Questions

[Mathemagician]

Hello to all from Canada!

In preparing the English Help file (yes, it WILL be done!), I have come across a few things that I can't figure out completely (or at all!). This thread will be dedicated to these kinds of issues. If anyone - moderator or user, knows anything about these issues, please feel free to comment.

1. In the Input dialog, Pictures/Files - Info tab: there is an item "Alternative (i.e. Alternate) path". What is this, and how is it entered? Or is it not functional?
2. I am finding references (in the English language file - English.lng) and in the Options/Plausibility check (I have renamed to Integrity check) of underscores being used to denote a 'preferred' first name (erroneously called nickname). However, the Input dialog has a place for both "Nickname" and "Main name" (preferred name?). If Integrity checks are done during input, entering 1 or 2 underscores in front of any of the first/given names causes an 'error'. Is the use of underscores an old feature, now removed/deprecated? If not, how do you use them?

Thanks for any and all comments/replies, and Merry Christmas!

[Marcus]

1. In the Input dialog, Pictures/Files - Info tab: there is an item "Alternative (i.e. Alternate) path". What is this, and how is it entered? Or is it not functional?

In opposition to the full (or absolute) path this is the relative path. Relative to the location of your current Ahnenblatt (or Gedcom) file in which the pictures and files are linked.

1. I am finding references (in the English language file - English.lng) and in the Options/Plausibility check (I have renamed to Integrity check) of underscores being used to denote a 'preferred' first name (erroneously called nickname). However, the Input dialog has a place for both "Nickname" and "Main name" (preferred name?). If Integrity checks are done during input, entering 1 or 2 underscores in front of any of the first/given names causes an 'error'. Is the use of underscores an old feature, now removed/deprecated? If not, how do you use them?

The underscore feature is deprecated since the new dialog (the complete tab "name" ist new!) of version 2.80.
But there are already wishes to let us do it with the underscores for a quicker input - so it may just come back.
The underscores denote a "Rufname" - the commonly used first name, if there are more than one. It is not the nickname of a person, though some people use the feature for marking nicknames too.
Example: George W. Bush was marked as "_George_ W." (or "_George_ Walker") in the first name field.
I for myself would (respectively had, since it doesen't work this way now) even use it for Bill Clinton by typing "William _Bill_" in the first name field. Which is formally not correct, since "Bill" is not part of his forenames and more of a nickname.
The field to which those names got imported (still get, if loading a file from version 2.74 or earlier) is that in the bottom right corner of the "name"-tab - called "main name" as of now.

I would suggest (maybe) to not rename the plausibility check to integrity check, since it does have a slight different meaning. At least I think so ... where "Plausibilitäsprüfung" is more a weak "could be right" (fits some constraints) where integrity check sound more like "100% accurate".
Marcus

[Mathemagician]

Marcus,

Thanks for the answers - I thought that the underscore thing might be from an older version. I will just ignore the Option for that (or make a quick comment, re: older version). With the Alternate path - I imagine that this must come from importing something; if you look at the Demo file, the "File path" is (in fact) a relative path. However, I checked my own "family" file; pictures I added have a fully-qualified path as the "File path" and the Alternate is a relative path. Makes sense... I missed that because I was only working in the Demo file. It is probably imported, rather than entered manually.

Re: Plausibility, I might be criticized by an English professor, but "plausible" in my mind (and the dictionary definition) means that something could be acceptable or right (but might not be); it has the "appearance" of being right or truthful. That is a word that is also not used often in common English. Integrity check to me gives an image that "things are where they should be". If you look at the Options for Integrity/Plausibility, they are things like
- "unknown gender" (people should be one or the other, unknown only because of lack of information)
- "persons without connections", not a mistake in entering, but maybe this person doesn't belong, or connections (i.e. parents, siblings) were forgotten
- "GEDCOM compatible dates", not consistent with the proposed date entry method
- etc.
I'm going to leave "Integrity" as it is, but only because "Plausibility" might confound novices. In data processing, you hear of "data integrity", but rarely of "data plausibility" or "plausible data". The word meaning IS correct, but I don't think it's the best fit. Wikipedia has a lengthy article on "data integrity" (at least in English) and they sum it up by saying "data integrity" is the opposite of "data loss". You can't guarantee that the data is correct, just that is in the expected form, etc.

