Re: [LegacyUG] Favorite Option

[John B. Lisle]

Jay,

Isn't it great that Legacy is so flexible that every user can organize their data almost any way that works best for them...

john.

At 06:36 PM 12/6/2013, Jay 1FamilyTree wrote:

John,Â

Agreed on all your statements except......

.............and this is my own personal preference on how to do things, and I do not expect nor ask that anyone has to do it my way.Â


I ALWAYS replace and empty given or Surname fields with a placeholder called Unknown

I too often receive a gedcom whereby some import/export in the gedcoms past did not properly handle all the data and a given name ends up in the surname field.Â

Just this morning I imported a Gedcom of 272 persons and 4 records had empty given names and the given name in the surname field.Â
Fortunately I caught this as the 4 records were already in my database properly,Â
and when I informed the sender, she said she had spent weeks trying to find Anna (or Johanna) Otto when in fact Anna married Otto Schmitt Â

I do follow your method on given names in that I try to use a gender if possible like UnknownF or UnknownM.

ThanksÂ

JayÂ






I questions the sender and she said that part was how she got it from someone else.Â









On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 2:22 PM, John B. Lisle <leg...@tqsi.com> wrote:

Jay,

Thanks.

Please see below...

john.

At 03:41 PM 12/6/2013, Jay 1FamilyTree wrote:

John,

You asked that I look into this and report back.

Regarding the exceptions list (UnknownName.txt) for the Potential Problems report

From my own tests I do not see that the text file allows any comment lines...

Other text files that Legacy uses (GeoData-alt.txt) does allow comment lines by using an *

But UnknownName.text does not

I expected this as it was a late add to solve the pervasive problem of unknown type names littering the PP Alerts and Reports and making them unusable.

Maybe a future upgrade will allow comment lines, personally I do not like having text files without comments to explain them.

Make the suggestion formally, please.

Be sure to use the filename of UnknownName.txt   because UnknownNames.txt (with an s) does NOT work.

Yup. Got that T-shirt... first time we got it to test, the wrong name for the file was given to us. ;-)

Also it appears that these name exceptions are only for the Potential problem report and that other areas of Legacy do not refer to the exception list.

Where else would you like this to be used? I routinely use up one of my Tags so that I can exclude folks with my unknown surname [--?--] from being looked at by the FamilySearch module, so I would like to see that tool have knowledge of this file.

Capitalization DOES matter, 'Child' and 'child' should both be entered if you want to exclude all references of child.

Did not know this. But I am fairly anal when it comes to names.

This should also be submitted as a suggestion.

So in my UnknownName.txt   file I have

Unknown Child Living Infant Unnamed Baby UNKNOWN child

Unknown UNKNOWN

The first line is for given names, the second line for Surnames.

I know that a lot of files you get might come through with given names like Living or Private. If possible, I try to genderize them ... ie, if I can figure out if the person is male or female, I will assign their name appropriately (eg, Mister, Miss, Son, Daughter, etc.) This provides more information to the reader. Then, when you create a report that obscures them as living or private, those names are from Legacy, but whilst you are working with them, you know what gender they are, at least.

NOW... the next thing to do is purge your Family File of the Unknown family. ;-)

I know it is all too common practice, but using Unknown or ? ?? ??? or Unk in your data is not considered best practice. I have learned that in many parts of Europe, NN is the standard.

I invented [--?--] as my standard about 15+ years ago. I liked it because it would never be confused as a real name in any language, and it sorts before the real alphabetic names in an index or name list.

I mentioned it in a few email postings on various RootsWeb lists I participate in and it is, of course, throughout my web sites. Others started adopting it.

A few years ago there was a report on Rootsweb that it was being used in a significant number of the WorldConnect databases as the unknown surname. And, I believe that someone had a note in some NEHGS article using a variation of my string.

Try it, you may like it. ;-)

john.

Jay

On Sun, Dec 1, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Jay 1FamilyTree < 1familytree....@gmail.com> wrote:

John,Â

The Help text is not total clear on the UnknownName.txt  requirements...Â

the example shows

Child ???

[--?--] NN ???

so does that mean then in a given name field with only the text "Child" or "???" Â will be ignored when creating potential problems? Â

Does capitalization matter??     what if its "child" ?

Will this text file allow for 'comments' ?

Like Â

#Given names

Child ???

#Surnames  Â

[--?--]

Just most of us do not automatically know how to do these type customizations!    But yet another reason why Legacy is so great!Â

Thanks

JayÂ

Could you or someone provide an example of the contents of unknownname.txt ?

On Sun, Dec 1, 2013 at 3:56 PM, Kurt Kneeland < kurt-kneel...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Great tip on the UnknownName.txt file.  I‬™ve also seen mention of .txt files for customizing the GeoCodes data.  Are there any other of these little know customization techniques?

Â

From: John B. Lisle [ mailto:leg...@tqsi.com]

Sent: Sunday, December 01, 2013 4:41 PM

To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com

Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] Favorite Option

Â

C G, Randy, et al,

When we first got to testing the PP Alerts, I felt the same way you are feeling. Today, the number of PP Alerts that pop up incorrectly - as determined by your settings - is very small. And when they happen, tell us about them so that the developers can look into them and get them fixed.

There are two activities you can do that can significantly reduce your "false alarms".

1/ If you have various naming conventions for unknown given and surnames, you can list those in a file called UnknownName.txt. Help has the details. This allows you to still find problems in names but exclude the bulk of the names that you expect to not conform to "standards".

2/ The NEW category for Potential Problems called "Gaps" are going to drive many people wild. I think you need to adjust your use of those Gap settings. Please note that the settings for the Potential Problems Report determine what types of problems you want Alerts for. You can set the Gaps settings there for different time periods, or just turn those settings off, if you choose not to worry about those settings. I know I have fiddled with those to suit the needs of my family files.

These instant PP Alerts are one of the great benefits of L8 as they alert you while you are entering data if you have entered something that does not make sense.

And, as mentioned by someone else, the ability to know when you add a new person that the person may be a duplicate of someone already in your file, can save you a ton of work.

L8 is going to change the way you do research and lots of folks do not like to change their habits. In the long run, these features will promote your research to being more accurate and better respected.

Just my opinion... I could be wrong...

john.

At 03:31 PM 12/1/2013, C.G. Ouimet wrote:

Especially since many of the problems are really false alarms … Too many fallse alarms leads to ignoring real ones …

Â

Â

C.G. Ouimet

Kingston ON

Â

From: Randy Clark [ mailto:ceddaco...@gmail.com]

Sent: December 01, 2013 03:22 PM

To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com

Subject: [LegacyUG] Favorite Option

Â

I love Option 8.11 as it lets me turn off those annoying warning symbols.

Legacy User Group guidelines:
http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp
Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009:
http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyusers.com/
Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009:
http://www.mail-archive.com/legacyusergroup@legacyfamilytree.com/
Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp
Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com).
To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp