Dennis, As you know, all of our major cities comprise 3 fields, with the possible exception of London where 2 is acceptable (and Manchester also 2, because it is my home city and, therefore the greatest). Putting aside my aesthetic aversion to a location full of commas, I have not come across a double comma meaning "not applicable". Hence when I see them my instinct is to wonder what is missing.
The short name can be exported for web pages (I'm not sure about reports), but I think is mainly for use within ones own files for compactness on the various screens, and mine certainly are not suitable for export to anywhere! For some reports I think leading commas can be stripped. I do not see any need to 'trick' Legacy when using the actual Locations as the program will pretty well accept anything, up 9 (I think) fields, and in the order used by the country to which they apply. Reading right to left simply improves the ease with which a specific location can be found when one uses a variable number of fields. One only needs to 'trick' Legacy when using the geolocator which assumes the format of town, county, state, country. As I mentioned temporarily adding UK or GB at the end of a location will solve this. I don't actually care what anybody has in their personal files, but when published I do consider that details should follow the custom(s) of the country to which they apply. If only because this makes for much more comfortable reading by the inhabitants of that country - and may, therefore, give a better response rate, not to mention the courtesy showing respect for that country. Ron Ferguson http://www.fergys.co.uk/ -----Original Message----- From: Dennis M. Kowallek Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2010 8:52 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Entering Locations/Places On Thu, 18 Nov 2010 19:53:47 -0000, "Ron Ferguson" <[email protected]> wrote: >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. Ron: The original poster specifically asked about "Lincoln, Lincolnshire, England". You are (of course) correct to say that it should be displayed this way on reports and web pages (and exported). But for the purposes of sorting the Location List, what would be the harm in entering an extra comma? i.e. "Lincoln, Lincolnshire, , England". One normally assumes that the blank placeholder means that a piece of information is "missing" or "unknown". But a user could also use this to mean "does not apply". It would just be a way to trick Legacy into sorting the list in a desired order. No more, no less. Since extra commas can be removed in the output, does this really matter? My discussion with Jerry was essentially a quarrel over "what is the best way" to do something. My stance is that the "best way" depends on what you wish to accomplish. If standardizing on 4 fields provides a benefit, go for it. If one can get the job done with an indeterminate number of fields, go for it. That being said, if I were a stickler for a 4 field convention (which I am not), I would go ahead and use that as the long location name. But I would enter the 3 field (correct) location name as the short location name and display that on all reports and web pages. I don't think there is an option to export the short name in place of the long name (or to remove extra commas). Maybe there should be. *** My comments can be extrapolated to include 5 (or more) field conventions if desired. Maybe "city, township, county, state/province, country". Or "street address, city, township, county, state/province, country". If a field does not apply, just leave a placeholder. *** Just discussing ... not recommending any particular method. -- Dennis Kowallek (LTools) http://zippersoftware.com/ltools http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ltools 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
