I need over the 100 characters allowable in Location for Events. By the time I put in the name of the church, town, county, country, location, section number, and grave number, I have run out of my 100 characters. I see that when a report is printed, the allowable 100 characters run over into a second line. John, can we have the rest of that line so we could add more description? There is all this empty space just waiting to be filled. Is anyone else having this problem? Thanks for any consideration, John. Carole

Even without a precise grave location, I'm in trouble with St. Paul Evangelical & Reformed (now United Church of Christ) Cemetery (Bluff Road), Edwardsville, Madison County, Illinois. And yes, I do want all that to print every time. I'm still trying to differentiate among the various "St. Paul" churches in the neighborhood referred to by an earlier researcher. She knew which one she meant, but it's not at all clear to me. Marsha L. Ensminger --- On Fri, 5/25/12, Carole Edwards Caruso <carolec@stny.rr.com> wrote: > From: Carole Edwards Caruso <carolec@stny.rr.com> > Subject: [BK] Number of Characters Allowed > To: bk@rootsweb.com > Date: Friday, May 25, 2012, 6:43 AM > I need over the 100 characters > allowable in Location for > Events. By the time I put in the name of the church, town, > county, country, location, section number, and grave number, > > I have run out of my 100 characters. I see that when a > report is printed, the allowable 100 characters run over > into a second line. > > John, can we have the  rest of that line so we could > add > more description? There is all this empty space just waiting > > to be filled. > > Is anyone else having this problem? > > Thanks for any consideration, John. > > Carole > > 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 >

Marsha- I understand your frustration. You do all this work, and want it to be just so, and limited by the space given. The only thing I can suggest is cutting out spaces and abbreviate whenever you can. And I know it will not look like you want it to on reports, but if you are consistently consistent, your reads will understand your meaning: St.Paul Evangelical&Reformed(ie United Church of Christ) Cemetery(Bluff Road), Edwardsville, Madison Cty, IL Rick Beitler Springfield, MO rabone@gmail.com chertyrock.blogspot.com Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words. ~Saint Francis of Assisi ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Marsha Ensminger <marshaensminger@yahoo.com> Date: Fri, May 25, 2012 at 11:35 AM Subject: Re: [BK] Number of Characters Allowed To: bk@rootsweb.com Even without a precise grave location, I'm in trouble with St. Paul Evangelical & Reformed (now United Church of Christ) Cemetery (Bluff Road), Edwardsville, Madison County, Illinois. And yes, I do want all that to print every time. I'm still trying to differentiate among the various "St. Paul" churches in the neighborhood referred to by an earlier researcher. She knew which one she meant, but it's not at all clear to me. Marsha L. Ensminger --- On Fri, 5/25/12, Carole Edwards Caruso <carolec@stny.rr.com> wrote: > From: Carole Edwards Caruso <carolec@stny.rr.com> > Subject: [BK] Number of Characters Allowed > To: bk@rootsweb.com > Date: Friday, May 25, 2012, 6:43 AM > I need over the 100 characters > allowable in Location for > Events. By the time I put in the name of the church, town, > county, country, location, section number, and grave number, > > I have run out of my 100 characters. I see that when a > report is printed, the allowable 100 characters run over > into a second line. > > John, can we have the rest of that line so we could > add > more description? There is all this empty space just waiting > > to be filled. > > Is anyone else having this problem? > > Thanks for any consideration, John. > > Carole > > 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 > 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

