Jerry, I have extracted the piece below from your last post because, to me, it illustrates a point which a number of us have been trying to make. That is that there is *no* compromise, one cannot compromise with facts, and the fact is that we do not construct our locations in a set format. Broadly speaking we go from the smallest place to the highest, but the number of steps in between can vary wildly.
Our history goes back a long way before America was first settled, and our history is part of the location names which we find in different parts of the country. They might reflect the former Viking strongholds, the Romans, the Dutch, and before them the Celts. I go on for over 2000 years of our history and illustrate using different administrative units for all of this period. We cannot regularise our location into any set number of fields, there isn't one. Fortunately, as others have said Legacy can handle this without a problem, once one realises that *there is no standard format*. For similar reasons, much of Europe has the same inconsistences. America may consider itself to be a bit lucky (or maybe not), but when the English/Irish etc. settlers went over there they took with them the ideas of administration which were the most modern in the world at that time - basically ours. However they had the advantage of not having any historical baggage, and built using a clean sheet. Whereas for us we had the history mentioned above which meant that our system had to incorporate many existing structures and hence comprises structured variability. I was once a senior member of an organisation about which the President said, "it exists in a state of stable instability" - pretty much like our locations! Ron Ferguson http://www.fergys.co.uk/ -----Original Message----- From: Jerry Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 11:49 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Entering Locations/Places My kind of four division method works very well "out of the box" with TNG (The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding). If any of the schemes of the UK people do that, I'll definitely take a second look. BTW, I didn't mean to say the UK folks are doing it wrong. Obviously, if there aren't four divisions there, that's the way it is. I'm just trying to focus on how we compromise, if we have to, but do the job in the interest of the average user, especially the brand new user. Thanks for the input... -Jerry/ http://www.MerriamFamilyTree.org On 11/18/2010 1:28 PM, Dennis M. Kowallek wrote: > On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 18:06:17 -0500, Jerry<[email protected]> > wrote: > >> I must >> be missing something if it works well for you and sorts perfectly, but >> maybe we'll have to discuss off-list because it's getting too >> controversial. > It's not getting controversial ... although this does get discussed > quite often on the LUG. And telling the UK listers that they are doing > it wrong is always a mistake. ;-) The moment you brought it up I smiled > and thought to myself ... "I hope he is wearing his flak jacket." Then I > started counting down from 10 ... waiting for Ron's inevitable reply. > > I personally don't use right to left sorting. But I know others who do > and it works for them. I use left to right sorting (without problems) > and find myself changing the sort order all the time depending on my > needs. Keep in mind the sort order is just a tool that helps you locate > a location. It is not meant to be set to one value and never touched > again. > >> Maybe some of you record everything totally different like >> California, Los Angeles instead of Los Angeles, California ?? > AFAIK, the sort order on the Location List screen ONLY affects how that > list is displayed. You still enter them in the various location fields > in left to right order. So this is not a problem at all. Maybe this is > the point you are missing. > 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
