* Spaces in Places and Addresses

[davidm_uk]

Until recently I'd got into the habit of including spaces when I entered place and addresses. For example place:

Ampthill, Bedfordshire, England

Having now changed to 4 fields for places I have ended up with some places in the form:

,Ampthill, Bedfordshire, England

Either seems to display ok in reports and diagrams but when I start typing a place name in the properties box (as distinct from selecting it from the list) I have to type either ,Amp or , Amp before it is found.

I probably ought to tidy all the entries to a consistent format, but which is best: include the space after every comma or not? Is there a way of doing this without editing every entry individually?

[tatewise]

I would recommend a space after every comma because it looks more natural.

My prototype Rearrange Address and Place Parts Plugin by default does that comma tidying on both Address and Place fields even if you perform no other 'rearrangements'.

Try the attached Plugin and simply click the PERFORM REARRANGEMENT button lower right, after taking the precaution of a Gedcom Backup, but if you don't like the results then Edit > Undo Plugin Updates before you Close FH will restore your original data.

[davidm_uk]

Thanks Mike.

I installed and ran the plugin (after taking a copy of the gedcom) and it seems to have adjusted all of the addresses and places except one, which gave an error message:

Capture (Place).JPG (21.97 KiB) Viewed 3442 times

Upon investigating I found that the copy of the gedcom before running the plugin had two entries:

,Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, England (with 5 links, and a lat/long entry)
, Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, England (with one link, and no lat/long entry)

I can fix this with a manual edit and merge, but wondered why it upset the plugin.

[tatewise]

The reason for the error is that if that change went ahead there would be two Place records with the same name, and that is not allowed.
i.e.
(1) The existing , Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, England with 1 link
(2) The renamed , Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, England with 5 links

The Plugin dare not actually Merge them as they may (and in this case did) have different fields values.

However, the Plugin has a mechanism to handle this scenario, and I must investigate why it was not triggered in this case. So it was worth while letting you loose with it!

[tatewise]

I have found the problem, and fixed the code, and hope to publish the Plugin next week, with updated Help & Advice pages.