"Tom Wetmore" <ttw4@verizon.net> wrote in message news:6e17c48d-3582-4557-aee1-3bbcc72624d5@googlegroups.com... > Tony, > > Our discussions often boil down to me thinking you over analyze things, > and you thinking I under > analyze things! In this case I think we're in basic agreement. > > What you call a location seems to be what I think of just a spot on the > globe, completely devoid of name > or religion or geo-politics. This is what you mean by the 2D aspect of > place/location. Whether a location > should be just a spot, or a small area, or a large area I don't think > matters -- it's somewhere on the > globe we are interested in. That spot/area is effectively timeless, it's > been there throughout history > without regard to name, political control, or religion. > > Then comes the name/"place" dimension, which is, dimensionally, a forest > of overlapping containment- > based, named location trees that vary over the dimensions of time, > language, nationality and religion. > This seems more complex than your +1 indicates. The point here is there is > no simple containment > tree that works. The time and "purpose" dimensions require a much more > complex forest structure if we > truly wish to understand what a location has been called and what places > it has been considered to "be > in" over all of history. > > A place authority would be a representation of all those forests in all > those dimensions. Plug in a > location, output a list (actually a forest) of named-locations that > contain or contained that location. Specify the time period or the > religious component, and the authority could limit its output to the > appropriate places that would have encompassed the location at some > historical epoch. I don't > understand why you wouldn't be interested in entering a location into an > authority and then getting a > "history" of all the places that location has been "in" over history. For > me this is the FUNDAMENTAL > need for anyone interested in accurately understanding the places where > genealogical events occurred. > > I have a Place data type that I use in a variety of software, genealogical > and otherwise. A Place object is > simply a node in one of these forests. It can be contained by any number > of other Places and it may > contain any number of other Places. In "technical terms" this forest that > truly represents the "naming > history" of a place, is a potentially very complicated directed acyclic > graph (DAG), which must be the mathematical structure than any place > authority would use as its "database.' A single, "low level" Place > can therefore be a member of ANY NUMBER of hierarchies. This handles all > issues of parishes that cross > county boundaries, or in another context, national parks that are located > in more than one county. The > "gazetteer" itself, which can be thought of as the external data that > creates these graphs, is nothing > more than a text file that lists the thousands (ultimately millions) of > containment relationship between > JUST PAIRS of places, along with properties that specify type of place, > time dimension, language, etc. > > One lack of my software is that it doesn't have a way of dealing with > nameless locations, points or > areas. One must start with at least a single name. Clearly a real > authority must bridge the gap between > locations and names. With my software you could enter, say, Georgia, and > it would let you know that > you could be talking about a state in the USA or a country in Europe. You > could enter Kings with a type > of county and it would let you know all the states/provinces/countries > that contain places named Kings > County. That is the software can then take partially specified names and > then provide the lists of all > possible completely specified Places that correspond. If you are lucky > there would only be one such > "resolved Place;" if you aren't lucky then your data is ambiguous until > you learn more. > > Tom Wetmore I think we only disagree on the multiple hierarchy issue Tom. I believe that you can create a single hierarchy which includes geographic and administrative entities, and then represent the other information (e.g. ecclesiastical, political, judicial, etc) as attributes, or properties, of the leaves in that main hierarchy. This is working well for me at the moment. I have seen "nameless places", such as cottages in very rural landscapes that had neither house name or number, but these were generally addressed (at the time) by the name of the family living there. Tony Proctor

Tony, I disasgree that things can be done with a single hierarchy, say based on modern times, that then points off to associated data to handle earlier time periods and other dimensions. Here's an example. Poland. The history of Poland is complex. Every location in Poland fits within an incredible number of different hierarchies. Locations have been in many countries over time (Poland, Germany [West Prussia], Austria, Russia, Lithuania, ...). When in those nations every location was in a separate political hierarchy. And each of those hierarchies changed over time as the political leaders rearranged boundaries. In parallel there were the religious hierarchies. Poland has been divided into catholic parishes, protestent arrangements, Jewish arrangements, all overlapping in time and in space. Towns and cities had/have a multiplicity of spellings depending upon the nationality of the speaker or the purpose of the hierarchy. I don't believe this complexity can be handled by a single hierarchical tree with associated information. If I am wrong, however, the job might be a bit easier, but I don't think so. Your "associated information" would have to become so complex in a case like Poland that I bet you'd throw up your hands and head for the graph solution. You can see the beauty of the solution that some people use, that is, record place names in terms of the place names in use today. It allows them to avoid this whole messy area! But I think it's pretty darn weird to record an event that occurred in Connecticut before the American revolution as having occurred in the United States. I record those events as occurring in Connecticut Colony (and I would add Great Britain as the country in the cases where it were needed). Tom Wetmore > I think we only disagree on the multiple hierarchy issue Tom. I believe that > you can create a single hierarchy which includes geographic and > administrative entities, and then represent the other information (e.g. > ecclesiastical, political, judicial, etc) as attributes, or properties, of > the leaves in that main hierarchy. > This is working well for me at the moment. I have seen "nameless places", > such as cottages in very rural landscapes that had neither house name or > number, but these were generally addressed (at the time) by the name of the > family living there. > > Tony Proctor