To Carole Edwards Caruso It has been suggested by a couple people for me to have longer locations in a future version. The current fields sizes are listed on page 68 in the BK 6.5 book. Those sizes are what I set up when I designed the data files. I can not change them without creating new data files for a different version of BK in the future. Back in the old days of BK 4, I had 40 characters for locations. When I changed it to 100 I thought that would make everyone happy. If I change it to 150 in the future, I am sure someone will want 200 later on. If I make the maximum 200 or 500 or some large number, then the data files will be larger for everyone, so that is why I picked 100 for BK 6 I am sorry that what you want to type does not fit in 100. You can attach a source to the event or attach a note to the event or attach a note to the location. You may need to abbreviate the location to make it fit in 100 characters. I will try to make it at least 150 characters long the next time I change the data file structure. John Steed ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carole Edwards Caruso" <carolec@stny.rr.com> To: <bk@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 9:43 AM Subject: [BK] Number of Characters Allowed >I need over the 100 characters allowable in Location for > Events. By the time I put in the name of the church, town, > county, country, location, section number, and grave number, > I have run out of my 100 characters. I see that when a > report is printed, the allowable 100 characters run over > into a second line. > > John, can we have the rest of that line so we could add > more description? There is all this empty space just waiting > to be filled. > > Is anyone else having this problem? > > Thanks for any consideration, John. > > Carole > > 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 >

John, If you're considering a change to the file structure, I would suggest a radical change. Break up the single location field into multiple fields, as "The Master Genealogist" does. I got so frustrated by the 40 character back in the "old" days that I went looking for an alternative. I have yet to come up with a location that TMG can't handle. Of course, if you were to break up the location field there would be issues in converting "old" BK data to the "new" format. TMG's import routine did a pretty good job of separating the component parts and assigning them to the appropriate fields. I suspect the commas I used had something to do with it. Also of course, whatever labels you assign to the various fields will cause dissension among users. What works for me won't please Otto... I don't know if there's a way for you to structure them as "field 1", "field 2", and so on and then allow the individual users to add names that make sense to them. Marsha L. Ensminger --- On Fri, 5/25/12, John Steed <brothers_keeper@msn.com> wrote: > From: John Steed <brothers_keeper@msn.com> > Subject: Re: [BK] Number of Characters Allowed > To: bk@rootsweb.com > Cc: carolec@stny.rr.com > Date: Friday, May 25, 2012, 11:17 AM > To Carole Edwards Caruso > > It has been suggested by a couple people for me to have > longer locations in > a future version. > > The current fields sizes are listed on page 68 in the BK 6.5 > book. > > Those sizes are what I set up when I designed the data > files.  I can not > change them without creating new data files for a different > version of BK in > the future. > > Back in the old days of BK 4, I had 40 characters for > locations.   When I > changed it to 100 I thought that would make everyone happy. > > If I change it to 150 in the future, I am sure someone will > want 200 later > on. > > If I make the maximum 200 or 500 or some large number, then > the data files > will be larger for everyone, so that is why I picked 100 for > BK 6 > > I am sorry that what you want to type does not fit in 100. > > You can attach a source to the event or attach a note to the > event or attach > a note to the location. > > You may need to abbreviate the location to make it fit in > 100 characters. > > I will try to make it at least 150 characters long the next > time I change > the data file structure. > > John Steed > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Carole Edwards Caruso" <carolec@stny.rr.com> > To: <bk@rootsweb.com> > Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 9:43 AM > Subject: [BK] Number of Characters Allowed > > > >I need over the 100 characters allowable in Location > for > > Events. By the time I put in the name of the church, > town, > > county, country, location, section number, and grave > number, > > I have run out of my 100 characters. I see that when a > > report is printed, the allowable 100 characters run > over > > into a second line. > > > > John, can we have the  rest of that line so we > could add > > more description? There is all this empty space just > waiting > > to be filled. > > > > Is anyone else having this problem? > > > > Thanks for any consideration, John. > > > > Carole > > > > 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 > > > > 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 >

