Software of the Month Club 1996 May

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CHAPTER 11 LISTS OF SIMILAR PERSONS, FAMILIES AND NOTES OR SEARCHING YOUR FOLDER FOR SPECIFIC INFORMATION PART B: A GLOSSARY OF GIM LISTS COMMANDS WITH EXAMPLES... In the previous section, you saw four GIM LISTS commands, namely MAKE, FROM, WHERE, and GO. You also saw the ORDER command briefly. Actually, GIM LISTS offers 26 different commands. In alphabetical order, they are: APPEND APPROX CASESENS CLEAR CLOBBER COMMANDS DISPLAY EXACT EXIT FILE FROM GO HELP INTRO KILL LISTS MAKE ORDER PLACES PRINT PRLIST PROMPT QUIT SCRIPT SHOW WHERE Each of these commands will be discussed in some detail in this section. A summary of the information presented here is also available from within GIM LISTS by using the HELP command. For example, type HELP MAKE at the GIM LISTS prompt. The APPROX Command... The APPROX command means exactly the same thing as the CASESENS OFF command. See the CASESENS section below for more details. The CASESENS Command... CASESENS is an abbreviation for "case sensitivity". Case sensitivity is a term that refers to whether or not GIM LISTS pays attention to whether a character string is in upper or lower case. In other words, if case sensitivity is OFF, GIM LISTS will treat "Vermont", "vermont", and "VERMONT" as the same place name. Any search for "Vermont" will also find references to "vermont", "VERMONT", and for that matter, "VeRmOnT". On the other hand, if case sensitivity is ON, GIM LISTS will pay attention to differences in upper and lower case. If you search for persons born in "Vermont", GIM LISTS will not find persons born in "vermont". You must decide which of these searching methods is best for you. If you prefer case sensitive searches, type CASESENS ON (or else EXACT, which is the same thing). Otherwise, type CASESENS OFF (or else APPROX, which is the same thing). If you type CASESENS all by itself, GIM LISTS will tell you whether case sensitivity is on or off. GIM LISTS remembers from one session to the next whether you have turned case sensitivity on or off. Therefore, you'll only need to set it once, and then only thereafter when you change your mind. The CLEAR Command... Until you type GO, GIM LISTS remembers what you typed into the MAKE, FROM, WHERE, and ORDER commands. You may decide that you don't like what you typed, and you may want to start over. The CLEAR command does this for you; after typing CLEAR at the GIM LISTS prompt, anything you have typed into these four commands is wiped out. To see what you have typed into the MAKE, FROM, WHERE, and ORDER commands, use the SHOW command. (See below.) The CLOBBER Command... Normally, if you try to create a list with a name which is already in use, GIM will prevent you, saying that you need to pick a different list name, or kill the existing list. (This is called "noclobber mode".) If you type CLOBBER ON, this behavior is modified, such that if you try to create a list with a name which conflicts with an existing name, GIM LISTS will silently kill the existing list to make your new one. (This is called "clobber mode".) Noclobber mode is the default behavior. You can get it back, after typing CLOBBER ON, by typing CLOBBER OFF. Typing CLOBBER, by itself, will show whether clobber mode is on or off. The list names "All Persons", "All Families", and "All Notes" are reserved, and you cannot create lists by those names even in clobber mode. Also, as described below under the "KILL" command, it is not possible to create a list named "ALL", and this is still true in clobber mode. The COMMANDS Command... This command tells you what commands GIM LISTS will accept (APPROX, CASESENS, CLEAR, and so on). It can be useful to jog your memory, but otherwise, it's pretty boring. The APPEND, DISPLAY, FILE, PRLIST, and PRINT Commands... These commands are all related, and are all used to display existing lists. First, a quick summary: APPEND -- send the PRLIST list to a named file DISPLAY -- display the PRLIST list on the screen FILE -- send the PRLIST list to a named file PRINT -- print the PRLIST list on the printer PRLIST -- tell GIM LISTS which list to display Now, a little more detail: Let's say you want to display a list. If you were just to type the DISPLAY command, GIM LISTS wouldn't know what you wanted to display -- All Persons? All Families? All Notes? Something else? -- and would complain. To keep it from complaining, you first have to tell it what list you want to