[tatewise]

Just to be clear, the extra symbols and diacritic letters supported by ANSI coding are only:

€ ‚ ƒ „ … † ‡ ˆ ‰ ‹ Æ æ Œ œ ‘ ’ “ ” • – — ™ › ¡ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ­ ® ¯ ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ × ÷ Þ þ ß Ð ð nbsp

À à Á á Â â Ã ã Ä ä Å å Ç ç È è É é Ê ê Ë ë Ì ì Í í Î î Ï ï Ñ ñ Ò ò Ó ó Ô ô Õ õ Ö ö Ø ø Š š Ù ù Ú ú Û û Ü ü Ý ý Ÿ ÿ Ž ž

The diacritic letters not supported by ANSI and only allowed in UTF-8 coding include (but there are more):

Ā ā Ă ă Ą ą Ć ć Ĉ ĉ Ċ ċ Č č Ď ď Đ đ Ē ē Ĕ ĕ Ė ė Ę ę Ě ě Ĝ ĝ Ğ ğ ġ ģ Ĥ ĥ Ħ ħ Ĩ ĭ Į į IJ ij Ĵ Ķ ķ ĸ Ĺ ĺ Ļ ļ ľ Ŀ Ł ł

Ń ń Ņ ņ ʼn Ŋ ŋ Ō ō Ŏ ŏ Ő ő Ŕ ŕ Ř ř Ś ś Ŝ ŝ ş Š ţ Ţ Ť ť Ũ ũ Ū ū Ŭ ŭ Ů ů Ű Ų ų Ŵ ź ż Ž ž

I leave it up to the reader to decide whether the ANSI set covers the common Western European diacritics.

[Mark1834]

True, we should probably settle on “non-Latin” as the preferred term, as it has a recognised definition. “Common” is a bit subjective, and “foreign” is meaningless when the author and reader may be of different nationalities.

[johnhanson]

Mike
Thanks that worked nicely - now to fix the rest which I can do easily

The only thing that is missing from the resulting list is the User ID

Something that a number of these simple plugins seem to miss in the early versions

Is it easy to add to the result output?

[tatewise]

To add a Record Id to the final Result Set ...

About line 95 add a table variable to hold the Record Id:

Code: Select all

    tblRecord = {}
    tblRec_Id = {}

About line 115 save the Record Id in the table:

Code: Select all

                    table.insert(tblRecord,pi:Clone())
                    table.insert(tblRec_Id,fhGetRecordId(pi))

About line 128 display Record Id in the Result Set:

Code: Select all

                fhOutputResultSetColumn("Individual", "item", tblRecord, #tblRecord, 180, "align_left")
                fhOutputResultSetColumn("Rec Id", "integer", tblRec_Id, #tblRecord, 40, "align_mid")

[johnhanson]

Mike
Worked like a dream
Thank you so much