Tom Wetmore wrote: > Tony, > > I disasgree that things can be done with a single hierarchy, say > based on modern times, that then points off to associated data > to handle earlier time periods and other dimensions. > > Here's an example. Poland. The history of Poland is complex. > Every location in Poland fits within an incredible number of > different hierarchies. Locations > have been in many countries over time (Poland, Germany [West Prussia], > Austria, Russia, Lithuania, ...). When in those nations every location was in > a separate political hierarchy. And each of those hierarchies changed over > time as the political leaders rearranged boundaries. In parallel there > were the religious hierarchies. Poland has been divided into catholic > parishes, protestent arrangements, Jewish arrangements, all overlapping > in time and in space. > Towns and cities had/have a multiplicity of spellings depending upon the > nationality of the speaker or the purpose of the hierarchy. > > I don't believe this complexity can be handled by a single > hierarchical tree with associated information. If I am wrong, > however, the job might be a bit easier, but I don't think so. Your > "associated information" would have to become so complex > in a case like Poland that I bet you'd throw up your hands and > head for the graph solution. > > You can see the beauty of the solution that some people use, > that is, record place names in terms of the place names > in use today. It allows them to avoid this whole messy area! > > But I think it's pretty darn weird to record an event that > occurred in Connecticut before the American revolution > as having occurred in the United States. I record those > events as occurring in Connecticut Colony (and I would > add Great Britain as the country in the cases where it were > needed). Well, uh, but, I would have sworn "Great Britain" was an island, not a country. Things were happening in Plymouth Colony and in Virginia before the UK existed (170-something wasn't it?) so you can't claim that John Rolfe's child was born in Virginia UK, England or Great Britain. Virginia was a stand-alone real estate scam until 1625 when it became a Crown Colony. If saying something happened in 1616 in Virginia USA is wrong, so is saying it happened in 1616 in Virginia Great Britain or Virginia UK. At least by saying USA you put people on the right continent. No sneezable trick these days. Cheryl

"Tom Wetmore" <ttw4@verizon.net> wrote in message news:e0eb94af-6026-4e0a-b16b-ff33960b7a04@googlegroups.com... > Tony, > > I disasgree that things can be done with a single hierarchy, say > based on modern times, that then points off to associated data > to handle earlier time periods and other dimensions. > > Here's an example. Poland. The history of Poland is complex. > Every location in Poland fits within an incredible number of > different hierarchies. Locations > have been in many countries over time (Poland, Germany [West Prussia], > Austria, Russia, Lithuania, ...). When in those nations every location was > in > a separate political hierarchy. And each of those hierarchies changed over > time as the political leaders rearranged boundaries. In parallel there > were the religious hierarchies. Poland has been divided into catholic > parishes, protestent arrangements, Jewish arrangements, all overlapping > in time and in space. > Towns and cities had/have a multiplicity of spellings depending upon the > nationality of the speaker or the purpose of the hierarchy. > > I don't believe this complexity can be handled by a single > hierarchical tree with associated information. If I am wrong, > however, the job might be a bit easier, but I don't think so. Your > "associated information" would have to become so complex > in a case like Poland that I bet you'd throw up your hands and > head for the graph solution. > > You can see the beauty of the solution that some people use, > that is, record place names in terms of the place names > in use today. It allows them to avoid this whole messy area! > > But I think it's pretty darn weird to record an event that > occurred in Connecticut before the American revolution > as having occurred in the United States. I record those > events as occurring in Connecticut Colony (and I would > add Great Britain as the country in the cases where it were > needed). > > Tom Wetmore > > >> I think we only disagree on the multiple hierarchy issue Tom. I believe >> that >> you can create a single hierarchy which includes geographic and >> administrative entities, and then represent the other information (e.g. >> ecclesiastical, political, judicial, etc) as attributes, or properties, >> of >> the leaves in that main hierarchy. > >> This is working well for me at the moment. I have seen "nameless places", >> such as cottages in very rural landscapes that had neither house name or >> number, but these were generally addressed (at the time) by the name of >> the >> family living there. >> >> Tony Proctor You've misunderstood me Tom. You're one of the few people who has read my research pages but maybe you've forgotten that my geographical/administrative hierarchy has time-dependent up-links. Hence, a village that existed in county A before one date, and county B from that date onwards, can be represented accurately. The village exists as named entity, as do the two counties, and properties/attributes/history can be attached to any of them. It's only the relationship between them that is time-dependent. If a street is deemed to be in a particular ecclesiastical parish then all I was saying before is that this information can be recorded as a property of the entity in the place hierarchy, as opposed to in a different type of hierarchy or some type of hybrid hierarchy. I'm not hoping to convince you that this is the right way (smiling to myself here) since this is still a research project. I just wanted to clarify my approach since I believe it certainly has some mileage (i.e. worth consideration). Tony Proctor Tony Proctor

