#1205 Recognize the order of places as defined in the head

[Andreas R.]

When a GEDCOM is starting in the HEAD with the lines
"1 PLAC
"2 FORM Town , Area code , County , Region , Country, Subdivision"
it would be fine if PGV will take this information to reorder place information to use it correctly for use with the mapping system.
The Gedcom is created by Heredis11 of BSD Concept.

PGV internally uses the order
- Subdivision, Town , Area code , County , Region , Country

[ggpauly]

Hi Andreas,

I probably can't help you, but I would like to understand your question.

I don't understand the custom order you want to use- it seems like putting the subdivision above country would confuse matters. Unless you're redefining subdivision to mean a region (like Scandinavia) instead of housing development.

Also, you said mapping system - are you talking about Googlemaps? It looks like (for PGV 4.2.3 ) the built-in Googlemaps hierarchy is Max, House, Neighborhood, City, State, Country. I haven't tried to override this, so I don't know how that would work.

[Andreas R.]

Hi ggpauly,

thanks for your reply. I probably didn't describe good enough my problem.

Yes, the built-in Googlemaps hierarchy is Max, House, Neighborhood, City, State, Country. It's an order of precision of the place.

But the standard gedcom output of Heredis is as described in the head of the gedcom:
"1 PLAC
"2 FORM Town , Area code , County , Region , Country, Subdivision"

Subdivision means something like "neighborhood" or "house"

The gedcome standard says that the format of the PLAC tag can be in any order, but it has to be defined, so that thew target software will be able to make good use of it.

That's what I ask PhpGedView to do. Changing the order of the PLAC tag, so that this can be used in googlemaps.

Was this ok as description of my problem?

Andreas

[Stephen Arnold]

Andreas
There are numerous posts and reviews about Heredis' incorrect Master Place Table and the obscure order it uses. It is {b}very[/b] unlikely that we would change PGV to accommodate such a non-standard and misconstructed place hierarchy. It is predominantly french-centric and even then does not follow convention.

Here is a well-written review and recap of all the problems with Heredis software.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~tamuraj/jones2/Heredis10.xhtml

And a quote therefrom:

master place table

Amsterdam, France

When I entered "Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands" in the place field the program turned it into "Amsterdam- Noord-Holland- Netherlands". That is because I should not have done that, there are separate fields for the separate parts of a fully specified place name.
The program has a master place table. I find Heredis's master place table with its modal pop-up dialog box awkward to use and I wonder about its performance in large databases. When I enter "Amsterdam" (city), "Noord-Holland" (province) and "Netherlands" (country) into the right fields, Heredis seems to erase it all. I initially guessed this behaviour has something to do with the database of French places that is in there, and the predictable failure to recognise anything French about that location - despite the fact that it briefly was French territory during Napoleon's reign. Fact is, Heredis does not actually erase it, it is just something awkward in the user interface. Anyway, I managed to get the three part into three fields in the master place list.
Heredis then exports it as "PLAC Amsterdam,,,Noord-Holland,NETHERLANDS,". Note that the country name has been changed to be all capitals. That is an error. Also note the lack of a space after each comma and superfluous comma at the end. I consider that to be errors too.

franco-centric

The real problem with Heredis' master place list is that is entirely Franco-centric, and expects several fields between the city and province. When I enter "Paris", the program automatically expands that to Paris, 75000, Paris, Île-de-France, France" and exports it as "PLAC Paris,75000,Paris,Île-de-France,FRANCE," (note the extra comma again).
I could easily add the municipality (Amsterdam), but what Heredis apparently expects me to enter in between the city and the municipality is a numeric city code. That is just not possible. We have postal codes, we don't have city codes.
Besides, the export format is wrong. When I import the Heredis GEDCOM into PAF, it becomes "Paris,75000,Paris,Île-de-France,FRANCE,". That is not right, and it Heredis, not PAF, that's at fault. The city codes are not part of the place name hierarchy, and no other program expects to have to deal with that. The export should be "PLAC Paris, Paris, Île-de-France, France".
[b][i][color=green]-Stephen[/color][i][/b]