Otto, Please read my note more carefully before you fire off your typically negative comment. Your "subject for subject" comment after your "etc" in item 7 is strange. I had TWO suggestions. You have 7, well actually only 6, sections -- none of which address my main point that the source citation fields be used for further detail if desired. 1. You are in agreement with me that one should use abbreviations IF they are not confusing. What point are you trying to make that is different from mine? In my case of 8600 locations I had only 1 what was even close to the maximum -- and I have now reviewed it and changed it to be more readable -- and shorter! 2. Why should BK substitute for a history book? There are examples even here in Pennsylvania of some locations having been in as many as 6 counties at different times in history. Should I list all six in the location field? If in compiling a genealogy you want to include a chapter on history or on geography you can easily do so and it will be more complete and more readable than trying to fit it into a 100-character (or even 200-character!) location field. 3. My point exactly. So what is the point of your comment? 4. See number 2. Why keep beating a dead horse. 5. I have over 8000 locations. There are only a few that someone would have trouble locating. Why set up GPS for every location? If GPS is important for a specific location, use a source citation field and put it in. Are you going to search on GPS so that it needs to be a separately indexed field? 6. Your BK must work differently than mine. I can put in a partial location and F8 supplies candidates just like *. Without the *. Nowhere do I say that John should stop development. I said that I am against structural changes if there are good alternatives. I have often found that thoughtful users can themselves suggest work arounds and I have seen many suggestions from readers of this forum that do just that My opinion on avoiding structural changes is based upon a career in programming and systems design, and the managing of teams of such people. I stand by it. There are times when a structural change is required, but it is a tool of last resort, not of first resort. Jim Ramaley ----- Original Message ----- From: Otto Jørgensen To: bk@rootsweb.com Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2012 5:42 AM Subject: Re: [BK] Number of Characters Allowed On Fri, 25 May 2012 23:16:11 -0400, "Jim Ramaley" <jramaley@comcast.net> wrote: >John, > >I am not in favor of structural changes to a program to accommodate a perceived need when that need can be easily handled with a work-around. > >The issue seems to be that folks want to use the Location field in ways that were not intended. > >For example, some want it to be a history lesson by including former names of a location. I recall seeing one some years ago who wanted to include the fact that many current-day European locations were, historically, part of the Holy Roman Empire. > >Some want the location to be GPS exact and while that might be technically possible today, it is not nearly as useful as saying something like "Schlosser's Church, Unionville/Neff, North Whitehall Twp, Lehigh Co, PA . > >I use the location field to help a reader or fellow researcher in understanding enough of the location of a given event to visit or to do further research. When I go into the field I find that your report "Locations with Events" to be of great value. But if locations were so specific that they are unique to a given individual, this report would be much less useful. > >There are at least two ways that greater precision can be given in specifying the location for an event. > >1. Events have a source field. The source screen has several fields > that could be populated to make the citation more geographically > precise. For example, if one wants to specify the section, lot, > and plot number for a grave, there are comment fields, text > fields, and page / reel number fields [that's what I use]. These > print out on reports and you would want to cite a source anyway. > >2. If a location has "changed" because of political activity (example: > a new county is formed out of an old one) it usually takes only a > few characters out of the 100 available to so indicate. For > example, I have ancestors buried in what is now Lehigh County, PA, > but at the time of the probate of the wills the county was > Northampton. If necessary for understanding, I use "Heidelberg > Twp, Lehigh (formerly Northampton) Co, PA" > >I have read that some folks don't want to use abbreviations because they can be confusing. I have found that to be the case only where the political subdivision is not known to the researcher and has been left blank. For example, here in Adams County, PA the westernmost township is Franklin Twp. The next county to our west is also named Franklin. So, giving a citation to "Franklin" but omitting the political subdivision is certainly confusing if citing an event in this area. > >Bottom line: I have 8666 locations in my database. Average length is 27 with a standard deviation of 9. Largest location has 98 characters with only 10 having a length of 70 or more (and those 10 could have been shortened by abbreviations if I saw the value is so doing. > I don't agree mostly. I firstly say that fields are used for what they are specified!! 1. If I have a very long name as specified in a previous answer I see the Idea to shorten that for the reader, but I agree that it is also necessary to give the complete name of location. The example was 108 characters and for me I think that is to long in a book. If you repeat that name of location several time, for all events on the same page (born, birth, marry, death, education etc) My idea was to use a short abr. in the text and have a common footnotes down on the same page telling the complete name. Paper used has normal limit of 112 characters on a line. 2. Names is necessary to also give the political history. Many Norwegian have roots from Sweden and some of the location that now is Swedish was earlier Norwegian. This is normal and similar in many countries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4mtland The sources here is to be found in both Norway and Sweden and have to be specified and it is a need for the reader to understand that. So there is a need to have soma information. W can put that in the detail of Location. It is waist of time and paper to tell this several places in a biography of the family BK has not yet any good way to connect places, nor when they have new administration or changed name Sankt Petersburg = Petrograd = Leningrad For names on person we have a lot of Alternatives names. That seems to be OK, but not for location. For Persons and events we use biography and Notes, but not for Location (here we shall put that information into the biography under Edit or as Note)? To add storry of farms we normaly use http://www.dokpro.uio.no/rygh_ng/rygh_form.html http://www.dokpro.uio.no/perl/navnegransking/rygh_ng/rygh_visetekst.prl?s=e&Vise=Show&KRYSS128347@29149=on and that is sources for our farms with different way of naming/spelling farm-names 3. Many do want to include the history of a farm, a church etc to the history of a family. In stead of repeating this all the time for many persons in the family book you can add that once place and use that in the same way you make index 4. A location can beside change country as a result if was WWII also have different administration whether it is Civil or religion. The borders for the administration are different even in the same countries. 