display, by typing the PRLIST command. For example, let's say you have a number of lists to choose from, and you want to display the one called "Octogenarians". At the GIM LISTS prompt, type "PRLIST Octogenarians" and press the enter key. GIM LISTS now knows what you want to display, so you can type DISPLAY at the GIM LISTS prompt and press the enter key. If the Octogenarians list is a list of persons, you'll see a list of persons' names displayed to the screen. (Note that it's not necessary to type PRLIST in all cases. Just after you've created a new list, GIM LISTS assumes that the new list is the one you want to DISPLAY. Also, if you leave GIM LISTS, but don't altogether exit GIM, GIM LISTS will remember the value you last gave to PRLIST. This means that the PRLIST command is only necessary if you want to DISPLAY something besides the latest list.) You can display more about these people than just their names, though. You can use the DISPLAY command to include their pin and gin numbers, birth dates, death places, burial source notes, or whatever. For details on this, see the section below entitled "How to Get the Most Out of the DISPLAY Command". You can also send lists to the printer or to a file. To do so, use APPEND, FILE, or PRINT commands instead of the DISPLAY command. If you type FILE OCTO.LST, GIM LISTS will send the list to a file on your disk with the name OCTO.LST. If you type APPEND OCTO.LST, GIM LISTS will do the same thing, but will append the list to the OCTO.LST file if it already exists (and will create it otherwise). Lastly, if you type PRINT, GIM LISTS will send the list to the print device -- usually LPT1 -- that you selected in the Setup Area. These commands are all explained in much more detail in Part G of this chapter, "How to Get the Most Out of the DISPLAY Command". See that part for more details. The EXACT Command... The EXACT command means exactly the same thing as the CASESENS ON command. See the CASESENS section above for more details. The EXIT Command... This command is identical to the QUIT command, and causes GIM LISTS to terminate and return to the Multi Area. This same thing will happen if you press the F10 Key or the Escape Key at any time. Note that when you leave GIM LISTS, any lists that you create are remembered by GIM LISTS until you come back. The FILE Command... See the description of the DISPLAY command above for more information on this command. The FROM Command... For details on the FROM Command, see the previous section, entitled "An Introduction with Basic Examples". Note that what you type in after the word FROM must be the name of an existing list, or else GIM LISTS will complain when you type GO. Note also that it doesn't matter whether you type the name of the list in upper, lower, or mixed case; if you type "FROM all persons", GIM LISTS will know what you mean, even though the list is actually called "All Persons". The GO Command... For details on the GO Command, see the previous section, entitled "An Introduction with Basic Examples". The HELP Command... The HELP command is used to, well, get help. You can get some help on any of the GIM LISTS commands by typing HELP <command> and pressing the return key, like this: HELP COMMANDS HELP WHERE HELP PROMPT You can get help with several other aspects of GIM LISTS by typing any of these: HELP OVERVIEW HELP KEYWORDS HELP EXAMPLES And of course, pressing the F9 key will get help at any time. Some of these HELP commands, and pressing the F9 key, will bring up the GIM Help windows. For details about getting around in these windows, see chapter 5, entitled "Getting Help". The INTRO Command... This command repeats the introduction that you see when you first enter GIM LISTS. This is in case you want to read it again after it has scrolled off the top of the screen. Like the COMMANDS command, it can be useful to jog your memory, but otherwise, it's pretty boring. The KILL Command... After you've made a number of lists, you'll find that you don't need or want some of them anymore. When this happens, it's helpful to tell GIM LISTS to get rid of the ones you don't want. This frees up computer resources for other purposes, and also keeps the LISTS command (see below) from getting unwieldy. You do this with the KILL command. Type "KILL <list name>" at the GIM LISTS prompt and press the enter key. Of course, <list name> must be an existing list, or GIM LISTS will complain. Note that you can type "KILL ALL" instead of KILLing each list