Tony Proctor wrote: > > "Tom Wetmore"<ttw4@verizon.net> wrote in message > news:6e17c48d-3582-4557-aee1-3bbcc72624d5@googlegroups.com... >> Tony, >> >> Our discussions often boil down to me thinking you over analyze things, >> and you thinking I under >> analyze things! In this case I think we're in basic agreement. >> >> What you call a location seems to be what I think of just a spot on the >> globe, completely devoid of name >> or religion or geo-politics. This is what you mean by the 2D aspect of >> place/location. Whether a location >> should be just a spot, or a small area, or a large area I don't think >> matters -- it's somewhere on the >> globe we are interested in. That spot/area is effectively timeless, it's >> been there throughout history >> without regard to name, political control, or religion. >> >> Then comes the name/"place" dimension, which is, dimensionally, a forest >> of overlapping containment- >> based, named location trees that vary over the dimensions of time, >> language, nationality and religion. >> This seems more complex than your +1 indicates. The point here is there is >> no simple containment >> tree that works. The time and "purpose" dimensions require a much more >> complex forest structure if we >> truly wish to understand what a location has been called and what places >> it has been considered to "be >> in" over all of history. >> >> A place authority would be a representation of all those forests in all >> those dimensions. Plug in a >> location, output a list (actually a forest) of named-locations that >> contain or contained that location. Specify the time period or the >> religious component, and the authority could limit its output to the >> appropriate places that would have encompassed the location at some >> historical epoch. I don't >> understand why you wouldn't be interested in entering a location into an >> authority and then getting a >> "history" of all the places that location has been "in" over history. For >> me this is the FUNDAMENTAL >> need for anyone interested in accurately understanding the places where >> genealogical events occurred. >> >> I have a Place data type that I use in a variety of software, genealogical >> and otherwise. A Place object is >> simply a node in one of these forests. It can be contained by any number >> of other Places and it may >> contain any number of other Places. In "technical terms" this forest that >> truly represents the "naming >> history" of a place, is a potentially very complicated directed acyclic >> graph (DAG), which must be the mathematical structure than any place >> authority would use as its "database.' A single, "low level" Place >> can therefore be a member of ANY NUMBER of hierarchies. This handles all >> issues of parishes that cross >> county boundaries, or in another context, national parks that are located >> in more than one county. The >> "gazetteer" itself, which can be thought of as the external data that >> creates these graphs, is nothing >> more than a text file that lists the thousands (ultimately millions) of >> containment relationship between >> JUST PAIRS of places, along with properties that specify type of place, >> time dimension, language, etc. >> >> One lack of my software is that it doesn't have a way of dealing with >> nameless locations, points or >> areas. One must start with at least a single name. Clearly a real >> authority must bridge the gap between >> locations and names. With my software you could enter, say, Georgia, and >> it would let you know that >> you could be talking about a state in the USA or a country in Europe. You >> could enter Kings with a type >> of county and it would let you know all the states/provinces/countries >> that contain places named Kings >> County. That is the software can then take partially specified names and >> then provide the lists of all >> possible completely specified Places that correspond. If you are lucky >> there would only be one such >> "resolved Place;" if you aren't lucky then your data is ambiguous until >> you learn more. >> >> Tom Wetmore > > I think we only disagree on the multiple hierarchy issue Tom. I believe that > you can create a single hierarchy which includes geographic and > administrative entities, and then represent the other information (e.g. > ecclesiastical, political, judicial, etc) as attributes, or properties, of > the leaves in that main hierarchy. > > This is working well for me at the moment. I have seen "nameless places", > such as cottages in very rural landscapes that had neither house name or > number, but these were generally addressed (at the time) by the name of the > family living there. The obvious problem with creating hierarchies is -- who gets the final say on what goes in? Then since clearly hierarchy means something different to each of us, does your hierarchy begin in the Milky Way Galaxy and work its fumbling way down to 123 West Main Street or does it go the other direction? In either event, does a church parish out-rank a civil parish (where both exist -- or, I guess, at all). And, in either event of either event -- how will the hierarchy indicate to the reader that "Glaxon Parish" as a place-name is incomplete, or whether said parish is civil or church? And yeah, we're in the wet weeds here, but these points have to be considered. IME, the best time to find out about unsolvable problems is before you commit significant time, effort, and/or money. Cheryl