Besides, I already have done a lot of image captures!

I will add to this thread should any other questions come up. Thanks again!

[Marcus]

Yeah, there are some obscurities with the paths in the demo files ... don't know how Dirk is generating them. But they indeed look weird sometimes and at least in the new versions. It is already mentioned in a (german) discussion of the 2.85 version of Ahnenblatt.
So i expect it to become sorted out in one of the next updates.
Marcus

[Mathemagician]

Dear Ahnenblatt gurus,

The English help is progressing steadily. The only tools I have (for some difficult areas), unfortunately, are the German Help, Google Translate, and the Ahnenblatt program itself! Sometimes, I "hit the wall" - the translation is indequate to explain something, and I cannot determine behaviour from using the program. How can I document something I cannot observe...

The Search tool falls into the category above. I understand the "Exact", "AND", "OR" and "phonetic" searches and the relationship with the Tools/Options tab (fields to search), but I cannot find any different behaviour with the "Identical with whole data field" option (on Search dialog), nor can I find any change in behaviour with "Customized search group" ("Closed group search" from translation). Both seem to do nothing. Perhaps the translation is inaccurate, but still I find no change in results when these options are enabled/disabled.

Anyone out there know what these do? Do they even work? (Marcus, are your ears burning?) Thanks in advance for any comments that may help. I plan to post a Beta version of the English help before the end of January - the task is harder than I expected (testing/translation/head_scratching). The Beta version will not be complete - some topics not touched yet - but will provoke comments and suggestions, I'm sure.

[Marcus]

"Identical with whole data field" looks to be broken ... when searching for "Regina Hertha" in the field "First/Birth Names" in the file "Beispiel.ahn" it shouldn't find "Willner, Regina Hertha Klara" since the fields don't match exactly. It looks like the results are just the same as with the 'base option' without recognizing the check-box "Identical with whole data field".

The 'change in behaviour' with the option "Closed group search" is to be seen, after you choose one person of your search results - after you open the 'person-dialoge' with the "Go to ..."-button.
In the title of the dialoge you can see, that there are just a few persons 'left'. With the blue buttons at the bottom of the dialoge you can now easily navigate through just the people who matched your search.
In the "Beispiel.ahn" search for "Martin" and you'll have just three guys in your search results and after hitting the "Go to ..."-button, you'll navigate through this group of three instead your whole file - until you leave the dialoge.
Marcus

[Mathemagician]

History question...

As part of the English help preparation, I have been "monkeying" quite a bit with the English.lng (language) file. I have noticed entries for "Delete entry" in the input dialog, for siblings. While these language entries are present, there is no functionality for deleting entries (i.e links) to siblings. This functionality was in version 2.74 (I found an old version, but did not test). I presume that this was removed by design (and not forgotten somewhere), although I do not see anything in the revision history. Perhaps it is just covered by "modernized user interface" (v2.80).

Any secret information to share on this change? And why just for siblings? I understand how deleting a sibling link has consequences (for other siblings, parents), but the same would be true by deleting links to children, I think - and it works.

(added Jan 7/15) A little snooping in the EXE (RCDATA) reveals that the mechanism from v2.74 ("X" icons to delete siblings) appears to be intact! But... the images ("X") are not visible, hence not available to click. Curious. It looks like they were just disabled (temporarily?) rather than removed.

No rush answering this one - question is more out of interest than necessity...

[Marcus]

Hmm, don't know.
It may have something to do with the way better Gedcom-support in the new versions and the new data-model which is working in the background, and which will support almost all possible entries to a bunch of new fields in the version 3.0 (which is to come ... some day).

Ahnenblatt historically can save connections between sbilings, which are not known in Gedcom. To connect two siblings there, you need at least one parent.

So maybe Dirk hasn't evaluated this to the end, how to proceed with a maximum Gedcom-support and incompatibilities like the old sibling-connection. Maybe (just a thought) he'll delete them permanently if no one is missing them?!
Marcus