individually by hand. KILL ALL will remove all the lists (except All Persons, All Families, and All Notes), which can be a handy shortcut. Naturally, this means that you can't name a list "ALL", or the KILL command will get confused. The LISTS Command... After you've made a number of lists with GIM LISTS, it's easy to forget what you named them, which ones haven't been KILLed, and which ones are still available. To see what lists you have available, use the LISTS command. When you type LISTS at the GIM LISTS prompt, you'll see a table that looks more or less like this: P 361 All Persons F 97 All Families N 964 All Notes P 15 Double Spouses P 204 Females N 12 Other Parents The P, F, or N in the first column means that the named list is either a list of persons, families, or notes. (You may also see an X in this column, meaning that it is a list of places. See the section entitled "Six Different Lists of Place Names" for details.) The number in the second column is the number of members of that list. For example, the list called "Double Spouses" contains 15 persons, and the list called "Other Parents" contains 12 notes. (For technical reasons, the size of the list of All Notes is wildly inaccurate.) The MAKE Command... MAKE, followed by a new list name, specifies the name of a list to be created. For details on the MAKE Command, see the previous section, entitled "An Introduction with Basic Examples". Note that what you type in after the word MAKE must NOT be the name of an existing list, or else GIM LISTS will complain when you type GO. Note also that the combination of upper and lower case that you type here will be what is used by the LISTS and DISPLAY commands when this title is written, so choose your case with care. The ORDER Command... To fully understand this command, you should have read the previous section, entitled "An Introduction with Basic Examples", and you should have experimented a little with creating and displaying lists. Once you've done that, you'll notice that when you display the contents/members of a list, they are displayed in no particular order, unless you use the ORDER command. Without the ORDER command, you create a list like this: MAKE Direct Ancestors FROM All Persons WHERE gin NE 0 GO You can modify this sequence to include directions on how to sort the list as it's created by adding the ORDER command, like this: MAKE Direct Ancestors FROM All Persons WHERE gin NE 0 ORDER surname given birth date GO This addition causes the list of direct ancestors to be sorted alphabetically by surname. If two people have the same surname, then they are sorted by given name. If two people have the same surname AND given name, they are sorted by birthdate. When the ORDER command is used, you will notice that the DISPLAY command displays people in the order you specify. A complete list of the keywords ("surname", "given", etc.) that are recognized by the ORDER command is given in the section below entitled "Keywords Used in ORDER Commands". See that section for more details on the use of the ORDER command. Note that use of the ORDER command can slow down the operation of the GO command. We've used the fastest sorting algorithm we know of, but nevertheless, if you try to use ORDER to sort long lists, you may find yourself waiting a while. Experiment with ORDER, and see what you can get it to do, but be warned that it slows things down a bit. The PLACES Command... The PLACES command is a very powerful, very handy addition to the GIM LISTS function. It collates all the place names in your folder into six different lists, sorted and formatted in six different styles. This function can be very helpful in locating place names that are misspelled or incomplete. For details on the PLACES command, see the section below, entitled "Six Different Lists of Place Names". The PRINT Command... See the description of the DISPLAY command above for more information on this command. The PRLIST Command... See the description of the DISPLAY command above for more information on this command. The PROMPT Command... Ordinarily, GIM LISTS prompts you for commands by printing the words "GIM Lists >". However, if you would like to use something else as your prompt, you can use this command. For example, at the GIM LISTS prompt, type: PROMPT Genealogy is fun! Then you'll see what the PROMPT command is all about. The QUIT Command... This command is identical to the EXIT command, and causes GIM LISTS to terminate and return to the Multi Area. This