Mike,
It is very easy on a Public Forum to pick up the wrong idea about people who are posting. You are the fh and genealogy expert. I am good at investigative historical research but I am a beginner at fh, often too dumb to understand the instructions. And I am at home with a very bad cold and not thinking clearly enough to do my "real" work.
So yesterday in that muddled frame of mind I had time to experiment with fh. Not only was I feeling under the weather but I was very cross and alarmed to hear from you that my Emigration data might not export. I experimented with exports to Gedstar and Gedsite not to prove you wrong but because I was frantic and needed to reassure myself. Which happilly I did.
tatewise wrote:What EXACTLY have you done? .
I cant answer this "exactly". If I had known I was plunging in to a problem that might be of interest to others, I might have kept notes. From my point of view I was disobeying you, blundering about and it ended in failure. I felt ashamed of myself for having tried, for having ignored your advice, so I tidied everything up and reverted to normal - deleting all the Fact definition files that might have provided a record of what I did.
I don't believe it is possible to get that second Place field just by modifying the Fact Set Definitions. .
You are probably right. But I will try to describe to you what I did, and you may be able to pin point the obstacle. Remember this is an inexperienced user without much clue what I was doing, and when things did not work, I blamed myself and did something a little different. So there is no real method to what I was trying.
I used note pad. I made a copy of the Standard Fact Definition file, opened it in notepad and copied the portion that covers the Emigration Event. I closed that fact Definition file.
I edited the Emigration Fact Definition text, replacing all references to Emigration with Deportation or was deported. And pasted that into The Custom Fact Definition File. My Custom facts definition file only has two Custom Facts. Event Misc and Research Notes.
If you wished, you could probably replicate this editing more knowledgeably than I can.
I assumed that the combination of the Event sentence with 2 place fields and the codes for the fields required combined to give me the screen view that I wanted for data entry.
After two or three tries, this appeared successful as far as on screen editing goes. I was able to Add Fact, select Deportation, and fill in data. I did this both on my fh project and the sample project. I reported success on the Forum. But when I returned froma break, I had lost it. I though may be I had been dreaming! I blamed myself for failing to save it. Repeated the process and did a massive back up save.
During the afternoon and evening I may have created and then lost the Event about 3 times. But I was still blaming myself and my incompetence.
I wrongly thought that having the 2nd place field on screen and being able to edit it meant every thing was fine. I tested it with individual narrative reports both in the sample project and my own data base. The output was fine.
So my next step was to try export.
What is the Plugin you are talking about, and how do you know it does not like what you have done?
This is the Export GEDCOM plug in. My first trial was to my phone using the Gedstar mode and the sample Project - my data came across to my phone but as you rightly predicted the Event was labelled Emigration. I cant remember whether or not I checking the Fact Definition file to see whether I had left in any references to Emigration. Or whether the conversion for Android simply re-allocated the data to Emigration. In TMG I seem to have had two Deportation Custom Fact Tags, each with a deportation sentence , i.e.Deported from and Deported to, and I see one of them is mapped to GEDCOM EMIG.
I then tried the Gedcom Export plug in in Gedsite mode and that was when I got the error message - a paragraph with details and it froze and I couldnt export any file at all. This was a mega problem. Again I blamed my own ommissions and blunders and after three times, I decided I had been an idiot and was going to pack it all in. The error message was about an infringement of the rules and in Fact Type. Which from the point of view of your plug in was correct.
If you have found a workaround for the second Place field, a lot of people will want to know.
Until I read this, I didnt know anyone was interested. I had been blaming my own ignorance. In view of your post here - I now think that there may have been a pattern to my loss of that custom event type Deportation and its data entry screen.
The fact type remained available as I switched from one project to another. But it vanished if I exited the Program fh. And started the Program up again. Do you think that is a possible explanation?
I seem to remember it even disappeared from my Custom list. My attempts to exit and save intended to save my Deportation fact were probably self-defeating.
So everything you say Mike is absolutely correct.
The question for Calico Pie is why the rules need to restrict our use to just those two Events?
If one is permitted a standard event as an exception, why not allow a custom event?
I am worried about doing further experiments (tho I am still stuck indoors) because I have now created a normal single place custom Deportation Fact and I put some data into it last night. So I dont want to overwrite it. Or muddle up two facts having the same name. For the same reason I dont want to restore the full back up I did yesterday. I dont think that zip file includes Fact types anyway?
There are lots of deportation lists on line from the Nazi period. And the anticipated destination of every train is known. But having a destination on departure does mean that the train arrived there, nor that every person who left on that train arrived at its stated destination. Nor that there is a date of arrival. So a second place field for Deportation would be nice.
Deported with Transport 17, Train 901-12 from Gurs, Camp, France to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 05/08/1942.
As one doesnt have the luxury of two place fields in TMG (or any software I have used) one cant really complain about fh - but it was tantalising to have that possibility. And if there were anything you thought I could do, I might be tempted to try again.