Plugin Map Life Events

RonChapman · Post by **RonChapman** » 17 Oct 2011 22:09

I have used this plugin before and found it worked well. I noticed that I did not have the most recent version so upgraded it today. (In fact I upgraded most of them including 'Create and Update Ancestor and Descendant Counts'.)
I notice that when I generate the web page that at the bottom is listed the ancestor and decendant counts which are not relevent.
Also clicking or double clicking on an address does not take me to Google Maps or anywhere else for that matter.
I am using Windows 7, and windows explorer.
Thanks for your efforts,
Ron

ID:5516

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 18 Oct 2011 08:23

Ron clicking on the addresses should move the map around, rather than taking you somewhere else.

The list includes all Facts for a person, which would include the counts. I don't exclude the facts because they don't have a place.

Post by **tatewise** » 18 Oct 2011 10:45

I have just been trying out Map Life Events and Map Geo Code Maintenance.
This is an extremely useful facility.
However, the Map Geo Code Maintenance override for Places has no effect on Map Life Events.
This is because there is a typographical error in Map Life Events.
The line:
settingsFile = string.gsub(fhGetPluginDataFileName( ),'Map Life Events.dat$','Map Geo-Code Maintenance.dat')
should be:
settingsFile = string.gsub(fhGetPluginDataFileName( ),'Map Life Events.dat$','Map Geo Code Maintenance.dat')
i.e. The hyphen (-) in Geo-Code should be a space.

I would also appreciate larger GUI fields in Map Geo Code Maintenance to support longer place names.
i.e.
-- Input Fields
txtModern = iup.text{minsize = '400x25'}
txtPlace = iup.text{minsize = '400x25',readonly='YES',bgcolor='DLGBGCOLOR'}
txtLong = iup.text{minsize = '400x25'}
txtLat = iup.text{minsize = '400x25'}

Post by **tatewise** » 18 Oct 2011 13:07

After a little more experimenting, the following interesting results have emerged.
These are more to do with how Google Geo-coding performs than the Plugin itself.
However, it suggests that some associated Help may assist users in getting better results.

I have an old GRO Registration District that is stored in a Place field as Ecclesall Bierlow, Yorkshire West Riding, England and was a district of Sheffield.
The only important point is that Map Life Events returns was not found (ZERO_RESULTS) from Google Geo-coding.
Also I have Place field of Sheffield, Yorkshire West Riding, England that is mapped OK.

So I used Map Geo Code Maintenance to override the unrecognised Place field, with the following effect.
Ecclesall Road, Sheffield, Yorkshire maps to exactly the same marker as Sheffield, Yorkshire West Riding, England.
Ecclesall Road, Sheffield maps correctly to a separate marker West of the Sheffield, Yorkshire West Riding, England marker.
I experimented further with a current district called Attercliffe in the East of Sheffield .
Attercliffe, Sheffield, Yorkshire maps wrongly to a marker West of the Sheffield, Yorkshire West Riding, England marker.
Attercliffe, Sheffield maps correctly to a separate marker East of the Sheffield, Yorkshire West Riding, England marker.
551 Attercliffe Road, Sheffield, Yorkshire was not found (ZERO_RESULTS).
551 Attercliffe Road, Sheffield maps correctly to a separate marker East of the Sheffield, Yorkshire West Riding, England marker.

So it seems that less is more. Leaving off the county of Yorkshire gives better results than including it!!!

Incidentally, entering any of the above six places manually directly into http://maps.google.co.uk/maps gives expected valid results.

Post by **tatewise** » 18 Oct 2011 14:32

Some further observations regarding Map Life Events Plugin.
Some Facts, especially Family Attributes, do not display their details fully.
Specifically, the Fact Name its Place and Date are missing.

