Adding Surname to Truncated Source Names in RM9
Thanks. I had deleted my message after changing the extension to .zip and successfully extracted the .rmtree file undamaged, according to 7-zip.
Seeing the data was very informative. After much exploring, I came up with appending a list of surnames of those people who 'use' the source enclosed in square brackets. If the surname already exists in the source name, it's not appended. I'm betwixt and between whether that is a good thing because the framed list is where one would intuitively look. But maybe it lends itself better for reiterating after editing the database. Not sure. And I started out thinking that Couple type uses should present their Surnames as [husband=wife] but switched to separating their surnames for space efficiency (shown only once in the list instead of something like [husband,wife,husband=wife] if the source was used in support of their individual facts.
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I think what you show would be very helpful 🙂
Thanks again for working on this 🙂
Matthew
A downside to this approach of appending surnames to the Source Name is with lumped sources. You have one added automatically in an Import with 3430 citation uses. That translated into a Source Name that takes up almost 1-1/3 pages of a 75 page report on just its citations. I thought RM might be in trouble as I waited a few minutes before heading off to put away some groceries and brew a tea, fully expecting a crash but the preview was up on my return.
Had the long list of surnames been appended rather to the Citation Name, they would not even appear in the Source List report although I suspect that will be a datum that will get added in some future update - I'm pretty sure I've seen it requested and it would seem logical. Then it will be a problem for those who go extremely lumped with one citation reused many times. I'm thinking there needs to be a limit on the length of the Source (or Citation Name) to prevent them from becoming impractical (Source List doesn't wrap-around or pop out the full value) or having adverse effect on performance.
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I thought the sources had been split... I didn't realize I had a source with that many citation uses! I'll have to find and delete that dang thing. I would agree there should be some limit on the length of source names (just as long as its longer than what RM wants to cut them off at on import). I like the results in the temp database. I'm looking forward to running it on my live database 🙂
Matthew
I've revised the script to present the surnames as ╣surnamelist╠ to avoid the more commonly used square brackets [surnamelist] as bookends which might have greater probability of programmed truncation at the wrong place or the deletion of information other than a surnamelist when cleaning out old surnamelists at the start of the procedure.
Also checked that a drag'n'drop truncates the Source Name at 256 characters and revised the script's truncation process to properly terminate a dangling ╣surnamelist…╠. A 256 character Source Name is way too long for the single line fields in the Source List and Edit Master Source windows but manageable in the printable report.
Even if a surname is found in the original Source Name, it is now in the surnamelist. My eyes find the scanning easier.
Attached is the publishable script and I will do a post on it at some point. For now, it's ready for you to try out. Be cautious and patient - on the test database you sent me, it takes 20-25 seconds to update 31630 Source Names. It has had to go through a lot of work on many more records to reach that point!
Uploaded files:The published version, slightly revised, is at Source Names - Append Surnames.
Thank you again Tom this will come in very handy.
I'm planning on downloading a lot of source citations from Family Search so being able to re-run this as necessary will be very helpful.
Thank you so much 🙂
Matthew