English Help Manual, bug in v2.85

[Mathemagician]

Greetings from Canada,

I want to let everyone know that I am currently producing an English Help Manual! I have done this before - yes, it is a lot work, but Ahnenblatt is an exellent program. The manual is well underway, and will be MORE than just a translation of the German Help (Google Translate allows me to read it, but...). I hope to have it ready for first public release early in the new year - January some time, I hope. I am also modifying the English language file (English.lng) to match the manual, and correct some glitches from Othmar's original (good work, Othmar!).

Anyway, in the course of testing/experimenting I have discovered a bug. It appears that somewhere between v2.83 (it works!) and v2.85 (broken!) the date input for DATE_RANGE - specifically "between DATE1 and DATE2" - got broken. The behaviour is such that:

• substitute words (only 1, BET -> between, AND -> and) do not work, and
• if I change the substitute word as follows - GEDCOM.BET=BET\~bet - the routine works, but only for years, not month&year or day&month&year.
• creating a date using "bet" in a .GED file, then writing it out as a .ged file (i.e. Save as...) reveals that the GEDCOM modifier is now written as "bet", not "BET". This doesn't sound like much, but it tells me that 'I think the wires' between the hardwired string "BET" and the language variable string "bet" have become 'crossed'. I did a memory snoop (using HxD hex editor) - the GEDCOM.BET variable IS getting loaded.

No amount of fiddling with the language file wording, etc. will make it work with "between" as a substitute. Also, the DATE_PERIOD expression "from DATE1 to DATE2" exhibits the same behaviour! I had to change the wording of Lothmar's v2.85 English.lng file before testing ("of" -> "from"). All the other modifiers (even INT) seem to work as predicted. Both "between .. and" and "from .. to" work fine in v2.83.

I speak NO German, but I will try posting a shorter message to the German forum (Google Translate). Hopefully someone who reads English and writes German can communicate this to Dirk.

- Allen T.
British Columbia, Canada

[Marcus]

Hi Allen,

thanks for your bug report (and the work on the manual of course)!
I'll send this to Dirk, that he can test the gedcom-interface - I'm quite sure he'll answer here.
Marcus


Just saw the other post. Google Translate isn't perfect, but everbody get's the point. BTW: "Othmar" (like in your first try - not "Lothmar" .

[Mathemagician]

Marcus,

Thanks for the reply!

I received an English email from Dirk about a week ago, but I didn't want to 'push my luck' with English. The German Help manual has a stern warning about using languages "other than German", but perhaps that is outdated.

I also wanted to add to the bug report: the interpreted form of dates (INT) seems quite troublesome, also. I did some testing and found that most examples did not parse properly; but some more complex ones (between .. and ..) did!

For example:
INT JUL 1898 (summer of '98) parses as interpreted 18/07/0008 (summer of '98) with any error, re: GEDCOM compatibility.

I think that form is probably not used much, but maybe it could be looked at while the range and period bug is being investigated.

As I prepare the English help file, I am running into little glitches and bugs (but not many) with testing/experimentation - should I be posting those here? Or is there a better place on the forum for that? Ahnenblatt seems to be quite thoroughly tested - I don't want to be a pest..

[Marcus]

I would suggest that you open a new thread for every "family" of bugs. Even if it may look as a pest, it helps to improve Ahnenblatt and it will make discussion on the different topics a lot easier, if they are not all in one thread.
Marcus

[ako]

Just started using this family tree program and i think its brilliant , the only downside for me is no English instructions so things like trying to view a tree as it only says a printer has to be installed but not physically available , i have no idea how i can fulfill that requirement and theres nothing to assist by way of more detailed explanations or a Manual in English .

[Fridolin]

Hello ako,

welcome to the forum!

I think you're right - there is no english manual, as far as I know.

It sounds as if you already got a good part of your work done without any introduction. Because Ahnenblatt really is simple to handle. But hopefully, you are using a more recent version than named in the thread: The up-to-date version is 2.99e.

It sounds as if you are using Windows 10 as systems software. A lot of software doesn't work without a printer installed in Win10. Some don't have a printer connected to their computer - in that case you can use a virtual PDF "printer" instead. Install it as if it were a printer driver - it will redirect every printer job into a PDF file stored on your computer.

That's what I've heard about the problem - don't have Win10, so never had to deal with that sort of boring things.

Please feel free to ask again, if you don't understand what to do or it wouldn't work.

Good luck!

Frido

[ako]

Hi Fridolin and thank you , Im using windows 7 and i think i have latest version , had a look and it says 2.99e and i remember also seeing V5 at some time when i downloaded program .

Thanks for the advice on printer as i don't have one connected to my laptop , unfortunately im still unsure of how to install a virtual printer in such a way that the program will accept so that i can view the reports and trees on screen .

Played about with the program after importing a Gedcom file with 265 names and associated media , photos etc , all went very smoothly , the viewing tree is the only thing im desperate to get working as from screenshots i have seen online it looks perfect for what i was hoping for .

[Fridolin]

There is a version 3.0 in beta testing - so not published for work at the moment, but in use with some who are testing the software.

I didn't know that Win7 has the same problems with no printer connected. I don't have that problem as I always have a virtual PDF printer driver installed. I use PDFCreator 1.7.3 - it's an older really free version from www.pdfforge.org. Newer versions have a different business style - in PDFCreator 2.x there is a free version with ads, a paying version without ads ("plus") and a "business" version, and you have to choose.

There are a few packets with PDF printer drivers out there in the net, and I think most of them don't demand much more than downloading and clicking on the packet to install them. Just be careful not to install some additional software along with them. Maybe it's good to ask someome in your neighbourhood which PDF printer driver is mostly used in Spain. It's something very common - not only for nerds.

Frido