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FTA, CENS and NOTE

Discussion in 'Family Tree Analyzer' started by PhilGee, Jul 11, 2015.

  1. PhilGee

    PhilGee LostCousins Member

    I use Linux for most of my computer activity, so I have only recently installed FTA on my "Win 7" virtual machine. I now wonder why I delayed as it has found quite a few errors already! I should add that my underlying database is actually spreadsheet based, for personal reasons, and I generate GEDCOM files of families/family groups in a number of different levels of content, such as full or "internet".

    For LostCousins data, I have been developing a special "combined families" generator and run the output through FTA, giving the added benefit of checking for anomalies in the database. As part of the CENS data, I add a note
    though for Ancestry I add it to the CENS entry instead to make it visible
    However, I have found that FTA objects to the NOTE with the 1911 census, flagging an "unknown census ref", but seems happy with it attached to the other years. The "Ancestry" format is always accepted.

    I'm not yet familier with FTA, so not sure if this is intentional.

    Phil
     
    PhilGee, Jul 11, 2015
    #1
  2. Bryman

    Bryman LostCousins Megastar

    I think that the 1911 census has caused all sorts of problems due to the change of format for the references. It is not just FTA that has been affected, I noticed a problem with FMP searches a few weeks ago and am still waiting for that to be corrected.

    I recall that Alexander worked on this for a reported issue some time ago so perhaps you have found an oversight. I am sure that Alexander will see your post and investigate so just have a little patience.
     
    Bryman, Jul 11, 2015
    #2
  3. PhilGee

    PhilGee LostCousins Member

    Thanks, Bryman, I'm not in a hurry as I'm still developing things to be more consistent and produce GEDCOM compliant output suitable for online (Ancestry etc) and local (FH/FTM etc) use, as I also have different "age" cutoff levels and address detail depending on the destination.

    Phil
     
    PhilGee, Jul 12, 2015
    #3
  4. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    The "unknown census ref" report shows any notes it was unable to find census refs in. These will be ANY notes. The idea was that as different combinations of dots, commas, semi colons, ED, Enum Dist, Enumeration District, Edistrict, page, pg, Folio, F, etc etc were entered that I might not have covered some relatively obvious combos.

    So that report shows all the notes where no census ref was found so that users could report "you missed a bit" for a particular format!

    As Bryman correctly points out the 1911 format is radically different from other years so needs special combinations of searches to identify them. Can you list the formats that are failing so I can investigate why. It may be a simple format to add or it may be a tweak you could make in the output.
     
    Alexander Bisset, Jul 12, 2015
    #4
  5. PhilGee

    PhilGee LostCousins Member

    Alexander,

    The following is a short block for the same person. The NOTE gives the person's name and age as on the census image and the implied birth year with the census reference in the PAGE entry.
    FTA reports
    with all 243 unrecognised entries the 1911 NOTEs.

    FTA appears to recognise the PAGE census refs for all but 1911 where it seems to only look for a NOTE.

    Phil
     
    PhilGee, Jul 12, 2015
    #5
  6. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    No Phil, those examples are for CENS records, whether it recognises a census ref for them or not is irrelevant for this purpose as references for actual CENS records are treated as simple comments with no other useful function as it by definition already has a census record.

    What is important for identifying census records is where you don't have a census record and it's had to create one from the notes. That's your 1868 created records. It's the 234 unrecognised records that are the important ones as tweaking the search criteria might identify the missing records. There should be a report to show unrecognised census references this will generate s text file that will tell me what it searched but didn't recognise as a census reference. It's the lines in this file I need to see rather than the GEDCOM source.

    That said there is perhaps some merit in identifying the census refs where you have a CENS records but it's for completeness sake rather than adding anything extra to the equation.

    I suspect the 234 unrecognised are variants of an existing 1911 pattern that needs a little tweak at my end. So if you could list a few lines from the unrecognised report please I'll be able to find out why. I won't be able to fix it this week though as when I power up my laptop it crashes the "medieval" wifi I have at this holiday cottage I'm staying at so I have to stick to just using iPad.
     
    Alexander Bisset, Jul 12, 2015
    #6
  7. PhilGee

    PhilGee LostCousins Member

    Alexander,

    Firstly, as far as I'm concerned, you can leave this on the back-burner until you are home. However, the first five lines of the report (the rest are the same "data" for the ref) are:
    and shows the data from the "NOTE" entry under CENS (as shown my previous post).

    The "Census reference report" lists the 1868 non-1911 entries and shows the content of the PAGE text as the reference - the only entry with that data - (and correctly shows the corresponding FMP page) having ignored the NOTE text, that is why I don't understand the failure to use the same data for 1911.

    Phil
     
    PhilGee, Jul 13, 2015
    #7
  8. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    Phil that looks like you cut n pasted from a grid rather than exporting the data from the the text file created by the unrecognised census ref report. The button is on the census tab at the bottom of the form. It will save a text file that contains the unrecognised data.
     
    Alexander Bisset, Jul 13, 2015
    #8
  9. PhilGee

    PhilGee LostCousins Member

    Alexander,

    Right, I opened the report and did an !export to csv" to get a file, then cut and paste. I missed the alternative, but the following is an extract from "export" option of the same records (by C&P to give the same 5 people).
    I also tried removing the word "Census" from the note, but the result is unchanged.

    Phil
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2015
    PhilGee, Jul 14, 2015
    #9
  10. Alexander Bisset

    Alexander Bisset Administrator Staff Member

    Ok fixed the issue for the next version. It was expecting SN or Schedule Number or Schedule No not just Schedule on its own. Thanks for the info.

    A perfect example of how someone does something perfectly valid but slightly different and the search criteria isn't picking it up. This is what makes census reference pattern matching so tricky.
     
    Alexander Bisset, Jul 14, 2015
    #10
  11. PhilGee

    PhilGee LostCousins Member

    That's me being lazy and not including "Number" or "No" with any of the reference elements (so I am, at least, consistent)! That's what comes of generating my own GEDCOM files from data in CSV files.

    Thanks,

    Phil
     
    PhilGee, Jul 14, 2015
    #11

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