Richard Smith wrote: > "singhals" wrote: >> Richard Smith wrote: > >>> My point is that fuzzy rules *such as* these are useful, not that >>> these specific rules are of universal applicability. In England, >> >> Many posters to this list/newsgroup aren't in England and/or >> don't deal with British research. > > English norms are the example I'm using because they're the ones I'm > most familiar with, and I don't imagine they're will be totally alien > to others on the newsgroup, even if they're not especially applicable > to their own research. But as I just said, rules *such as these* are > useful. The specific rules I was talking about may not be. > >> And, not everyone wants to re-jigger their program. > > Unfortunately, that's precisely the attitude that has resulted in the > current generation of programs, most of which are grossly inadequate. > The "one size fits all" approach doesn't work well, at least not for Lor' God Almighty. If the current one-size-fits-all approach isn't working there's no rational cause to believe any other one-size-fits-all approach (including yours) will work better. ANY approach works better for some folks than for others. NO approach works best for everyone. ALL approaches work for some. > something as complicated as genealogical research. To take an > example, I want my program to know that if I enter a date in 1720, > unless I tell it otherwise, it's in the Julian calendar, but if I > enter a date in 1820, it's a Gregorian date. That's something that > needs customising. In Britain, the calendar change happened in 1752; > in France, in 1582; in Russia, not until 1918. For many people. most > of the time, they'll be dealing with one country and having a default > makes sense; but others might be dealing with a family that moved > around frequently, and for them a default calendar change might be > more of a nuisance than a help. > Far's I can tell, most genealogy programs allow you to say what country you're in and none of 30 or so I've used or seen demonstrated prohibit the addition of OS/NS as appropriate. > I'm far more interested in using (and if necessary, writing) a program > that's flexible enough to cope with the subtleties and ambiguities > that crop up in real life, than something that's easy to use and has a > pretty interface. (That said, I don't necessarily see these as Of you think I prefer pretty over functional, you're sadly mistaken. If you're wanting to change globally the background color or your font color, go for it and God Bless. If you're proposing to permit font, font style and/or font color changes INDIVIDUALLY within a single database -- how can I help? But, IME, subtleties and ambiguities are not susceptible to automated analysis with any reliability, because sure as check the very next after you end testing will FUBAR and bite you on the sit-upon. > contradictory goals.) If I'm going to spend thousands of hours using > the software to organise my research, I certainly don't begrudge a > extra quarter-hour configuring it so that it's right for me. You're > right that not everyone will agree, but it's unlikely that an event- > oriented genealogy program, as opposed to the many existing lineage- > oriented ones, will appeal to them anyway. > Perhaps I've not yet had my weekly allotment of caffeine, but it seems to me you keep changing what you want to do. First you're wanting to write a program that's "better" than what's available. Then when we point out that "better" is fairly subjective, you say you're looking only to customize YOUR database and revert to writing code. Commercial computer programs are written to prevent novices and children from doing irreparable damage to the facts and getting the developer sued; they are rarely written for the purpose of facilitating experimentation by advanced users, because there is no way to ensure that ONLY advanced users use the product. >> Worse, in some cases, families >> combine cultures, norms, religions ... few would want a >> program that forces them to use a different program or >> dataset for each branch of the family. > > A good point, but one that I think can be solved easily enough. The > Gentech data model supports dividing your research into separate > projects. Although they were seemingly designed for entirely self- > contained areas of research, what's interesting is that these projects > do not need to be self contained. It would be easy enough to use them > as a way of dividing research into separate areas to which different > settings could be applied. That way I can apply different settings to > my English, Irish, German and Jèrriais ancestors. > >> More, I'm not sure you can call a rule with enough >> exceptions to fit a "rule", fuzzy or not, because >> eventually, fuzzy logic loses its logic. > > Now you're just arguing about semantics. Would you be happier if I > used the term "cultural norm" instead of "fuzzy rule"? Whatever you No, because I was thinking more of "I before E except ..." which is a standard "rule" in English and American, but which has so much verbiage after the 'except' that it is all-but useless as a 'rule'. [see also, weird vs yield] > call them, they're potentially useful. I want my genealogy program to > draw it to my attention if I have a sixty-year-old woman giving > birth. Certainly it's not impossible, but it's sufficiently unusual > that I want alerting to it. That's something most genealogy programs can be told to do. If yours doesn't, try PAF or Legacy or FTM. OTOH, if you're wanting an event-based program, try The Master Genealogist. www.whollygenes.com Cheryl