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Place Details - Categorized in: Report a ProblemReport a Problem

8 posts. Started 27 Nov 2011 by esd. Latest reply 30 Nov 2011 by esd. RSS 2.0 feed for this topic RSS
1. esd (esd)
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Joined: Sun, 27 Nov 2011
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Posted: Sun, 27 Nov 2011 Permalink

There are locations that are not showing up in my Place Details report. When I compare Behold location details with Legacy Family Tree (my primary software, from which the GEDCOM was created), here are some examples of the differences I'm seeing:

, TX, Harris Co, -------- [Legacy = 1 ppl] [Behold = 1 ppl]
, TX, Harris Co, Goose Creek (detail) [Legacy = 2 ppl] [Behold = 0 ppl]
, TX, Harris Co, Houston [Legacy = 7 ppl] [Behold = 0 ppl]
, TX, Harris Co, Houston (detail 1) [Legacy = 1 ppl] [Behold = 1 ppl]
, TX, Harris Co, Houston (detail 2) [Legacy = 1 ppl] [Behold = 1 ppl]
, TX, Harris Co, Houston (detail 3) [Legacy = 1 ppl] [Behold = 1 ppl]
, TX, Harris Co, Houston Heights [Legacy = 1 ppl] [Behold = 0 ppl]
, TX, Harris Co, Pelly [Legacy = 1 ppl] [Behold = 1 ppl]

, TX, McLennan Co, Waco [Legacy = 10ppl] [Behold = 0 ppl]
, TX, McLennan Co, Waco (detail 1) [Legacy = 1 ppl] [Behold = 0 ppl]
, TX, McLennan Co, Waco (detail 2) [Legacy = 1 ppl] [Behold = 1 ppl]
, TX, McLennan Co, Waco (detail 3) [Legacy = 1 ppl] [Behold = 1 ppl]
, TX, McLennan Co, Waco (detail 4) [Legacy = 3 ppl] [Behold = 3 ppl]

2. Louis Kessler (lkessler)
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Joined: Sun, 9 Mar 2003
287 blog comments, 245 forum posts
Posted: Sun, 27 Nov 2011 Permalink

esd:

The simple test I did exporting from Legacy with default export options resulted in the same situation as you had, where Behold did not seem to report every place. But when I looked in the GEDCOM file Legacy produced, I saw there were a number of people marked PRIVATE with no events or places attached to them.

Do you have any individuals market Private in your file? if so, you have to override Legacy's default options to get all the data into the GEDCOM. In Legacy, in the GEDCOM Export window, go to the Privacy tab. In the bottom left section where it says "Override Private Settings", check all the boxes (there's 8 of them in Legacy 7.5). Then try the export and load that into Behold. If that exports all the people and places to the GEDCOM, then Behold should get them all.

Please let me know if that works.

The bottom line is that Behold can't read any data that is not in the GEDCOM.

Louis

3. esd (esd)
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Joined: Sun, 27 Nov 2011
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Posted: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 Permalink

No, Louis, that wasn't the problem. I don't have any "private" individuals in my database. And I knew that the place information that seemed to be "missing" from the Place Details report was in the GEDCOM because it was all showing up appropriately in the other Behold reports.

As I thought more about, I realized that it must be something in the way the locations were recorded or set-up in Legacy, since whether any particular location appeared (or at least was being found by me) in the Place Details report or not was an "all or nothing" proposition. Upon investigation, I discovered my problem. All my locations ARE in the Behold Place Details report, it's just that they appear in two separate alphabetical sequences and that was what was confusing me. It has to do with how I entered the commas.

Since the vast majority of my locations are in the USA, I only enter a country in the fourth location "slot" when it is non-US. If I don't know the town/city or the county, I always insert one or two leading commas to make certain that the state appears in the third "slot." I have been inconsistent, however, about putting a comma after the state. In Legacy, I have my location index set to display from right to left, so all the locations without information in the fourth slot (i.e., at the US locations) appear together at the beginning of the list, followed by the foreign country locations. When it comes to that sorting, however, Legacy doesn't care whether I've entered a final comma after the state or not. It's like it "assumes" that the final comma is there. I now see that Behold isn't set up that way. All the entries that have a comma after the state are sorted together, at the head of the Place Detail list, and those that don't have a comma appear with the states alphabetized in with the foreign countries.

If I were to standardize my location entries, I'd prefer to move everything to the "no comma after the state for US locations" format (fewer extraneous commas in reports, etc). Is there anyway that I can get Behold to sort them the way Legacy does?

Also, the details that appear under each location are sorted alphabetically by the field name... birth, death, event, marriage.... Is there an option by which the details could be sorted by date?

Many thanks for all your great work on Behold. I've only played with it for a few hours, but it's truly impressive even in its first version.