5. GPS is great and we can add coordinates to BK, even if the program not yet have the map connection. But we must also thing forward and not stop thinking of new ideas. 6. Search methods For name we can use * and ? to find the name directly. It is not perfect, but we have only F8 for location. On both we should be able to use the function "including" 7. Etc So I can continue with subject for subject. It is good future to have the possibility in the program, but that does not mean that everybody do have to use them all. And that is up to you to enter information into the program and it is up to you to use the possibilities. We can not tell users to not use the modern technique. We must hope that John can add it and give us the option to use the program, also in the future. It is also important that there will come new users, younger than we oldies will take the program forward to new generation. To stop developing the program is a bad idea -- Otto Jørgensen http://www.bkwin.info/ All email is checked by NORTON Remember - Use the Archives at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/search ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to BK-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Hello Jim! On Sunday, May 27, 2012 you wrote in [BK]: JR> Nowhere do I say that John should stop development... John looks over the horizon and is open to new minds. My previous experience is, that he tries to install features, which gave a compatibility to other Genealogy solutions. The expansion of the fields of places to 150 characters is just one example. -- bye, Otmar Mayr

On Sun, 27 May 2012 07:41:05 -0400, "Jim Ramaley" <jramaley@comcast.net> wrote: >Otto, > >Please read my note more carefully before you fire off your typically negative comment. > >Your "subject for subject" comment after your "etc" in item 7 is strange. I had TWO suggestions. You have 7, well actually only 6, sections -- none of which address my main point that the source citation fields be used for further detail if desired. > >1. You are in agreement with me that one should use abbreviations IF they are not confusing. What point are you trying to make that is different from mine? In my case of 8600 locations I had only 1 what was even close to the maximum -- and I have now reviewed it and changed it to be more readable -- and shorter! > >2. Why should BK substitute for a history book? There are examples even here in Pennsylvania of some locations having been in as many as 6 counties at different times in history. Should I list all six in the location field? If in compiling a genealogy you want to include a chapter on history or on geography you can easily do so and it will be more complete and more readable than trying to fit it into a 100-character (or even 200-character!) location field. > >3. My point exactly. So what is the point of your comment? > >4. See number 2. Why keep beating a dead horse. > >5. I have over 8000 locations. There are only a few that someone would have trouble locating. Why set up GPS for every location? If GPS is important for a specific location, use a source citation field and put it in. Are you going to search on GPS so that it needs to be a separately indexed field? > >6. Your BK must work differently than mine. I can put in a partial location and F8 supplies candidates just like *. Without the *. > >Nowhere do I say that John should stop development. I said that I am against structural changes if there are good alternatives. I have often found that thoughtful users can themselves suggest work arounds and I have seen many suggestions from readers of this forum that do just that > >My opinion on avoiding structural changes is based upon a career in programming and systems design, and the managing of teams of such people. I stand by it. There are times when a structural change is required, but it is a tool of last resort, not of first resort. You can do it just in the way yhou want. No problem Allready to day there is an option to shorten name doe om chart and report We want an option to shorten names in reports. And we hope John will do it We will use in Personally I have about 30000 persons in my database and about 7000 different location and about 1000 mastersourses and ditto 1000 masterSources. We want good reports and the number mention above is of no minor interes for my grandparents and relatives. They are interested that my Granduncle is burried i Alaska, but not so mucg on what exact grav. Hoever that information is taken well care of in my data and I can easerly print reports with all details both for location and lkines in a specific chuchbooks or census, but mostly that are for recerch work, not for common family reading. It is possible that we in scandinavian have done the work in BK different than yours, but we are a great number of scandinavian doing the same and that is also according to our tradition way of handling sources and information. Mostly all our sources are free of use and mostly all links are permently and by that that is used a lot and the way of using sources is common by all of us. May be myou shoukld install the Norwegian or Danish version and use that for you data and try the <f1> and if not understanding, The Google translate will help you BK does not substitute a history book, but history around farms etc, also gives a lot information why so many Norwgian did Emigrate to USA, Cana, Australia, Hawai etc That is very important for a family book and understanding of the life of all my relatives. The general historybooks does not tell about the poor situation on small farms with 10-16 children and wifes that did die in bith or male died at sea and lett behind widows on a small farm with 10 children. That is an importan jhistory of a family. At leas that is important information for most Norwegian in this hobby. -- Otto Jørgensen http://www.bkwin.info/ All email is checked by NORTON

On Sun, 27 May 2012 07:41:05 -0400, "Jim Ramaley" <jramaley@comcast.net> wrote: >Your "subject for subject" comment after your "etc" in item 7 is >strange. I had TWO suggestions. You have 7, well actually only 6, >sections -- none of which address my main point that the source >citation fields be used for further detail if desired. I did not answer specific onn this. Well I might have 7 wishes, but as John know, I have many, many more and have so for several years. But I do not put them to the list as there are alway someone who do not like new facilities Denmark and Norway are working together and Chri (in Denmark) and myselves (in Norway) works together and do inform eachother on all question and mail to John. Chris and I do support aour countries. But only few of them are fowarded to the list. John makes a good job and even if we sometimes have to wait (for different reason) the program becomes better and better and more modern as times go. -- Otto Jørgensen http://www.bkwin.info/ All email is checked by NORTON