same thing will happen if you press the F10 Key or the Escape Key at any time. Note that when you leave GIM LISTS, any lists that you create are remembered by GIM LISTS until you come back. The SCRIPT Command... GIM LISTS is a very powerful tool, but if you use it a lot, you'll notice that it involves a lot of typing. Some really powerful WHERE commands can get very long, and it's easy to miss a typographical error. Some really useful WHERE commands get used over and over, and it's wasteful to keep retyping the same commands again and again. The SCRIPT command is an attempt to alleviate some of this typing. With the SCRIPT command, you can create a script file with an ASCII text editor (NOT a word processor!), and then simply type SCRIPT <file name> from the GIM LISTS prompt. GIM LISTS will read its commands from this file and execute them exactly as if you had typed the same commands by hand. A SCRIPT command example: ERRORS.SCR... As an example of the SCRIPT command and of script files, see the sample script file in Addendum L of this chapter. When you copy that addendum to a file and strip out the introduction, call it ERRORS.SCR. Then when you type SCRIPT ERRORS.SCR at the GIM LISTS prompt, GIM LISTS will execute the commands in ERRORS.SCR as if you had typed them in by hand. The commands in ERRORS.SCR will create a number of lists of problems or potential problems with the data in your folder, such as persons who died before they were born, or were christened before they were born, and so forth. To take advantage of the ERRORS.SCR script file, go to the GIM LISTS prompt, type SCRIPT ERRORS.SCR, and wait a while. When things stop happening, and the script file is finished, type LISTS at the GIM LISTS prompt to see what lists have been created. Feel free to edit the ERRORS.SCR file with your own editor to add or remove any items you do or don't need. Note that you can create as many of your own script files as you want, and keep them for use whenever you repeat a GIM LISTS search frequently. The SHOW Command... Until you type GO, GIM LISTS remembers what you typed into the MAKE, FROM, WHERE, and ORDER commands. You may want to verify that you typed a certain command correctly, or you may just want to see what GIM LISTS thinks you typed. To do so, use the SHOW command. At the GIM LISTS prompt, type SHOW and press the enter key. Any MAKE, FROM, WHERE, or ORDER commands that you have typed so far will be displayed, with the notation that GIM LISTS is waiting for you to type the GO command, so that it can begin processing. To erase what you have typed so far, use the CLEAR command. (See above.) Note that GIM LISTS remembers what you typed until it makes a non-empty list. If you type GO, and GIM LISTS doesn't find any members to put into your new list, it will retain the values for MAKE, FROM, WHERE, and ORDER. This has two purposes: One purpose is that this way, you can review what you typed in case you feel that what you typed should have yielded a non-empty list. Often, having a second look with the SHOW command can shed helpful light on what went wrong in situations like this one. Another purpose is that if the command you typed failed to produce a non-empty list, you may want to revise the WHERE command slightly -- e.g., change the search from mothers under age 14 to mothers under age 17 -- without having to retype the whole MAKE-FROM-WHERE-ORDER sequence. GIM LISTS adds a handy feature for new users: if you choose, you can tell GIM LISTS to SHOW you your MAKE commands at each prompt. This provides a helpful way to verify that GIM LISTS understood what you typed the way you wanted it to. It also helps to jog your memory. This feature is initially on by default; however, you'll find that as you become more familiar with GIM LISTS, this feature becomes less useful, and eventually, actually an annoyance. You can turn this feature off by typing SHOW OFF, and you can turn it back on by typing SHOW ON. The WHERE Command... For details on the WHERE Command, see the previous section, entitled "An Introduction with Basic Examples". Also, see the next three sections, entitled "Operators Used in WHERE Commands", "Operands Used in WHERE Commands", and "Conjunc- tions Used in WHERE Commands". Note that the WHERE command can be as simple or as involved as you want it to be. When entering longer, more involved WHERE commands, be very careful that you type what you mean to type; this is an area where it's easy to make typing mistakes.