This is the way to do it. Ken sent this out back in November 2003: ----------------------------------------- Hi,
Those who are interested in the Geo Database and are currently using it should check out some files that allow you to improve and customize how the Geo Database works. A few have asked to have "County" or "Co." added to locations. Others have asked to have other text added. A given location can be entered by users in varying formats and this makes searching harder to find the correct location. In order to handle some of these differences we have four text files that I'd like for those who are interested to check them out and study them a little and see if there is something you can add to the files that would improve how Geo works for all users. After you install the 16 November 2003 build version 5.0.0.52 look in your Legacy folder for the following four files. GeoCountryCodes.txt GeoStateCodes.txt GeoCountyCodes.txt GeoExtraCodes.txt Do not change the above files. Instead make copies of them and call the copies this: GeoCountryCodes-Alt.txt GeoStateCodes-Alt.txt GeoCountyCodes-Alt.txt GeoExtraCodes-Alt.txt It's important that you make copies and don't change the original files. If you edit the original files and change the filedate then you may not get updates of the files with new builds. So, copy the files and work with the ones you added the -Alt to the name. When Legacy opens the Geo Database it read these files also. Legacy will first check for a file with the -Alt as part of the name and if one exists will open it instead of the original file. This allows users to make changes to customize settings to how they want the Geo Database to function for them. If you did a bunch of work to a file and then downloaded a new update and we had made changes and our file date was newer than yours then our GeoCountryCodes.txt file would overwrite your copy and you would lose all of your hard work. So, make changes to the GeoCountryCodes-Alt.txt file and you will never lose your work. If you saved a backup copy of our original files you could do file compares to see what we changed to see if you would want to add some of our changes to your -Alt version of the file. In the future we'll put all of this data into a database and will add a user interface to things to make it easy for any user to modify/customize things without having to figure out what the text files are all about and how to use them. At this point we are still trying to figure out all of the possibilities of how to make improvements and what types of things users are going to want to do. As you make improvements to your files we would like to know what you are adding or changing so we can see if it's something we feel all users would want so we can make the improvements to the our copies of the files. The Geo*Codes.txt files have some documentation included in the files that may help a little in figuring them out. These are initial releases and I'm sure we will have some good improvements to add to them. I think it would help a lot to include in the Subject line the specific file you are talking about as in: Subject: GeoCountryCodes.txt - your comment. or Subject: GeoExtraCodes.txt - your comment. This will allow those who are interested in following the discussion on this subject easy and those who are not interested can skip them. Thanks Ken McGinnis Millennia Corporation ------------------------------------------------------ Donald E. Paden [email protected] www.padenfamily.org -----Original Message----- From: Robert Mann [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, January 17, 2010 1:15 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [LegacyUG] Customizing Location Format I would like to record all county names as X "county" and use two-letter state abbreviations in all my USA locations. But, I can't find any way to control the location format to that extent. Does anyone know how to modify Legacy's default terminology for locations? Robert Mann Sandy Springs, GA Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
