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 G: HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF THE DISPLAY COMMAND... There are four GIM LISTS commands that let you print a list that has been created. They are DISPLAY, FILE, PRINT, and PRLIST. In this section we assume that you know what a list is, and how to make one. If you haven't done so already, review the first section in this chapter, which is entitled "An Introduction with Basic Examples". Also, review the DISPLAY family of commands description in the second section of this chapter, which is entitled "A Glossary of GIM LISTS Commands with Examples". In those sections, we briefly introduced the DISPLAY family of commands. In this section, we'll cover it in more depth. OVERVIEW... Of the four DISPLAY-related commands, PRLIST specifies which list you want displayed, and the others specify where and how you want to display the list. DISPLAY sends the list to the screen. FILE <filename> sends the list to a file. PRINT sends the list to the print device -- usually LPT1 -- that you selected in the Setup Area. In addition, the DISPLAY, FILE, and PRINT commands also include keywords that specify the format of the list as it is displayed. All of this will be discussed in detail in this section. EXAMPLE... 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. SYNTAX... COMMAND SYNTAX Before going any farther, let's make sure that it's clear how these commands are used. PRLIST <list name> DISPLAY <none, one, or more keywords> FILE <filename> <none, one, or more keywords> PRINT <none, one, or more keywords> <list name> can be any existing list -- All Persons, All Families, All Notes, any of the Places lists, or any list which you have already created. (Remember: use the LISTS command to see names of existing lists.) <filename> can be any valid DOS filename. <none, one, or more keywords> specifies the format to use when displaying the list. These keywords are described in detail in the next section. GLOSSARY OF KEYWORDS... Listed below are all the keywords that are currently recognized by the DISPLAY family of commands. We have only implemented a subset of all the keywords that are possible here, and it would be a simple matter for us to add more keywords to this list. If you would like to see other keywords added to this list, please contact the GIM Authors. Lists of persons may use the following keywords: AFN -- the person's Ancestral File number BAPTISM DATE BAPTISM PLACE BAPTISM SOURCE NOTE BAPTISM RESEARCH NOTE -- the person's LDS baptism data BIRTH DATE BIRTH PLACE BIRTH SOURCE NOTE BIRTH RESEARCH NOTE -- the person's birth data BURIAL DATE BURIAL PLACE BURIAL SOURCE NOTE BURIAL RESEARCH NOTE -- the person's burial data CHRISTENING DATE CHRISTENING PLACE CHRISTENING SOURCE NOTE CHRISTENING RESEARCH NOTE -- the person's christening data CODE -- the person's "code" value DEATH DATE DEATH PLACE DEATH SOURCE NOTE DEATH RESEARCH NOTE -- the person's death data ENDOWMENT DATE ENDOWMENT PLACE ENDOWMENT SOURCE NOTE ENDOWMENT RESEARCH NOTE -- the person's LDS endowment data GENDER or SEX -- M, F, or U for unknown GENERAL SOURCE NOTE GENERAL RESEARCH NOTE -- the person's "general" or miscellaneous notes GIN and EGIN -- the person's GIN number -- see notes about EGIN in the next section PIN -- the person's PIN number REFN -- the person's reference number SEALPAR DATE SEALPAR PLACE SEALPAR SOURCE NOTE SEALPAR RESEARCH NOTE -- the person's LDS sealing to parents data Lists of families may use following keywords: FIN -- the family's FIN number GENERAL SOURCE NOTE GENERAL RESEARCH NOTE -- the family's "general" or miscellaneous notes GIN and EGIN -- the family's husband's and wife's GIN numbers -- see notes about EGIN in the next section MARRIAGE DATE MARRIAGE PLACE MARRIAGE SOURCE NOTE MARRIAGE RESEARCH NOTE -- the family's parents' marriage data SEALSP DATE SEALSP PLACE SEALSP SOURCE NOTE SEALSP RESEARCH NOTE -- the family's parents' LDS sealing to spouse data Lists of notes may use the following keywords: GIN and EGIN -- the GIN number(s) of the note's owner(s) -- see notes about EGIN in the next section NOTE: Each of the lists of places has its own formatting rules. As a result, none of the lists of places will recognize keywords after DISPLAY, FILE, and PRINT commands. GIN NUMBERS... EXTENDED GIN (EGIN) NUMBERS By now you know that each of your direct ancestors has a GIN number, which makes it easy to find them and their relation- ships to you and to each other. It is often not so easy to find these relationships between other members of your folder who don't have GIN numbers and who aren't direct ancestors. The DISPLAY family of commands offers a keyword -- called EGIN -- which is an extension to the normal GIN numbering system. The extended GIN numbering system is designed to help to you locate a person or family in your folder who is not a direct ancestor. This extension to the GIN number works like this: -- an "s:" means a "spouse of" the person who follows -- a "c:" means a "child of" the parents who follow -- a "p:" means a "parent of" the person who follows So for example, extended GIN numbers look like this: 352 354 5712 You may see simple GIN numbers in a list of EGINs. This simply means that the individuals represented are direct ancestors, so there's no need to use EGINs to identify them. c:76,77 c:176,177 c:354,355 These EGINs each point to persons who are not direct ancestors, but who themselves are children of direct ancestors. For example, "c:76,77" is the child of the direct ancestors who have GIN numbers 76 and 77. c:64, c:,155 These EGINs are a variation