ESD

4. Louis Kessler (lkessler)
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Joined: Sun, 9 Mar 2003
287 blog comments, 245 forum posts
Posted: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 Permalink

So let me understand. You want an option to sort places either "the correct way" or "the wrong way". Behold sorts the correct way so that you can correct your mistakes.

Is there a reason under the Place details as to why you would want events sorted by date first? I cannot see a reason because there are no records that are date ordered. You always look up Birth records, or Marriage records, etc. I really need to know a useful purpose for something, because believe or not, extra options and extra features complicate and confuse people.

Louis

5. Louis Kessler (lkessler)
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Joined: Sun, 9 Mar 2003
287 blog comments, 245 forum posts
Posted: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 Permalink

I'm reading back my last post. I hope I didn't sound terse. I didn't mean to.

I just wanted to say that I'm trying to present your data in Behold in the most useful way possible. If Behold isn't reading your data as you thought you had entered it, then no other program will either. That's why it's important that you correct your data. One day you'll want to export it and you'll have problems unless it's corrected.

Display wise - I've put lots of thought into the display. The intention is to make the display most useful for research purposes. I try on purpose not to give a lot of options on the display. How many times are you totally confused by the multitude of options in Legacy's reports? All you want is for it to produce what you want but you can't get it for all the options. Sometimes less is more, as long as the less is defined correctly 99% of the time.

I am very open to ideas. Many of my ideas come from users. In fact there's a good one I got today which I'm going to implement and mention on my blog post tonight.

But the idea has got to fit in with the overall design of Behold and its purpose: To present your data in a simple single Everything Report designed to help you understand your data and do your research.

Louis

6. esd (esd)
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Joined: Sun, 27 Nov 2011
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Posted: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 Permalink

"If Behold isn't reading your data as you thought you had entered it, then no other program will either."
Perhaps this didn't come through my rambling explanation, but Legacy DOES do exactly what I want with my location data. I'm not a programmer, but since you are, I thought you'd be interested in exploring the difference between their sorting/display method and yours. But if not, so be it. I withdraw the suggestion.

"Is there a reason under the Place details as to why you would want events sorted by date first?"
In my research, I am just as interested in learning about the places where my family lived -- at the time they lived there -- as I am in collecting their BMD statistics. Having a way to easily see the range of dates in which my family was active in a particular location would be of great help to me in this regard. Legacy doesn't give me that option in their Locations Report either. I'll submit it to them and see if they are more open to the possibility. You seem to dismiss their "multitude of options" as confusing, but that has not been my experience.

Best of luck with Behold.

ESD

7. Louis Kessler (lkessler)
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Joined: Sun, 9 Mar 2003
287 blog comments, 245 forum posts
Posted: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 Permalink

Yes, Legacy corrects your data for you. I don't understand how it might do it. It's not just a matter of adding a comma at the end. It has to know one is missing. That means it has to know that is a State abbreviation at the end.

What if it's a State name instead, e.g. Texas instead of TX. Will it add the comma at the end of that as well? But if it does, then will Texas and TX be sorted together? Or will it now change Texas to TX for you? What about North Carolina and N. Carolina and N Carolina and NC. Will they be all corrected and go together? What if you have TX, USA? Will it take off the USA so that it will be together with the TX?

It's not as clear cut as you make it seem. And the bottom line is that because Legacy is correcting your data for you, but NOT exporting the corrected data, you don't even realize that its doing that and you'll be sunk if you have to transfer it to another program or give it to someone who uses another program. That program may totally mangle the places when it reads it in giving you an impossible mess - and you might not realize it until its too late, because Legacy just "fixed" it for you.

That's why I don't think its right.

But I do agree that you have a good reason for place details to be sorted by date first. I've had a bit of trouble deciding which way to primarily sort. I first added the events. And later I added the dates - so they were done that way and I initially justified to myself that it was the right way for research. But I had contemplated being able to flip the levels. If I did do that, it would be an Organize option, but it would also be an instant flip tool, like the show Selected / show All tags button. It would require changes to the database structure to allow the instant flip - so it is more possible, but a bit more involved to program.

I do have to be careful about options. I'm trying to keep Behold as simple to use as possible, but the Organization features are already overwhelming to many people. The fact that you do nothing but input your GEDCOM and get everything organized and displayed is the first step. I'm trying to set it up for editing, and the more options I add at this step, the more difficult the editing will be. On the other hand, the longer I wait to add any option, e.g. until after editing, the harder it will be to add it. It's really not easy. I am trying to do my best.

And I really do apologize because it sounds like you were insulted by what I said. I'm sorry.

Louis

8. esd (esd)
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Joined: Sun, 27 Nov 2011
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Posted: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 Permalink

No offense taken.

ESD

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