question about locations (PLAC)

justone · Post by **justone** » 11 Mar 2006 09:59

While transferring data from my other Gedcom apps, I wonder how to make the best out all the differnt data I got for locations.
I've seen that FH allows for endless number of columns per place, but each column isn't treated on it's own, but must only contain characters which in combination with the delimiter (comma) forms a valid textstring.

What I wanted to store is
data1 = townname / millname / farm
data2 = near to (townname)
data3 = area
data4 = country
data5 = postal code
data6 & 7 = geographical coordinates in the form nn°nn'nn' <--big problem here
data8 = first mentioned (year) of the place
perhaps some others

First of all I thought that I could make use of the PLAC_HIERACHY but that doesn't help much, since I can't enter non-gedcom-compatible sub-entries which will link to the columns in the PLACE list.

Big question : (the admin might know since he seems to know much about v3).
Will the PLAC handling differ in v3 or have I overlooked something clever in FH on how to store such data while being able to have access to each of the column entries in diagrams ? eg. in the form column4 + column2 + column5 against having all or up to comma nr. x ?

Comments appreciated

ID:1425

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 11 Mar 2006 12:10

As far as I know there is not a lot of changes in 3 over 2.3 for place name handling.

Personally I would not try to add location strings etc to PLAC data.

I use the address for the Name of houses, farms etc, reserving place for hamlet or village information.
Normally in the form

Village, County, Country

The extensions added in 2.3 for place ie
:SHORT
:Medium
:Tidy
:full

Allow you to extract the begining of place fields.

justone · Post by **justone** » 11 Mar 2006 12:25

that's what I ment being a bit restrictive. I could set up any number of columns with separated data but I can't access theses columns apart from short,medium,full, ... which is either everything or something from the left ending after a number of commas.

Must wait for v3 I bet and see what's improoved in terms of functions / methods which hopefully allow a more deeper separation of any date using conditions which allow filtering the relevant data.

If not, I'll wait for v4 [wink]

TimTreeby · Post by **TimTreeby** » 11 Mar 2006 12:41

You could always use the extra attributes of the address Attribute.
To add these, one way is from Individuals Record Window expand so you can see eg. Birth Details, then expand so you can see address details for the Birth. Then if you right click you get options to add
First Indexing Line
Second Indexing Line
City
State
Postal Code
Country

Hope this makes sense.

Tim

justone · Post by **justone** » 11 Mar 2006 16:54

If only the number of lines won't have been limited, it would have been ideal.

Point is that I need to cover locations from USA, Germany, France, Russia and Switzerland, and all these tend to require differnt number of lines and differnt (let's say column-identifiers)

What I miss is something such as 'Add user defined' with the ability to rename the Record identifier aswell as being able to add sub-user-defined entries.

Well, one can't have everything. FH already provides some things my other genealogy apps don't. I could sort of missuse the 6 available lines. Hopefully each of the line is accessible from the diagrams. Haven't tried.

thanks a lot for the 'visible' hint.

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