of those above. They point to persons who are the children of one or two parents, of whom only one (64 in the first case; 155 in the second case) is a direct ancestor. Specifically, "s:64," is the child of a father who is a direct ancestor, and "c:,155" is the child of a mother who is a direct ancestor. In these cases the other parent could either be missing from the folder altogether, or else could be the result of a multiple marriage, and therefore not a direct ancestor. s:91 s:350 These EGINs are spouses of direct ancestors who are not direct ancestors themselves. Specifically, the person with GIN number 91 is a direct ancestor who married the person with GIN number 90, and also married another husband. That other husband has EGIN number "s:91". s:c:42,43 s:c:70, s:c:,243 These EGINs are a combination of the EGINs listed above. Because the "s:" comes before the "c:", this should be interpreted as "the spouse of a child of". Specifically, the first example is the spouse of one of the children of that parents who have GIN numbers 42 and 43. c:c:8,9 c:c:12,13 Likewise, these are "children of children of" persons with the GIN numbers listed. p:s:91 This EGIN is rare, but will show up occasionally. It means "the parent of a spouse of" the person with GIN number 91. Note: naturally, you will never see "p:91", since parents of persons with GIN numbers also have GIN numbers by definition! p:s:c:140,141 And if you thought that "p:s:91" was rare, note that you may occasionally see this. It should be interpreted as "parent of a spouse of a child of 140 and 141". Note that you may also see empty EGINs. In such situations, GIM was unable to find a link from the person to the direct line in a reasonable amount of time, which usually means that the person in question is too far removed from the direct line anyway; his or her EGIN would be too huge to be of any help, and you'd probably find him or her more quickly with his or her PIN number. COMPLICATED... WHY IS THE DISPLAY COMMAND SO COMPLICATED? In other words, why can't one command be used to display lists instead of four? This section covers some of the theory of design behind the DISPLAY family of commands. Feel free to skip to the next section if this is not of interest. Before GIM LISTS can display a list, it needs to know at least three things: 1. Which list you want to print 2. Where you want the list to go 3. How you want the list to look Theoretically, all of this information could be included in a single command with lots of options. This approach wouldn't be so bad, even though it can quickly lead to a lot of typing, and to very long commands. Its real weakness, however, is that in practice, we know which list we want to print and where we want it to go long before we know for sure how we want the list to look when it gets printed. We like to experiment with the list's appear- ance on the screen a few times before we send the list to the printer. Therefore, since the "which list you want to print" part changes less often, we separated it into its own command, called PRLIST. That way, you don't have to retype the list name every time you experiment with the display keywords. At first, we also thought of separating "where you want the list to go" into its own command, which we called PRDEST. However, we found that in practice, we tended to forget how we had PRDEST set up from one moment to the next, and we all too often found ourselves sending things to the printer that we didn't intend. As a result, we changed things so that the display destination is always part of the list of keywords. However, to reduce the length of commands, we created three separate but similar commands -- DISPLAY, PRINT, and FILE -- rather than including the display destination as an option to a single command. ADVANCED HINTS... It isn't always necessary to specify the PRLIST command. GIM LISTS makes certain assumptions about the name of the list that you want to display. Once you enter the PRLIST command with the name of a valid list name, that value is remembered until you enter the PRLIST command again. This gives you the chance to experiment with the display keywords again and again until you like them, without having to re-enter the name of the list. The exception to this rule comes when you create a new list. GIM LISTS assumes that once you make a new list, you'll probably be most interested in displaying that list. Therefore, after each successful creation of a new list, GIM LISTS replaces whatever list name you had given previously with the name of the newly created list. This may seem like a strange idea, but after using GIM LISTS for a little while, you'll probably find that it's a very helpful and time-saving feature. MORE TO COME... Currently, the display keywords which are used to format lists are interpreted in a fixed order. In other words, whether you specify DEATH keywords before or after BIRTH keywords, the BIRTH keywords will nevertheless be interpreted first. Likewise, whether you specify DATE keywords before or after NOTES keywords, the DATE keywords are interpreted first. Personally, we like it that way. We think it makes the resulting list displays more organized and easier to read. However, there has been a significant interest in various alternative reporting formats, including columnar reports, ASCII-delimited reports suitable for importing into database packages, and so on. We intend to provide several such alternatives in a near-future release. If you have any thoughts along these lines (or would like to prod us into getting on with it already :-), please contact the GIM Authors.