The following code changes should rectify this problem.
(1)
In the function addFact(ptrEvent, strFact) remove the statement if strFact == nil then and its matching end.
Also change the statements between these two lines as indicated by the bold text below:
if fhIsEvent(ptrEvent) or fhGetTag(ptrEvent) == 'RESI' then
strFact = strFact..fhGetDisplayText(ptrEvent)
else
local strLabel = fhCallBuiltInFunction('FactName',ptrEvent)
strFact = strFact..strLabel..' '..fhGetDisplayText(ptrEvent)..' '..(fhGetItemText(ptrEvent,'~.DATE') or '')
if strPlace ~= ''
then strFact = strFact ..' in '..fhGetItemText(ptrEvent,'~.PLAC')
end
(2)
Change the three calls of this function as follows:
addFact(ptrEvent,'')
addFact(ptrEvent,'with '..fhGetItemText(ptrIndi,'~.~SPOU['..i..']>NAME')..':')
addFact(ptrEvent,'Child:'..fhGetItemText(ptrChild,'~.NAME')..':')

Post by **tatewise** » 20 Oct 2011 12:07

Is combining Map Life Events and Map Geo Code Maintenance into a single Plugin a useful exercise?

Is offering the choice between PLACe and ADDRess location mapping a useful enhancement?

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 20 Oct 2011 16:41

Mike, I am not going to have too much time to work on this at the moment, but I have fixed the Geo-Code problem, the actual cause was the Plugin Store removes hyphens from the Plug in names.

I don't know what I can do about the Geo-code lookups on google other than suggest you use the Map places to avoid the problem.

I kept the two plugins separate as I thought there might be other uses for the Geo-code data.

Not sure about the addresses, you would need to add a GeoCode maintenance for them as well and when plotting the time would be long as most people would have a lot more addresses than places.

Which Facts are not working and what is not showing?

Post by **tatewise** » 21 Oct 2011 10:59

I would be happy to take on the Plugin changes if you like.

Regarding Geo-code lookups on Google as I said:

It suggests that some associated Help may assist users in getting better results.

i.e. a Help button with advice on improving mapping results.

Apart from the description in the Plugin Store the Map Life Events Plugin does not mention the Map Geo Code Maintenance Plugin.
So by combining them and adding an Override button, it would make the mapping options more obvious to users.
The Override Data would still be available to other Plugins, and could possibly be kept in a distinct data file.
Alternatively, other Geo-code mapping features could simply be added to the one Plugin.

Yes, Map Geo Code Maintenance would need to work with Addresses as well as Places.
I also thought plotting would take longer, because I use Place and Address fields extensively.
I edited Map Life Events to use ADDR instead of PLAC and it wasn't too bad, because I only have 2.5 times as many Addresses as Places.
Perhaps the delay of 750 between plots could be a user adjustable parameter within certain limits?

Regarding Facts not working, as I said:

Some Facts, especially Family Attributes, do not display their details fully.
Specifically, the Fact Name its Place and Date are missing.

This only comes to light with Custom Facts because the Standard Fact Set has no Family Attributes.
It is a side effect of the known problem with fhGetDisplayText() for Attributes.

P.S.
I also have some ideas for user options that would integrate these Geo-map pages with FH Family Tree CD/Website pages.

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 21 Oct 2011 12:36

The delay is not of my choosing it was the best compromise where look ups are done to avoid getting blacklisted by the server, so changing it will probably mean the problem with failed lookups will come back.

Post by **tatewise** » 24 Oct 2011 00:07

I have been doing some experimenting with the Map Life Events Plugin and Google Geo-coding.
I am certain it is feasible to perform the Place or Address to longitude & latitude Geo-coding look-ups while running the Plugin.
Then the longitude & latitude values can be embedded in the HTML scripts, which allows them to create the map markers without the look-up delays.

The Geo-coded longitude & latitude values could be saved along with the Map Geo Code Maintenance override data.
This would avoid look-up delays for the same locations the next time the Map Life Events Plugin is run.
The user could have an option to ignore the saved data and force Geo-coding to renew the longitude & latitude values.

What do you think?

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 24 Oct 2011 10:42

I could not get the IP comms to work from with in Lua, to access the Google API, if you can work out a way to get that working feel free.

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