I am still using BK5g,, as did my late wife. Thus we were quite limited in the amount of space we could use for locations. Our ancestry is nearly all in England, so I used the Chapman County Codes as abbreviations, which was common practice there. New codes were added following the 1974 redistricting., and are contained in BS 6879:1987.// There is a good commentary in http://www.coxresearcher.com/definitions/admin.htm . For Canadian provnces I use the two-letter abbreviations used by Canada Poste. For the USA I use the two-letter abbreviations of the US Postal Service. At 02:17 PM 5/25/2012, John Steed wrote: >To Carole Edwards Caruso > >It has been suggested by a couple people for me to have longer locations in >a future version. > >The current fields sizes are listed on page 68 in the BK 6.5 book. > >Those sizes are what I set up when I designed the data files. I can not >change them without creating new data files for a different version of BK in >the future. > >Back in the old days of BK 4, I had 40 characters for locations. When I >changed it to 100 I thought that would make everyone happy. > >If I change it to 150 in the future, I am sure someone will want 200 later >on. > >If I make the maximum 200 or 500 or some large number, then the data files >will be larger for everyone, so that is why I picked 100 for BK 6 > >I am sorry that what you want to type does not fit in 100. > >You can attach a source to the event or attach a note to the event or attach >a note to the location. > >You may need to abbreviate the location to make it fit in 100 characters. > >I will try to make it at least 150 characters long the next time I change >the data file structure. > >John Steed > > > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Carole Edwards Caruso" <carolec@stny.rr.com> >To: <bk@rootsweb.com> >Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 9:43 AM >Subject: [BK] Number of Characters Allowed > > > >I need over the 100 characters allowable in Location for > > Events. By the time I put in the name of the church, town, > > county, country, location, section number, and grave number, > > I have run out of my 100 characters. I see that when a > > report is printed, the allowable 100 characters run over > > into a second line. > > > > John, can we have the rest of that line so we could add > > more description? There is all this empty space just waiting > > to be filled. > > > > Is anyone else having this problem? > > > > Thanks for any consideration, John. > > > > Carole > > > > 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 > > > > 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

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. Jim Ramaley Gettysburg, PA ----- Original Message ----- From: John Steed To: bk@rootsweb.com Cc: carolec@stny.rr.com Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 2:17 PM Subject: Re: [BK] Number of Characters Allowed To Carole Edwards Caruso It has been suggested by a couple people for me to have longer locations in a future version. The current fields sizes are listed on page 68 in the BK 6.5 book. Those sizes are what I set up when I designed the data files. I can not change them without creating new data files for a different version of BK in the future. Back in the old days of BK 4, I had 40 characters for locations. When I changed it to 100 I thought that would make everyone happy. If I change it to 150 in the future, I am sure someone will want 200 later on. If I make the maximum 200 or 500 or some large number, then the data files will be larger for everyone, so that is why I picked 100 for BK 6 I am sorry that what you want to type does not fit in 100. You can attach a source to the event or attach a note to the event or attach a note to the location. You may need to abbreviate the location to make it fit in 100 characters. I will try to make it at least 150 characters long the next time I change the data file structure. John Steed ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carole Edwards Caruso" <carolec@stny.rr.com> To: <bk@rootsweb.com> Sent: Friday, May 25, 2012 9:43 AM Subject: [BK] Number of Characters Allowed >I need over the 100 characters allowable in Location for > Events. By the time I put in the name of the church, town, > county, country, location, section number, and grave number, > I have run out of my 100 characters. I see that when a > report is printed, the allowable 100 characters run over > into a second line. > > John, can we have the rest of that line so we could add > more description? There is all this empty space just waiting > to be filled. > > Is anyone else having this problem? > > Thanks for any consideration, John. > > Carole > > 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 > 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

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

Hello! On Friday, May 25, 2012 Carole Edwards Caruso wrote in [BK]: CEC> I need over the 100 characters allowable in Location for CEC> Events. By the time I put in the name of the church, town, CEC> county, country, location, section number, and grave number, CEC> I have run out of my 100 characters. I see that when a CEC> report is printed, the allowable 100 characters run over CEC> into a second line. CEC> John, can we have the rest of that line so we could add CEC> more description? There is all this empty space just waiting CEC> to be filled. CEC> Is anyone else having this problem? CEC> Thanks for any consideration, John. CEC> Carole I wrote John in December 2009 about this problem. Perhaps we get now a expansion to 150 characters. -- Otmar Mayr