Re: [Gramps-users] Places in 4.X vs 3.X

[PeterMerchant <pet...@ho...>]

On 02/03/15 13:14, Tim Lyons wrote:
> TJMcK wrote
> ....
> SO, I was hoping that the Gramps wiki would have a concise and detailed
> topic regarding places and how to convert places from v3 to v4 --- but I
> found nothing!  Did I miss something or is there no official help for this
> (even if it is in non-english)?  If not, could we please make it a
> priority to get a help topic for this, as I'm wondering whether I should
> proceed with my converstion to v.4 (and right now am hanging in limbo
> because of this matter).
>
> ....
>
> I only have one Family Tree with nearly 1000 people and 390 places. I have
> mainly used 'Place Name' to record what is in the Source, and 'Location' is
> mostly empty. But where I have filled in the locaion, I have a mix of (e.g.)
> UK, England, Wales, United Kingdom etc.
>
> My advice would be, BEFORE UPGRADE:
>
> (1) Don't even think about upgrading from 3.4.x or 4.0.x to 4.1.x until you
> have sorted out your places. [1][2]
>
> (2) The upgrade only uses the data in 'Location', it ignores 'Place Name'.
> So you need to make sure the data in Location is well organised.
>
> (3) "The upgrade will work well if the main locations are used to hold the
> full place information." [3]
>
> (4) 'Alternate Locations' are not really supported in 4.1.x, so it is
> probably best to remove them before the upgrade. [4]
>
> (5) Check your data in Place Tree View. If it doesn't look good in that view
> it will be terrible after upgrade.
>
> (6) Try to make the hierarchy consistent for all places. [5]
>
> (7) The place completion tool is good for making systematic changes to data.
> [6]
>
> (8) Make sure you do a trial upgrade before you switch to 4.2.x [7]
>
>
>
>
>
>
> For new users, I thoroughly recommend the video tutorials.
>
> For existing data, a great deal of thought is needed on how to organise the
> data.  I think I want to store the place information from the original
> source in 'Place Name' and something like the current address information in
> 'Location'. For UK, this would normally make the 'Location' hierarchy
> City/County/UK. Based on the video tutorial, I am changing all the above
> countries to UK. Now that Royal Mail deprecates county, it is not always
> obvious what the County is (e.g. Edinburgh), so I need to look in a website
> with 'Traditional county names'.
>
> I am particularly undecided what to do about London. For example I have
> 'Lambeth, Surrey', when this was presmably a town. But now this is just a
> district of London, and London does not really have any county associated
> with it. If I use Middlesex and Surrey (which is what applied for most of
> historic time), what do I do when I don't know whether a Place is north of
> south of the Thames?
>
>
> [1] This upgrade has a much greater potential for making a mess of your data
> than any previous upgrades. It doesn't loose information, but it can produce
> an unexpected structure.
>
> [2] this comment
> http://gramps.1791082.n4.nabble.com/Blank-place-names-on-migration-from-3-4-8-to-4-1-1-tp4669026p4669109.html
> says "I expect that most users will have to tidy up their places after the
> upgrade.  However, this only has to be done once." It seems to me that doing
> it after the upgrade is MUCH more difficult than before!
>
> [3]
> http://gramps.1791082.n4.nabble.com/Blank-place-names-on-migration-from-3-4-8-to-4-1-1-tp4669026p4669109.html
>
> [4] Alternate locations are not lost on upgrade, it is just that they are
> not so fully supported.
>
> [5] For example, if you use City/County/Country for some places in
> Country=UK, I would use it for places in UK.
>
> [6] For example, I changed the Country to UK for all cases where the City
> was London.
>
> [7] I am fortunate that on Mac OS X, the Gramps application comes as a
> separate bundle, so I can have many different versions of the program
> available at once. I don't think this is so simple on Linux or even on
> Windows.
>
> Regards,
> Tim L
>
I think that these points could be part of the Wiki. Is there a section 
there for 'upgrading Gramps'?

As has been pointed out there is a difference between UK, GB and 
England. I have not bothered with UK or  GB and use England, Scotland, 
Wales etc as my top level. I also have not worried about a county  when 
setting London. It is just 'London,England'. A lot of my ancestors come 
from Lancashire, and I have used the historic place names where possible 
and not Manchester. This locates them more accurately, and in some cases 
prevents problems of duplicate place names in the same vicinity.

And yes, I did my place naming exercise after the upgrade. This 
discussion had not occurred then so I didn't know any better.

Just my thoughts, Peter