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Brad Miller

Varying the location verbiage in sentences

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I have dozens of places entered which are either 1) imprecise or 2) rural locations. When the location is given as near a town I have entered the word "near" in the Detail (L2) field. Other locations are given by directions from a more precise location so I have entered something like "S. of" or "farm 1-1/2 miles north of" in the Detail field.

 

The problem is that the sentences created for tags using these locations include a comma: "near, Dillsburg, PA" for example. I think I could create a second place style and use it only for these places, altering the output template for that place style to remove the comma. Is there an easier way to accomplish this? Obviously I don't want to create custom sentence output for every tag that uses this convention.

 

Anyone have other ideas? I should mention also that these are situations where I do want the directions to print out in reports. If I am simply inserting directions to the location for my own purposes I use the comment field for the place in the Master Place List. Or I put them in the memo field of a tag and exclude them from the output.

 

Thanks,

 

Brad Miller

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Brad,

I use place styles myself and haven't had any issues except:

 

When using SS, the full place including the near will be hyperlinked.

In the place index, the near will be part of the place.

 

For me this is a non issue.

 

Here's an example of a page without the places indexed.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancest...Gambill/p15.htm

 

Notice in Rutherford County, TN and on the banks of Rutherford Creek located in Williamson County, TN Both of those are done with place styles.

Here are some examples of place styles I use:

 

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancest...placestyles.htm

Edited by GenerationGoneBy

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Brad,

 

You could also enter the modifier in the local sentence structure.

 

 

This approach and styles are the two ways to deal with this. I prefer using the sentence structure and Teresa prefers using styles. Each to his/her own devices.

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Thanks Theresa & Jim for your responses.

 

Jim: I assume by the local sentence structure you mean that you would only have "Dillsburg, PA" in the Master Place List (MPL) and then you'd add the extra details like "near" or "farm S. of" in a custom sentence --- most of these are used in Residence tags in my case. Seems like that would make a lot of custom sentences, unless I'm missing something. But it would reduce the number of places in the MPL.

 

Theresa: Thanks for the links. To date I've only used one Place Style and I've only recently begun paying much attention to sentence output. Your approach is a nice one and also solves the problem of the default pronoun "in" not being appropriate for every location. I had been trying to fix this with using roles for some of the tag types, but wasn't completely satisfied with this. That's another topic, however.

 

I was going to ask if I had to go into the MPL to change the place style when entering a new location in a tag but I see there is a button on the Tag Entry screen for this purpose. I have a few other questions about how this works out but I guess I'll have to try it out to see.

 

Thanks again,

 

Brad

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Ok, I have added a second place style to use for imprecise locations, removing the comma after the [Detail] field. This works fine in the output sentence, however now I'm getting the following:

 

John Doe died on Sep 23, 1884 in near Herington, KS at age 74.

 

So I've successfully removed the comma, but I have a pronoun problem. For the Residence tag I had made extensive use of Roles to fiddle with the pronouns (among other things) and ended up with a fairly long list of Roles. The one to handle "near" for a Residence is:

 

[P] <|and [PO]> lived < [L]> <[D]> <[M]>

 

The space in front of [L] got rid of the unwanted pronoun.

 

I thought it would be nice to deal with this pronoun in the place style but I wasn't successful. The Output Template for the custom style is:

 

<[Addressee], ><[Detail] ><[City], ><[Township], ><[County], ><[state], ><[Country], ><[Zip], ><[Phone], ><[LatLong]>

 

I tried putting a space in front of the Addressee and in front of the Detail but this didn't work; I still get the pronoun "in". Any suggestions? Or is this even possible to do this way? Maybe I have to use the Roles or custom sentences?

 

Thanks! Brad

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Let's say you want your style to be Near a city. Your output template needs to be

<[Addressee], ><[Detail] ><near [City], ><[Township], ><[County], ><[state], ><[Country], ><[Zip], ><[Phone], ><[LatLong]>

 

THen change the sentence to

[P] <|and [PO]> lived < [L]> <[D]> <[M]>

 

 

That will give you Sally lived near Herington, KS at age 74.

 

You will get a warning telling you there is data in the template that doesn't belong there. Say OK, because you know that you have added the word near to the template.

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Well, I thought maybe it would be helpful to someone if I posted what I've ended up with. I've ended up not going with Teresa's approach, except to remove the commas, in large part because it would require extensive reworking of my data. It would also require duplicating many places, due to the embedded words in the Output Templates. For example I have a location where the country is "X". I have one tag where the person visited X and another where the person was born in X. Embedding the pronoun "in" in the Output Template --- which is what I was considering doing --- would require me to create two places, "X", one with the "in" and one without.

 

Another problem I had was that if I put "near" into an Output Template (Place Style), then my sentences would state "in near City, State."

 

So here is what I've ended up with. I created a second Place Style called "Rural", which is identical to my "Default Style" except to remove the comma. I already had "Rural" Roles defined for any tags which used one of these places. So when I have a location which is "near Town, State" or "S. of Town, State", I select both the "Rural" Role and the "Rural Place Style.

 

Seems like every solution I tried had a drawback and the same was true with what I've ended up with. Since I'm using the Role in an unconventional way to get rid of the pronoun "in", if I have a Tag Type which makes use of special Witness Roles AND the Rural situations, I've had to create more Witness Roles to accommodate the Rural situation. So let's say there is a rural Funeral and I have a Pall Bearer Role already; I'd need to create a "Pall Bearer Rural" Role to create the desired sentence output.

 

For me anyway it seems like it would be preferable if TMG would not include the pronoun "in" automatically, but allow me to handle it. Or at least if there could be a way to override this setting, it would be nice. I'm not sure this would have solved all of my problems, but at one point in my musings it would have seemed helpful!

 

Thanks,

 

Brad

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For me anyway it seems like it would be preferable if TMG would not include the pronoun "in" automatically, but allow me to handle it. Or at least if there could be a way to override this setting, it would be nice. I'm not sure this would have solved all of my problems, but at one point in my musings it would have seemed helpful!

Brad,

 

That part you can do - just turn off the preposition in Report Options. Of course you then to have to handle it yourself when you want it. I find it easier to leave it on and handle the exceptions with a local sentence.

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