Family Historian User Group

That’s exactly how it works on Linux/WINE as well. The hosting file system is mapped to Z:\, so in my case I’m free to choose a location in the same WINE bottle (C:\, unwise, as Gary noted), somewhere else on the Linux host (Z:\), or on my NAS (mounted in /mnt, as per usual Linux convention). All ei...

Gary - I assume the alternative you are referring to is the newer Windows backup plugin. Once Mike has explained the message you are getting (which looks to me like requesting permission to overwrite an existing backup), could you expand on what you mean by "some sort of loop" please? I've...

Kirk also asked about linking the information back to the original author. One possibility is to create a link to the originator in the note text (assuming they are in your FH project). It won’t show up in the originator’s information, but clicking on the link will take you directly to their record.

Irrespective of an individual’s financial circumstances, it’s hardly reasonable to expect them to purchase additional software just to help others. There are plenty of regular contributors here who are familiar with FTM. How about contacting Mike offline and offering to work with him to improve the ...

“Public” means that I can see your data as well, so I very much doubt that is the case. How are hints supposed to work if they can’t see what you have entered? If you don’t want any of your data to leave the privacy of your PC, I’m afraid that you’ll have to stop using external hints and matches. Th...

Certainly possible, but I would prefer to leave it for a while before submitting a new version for review to see if any bugs surface. In the meantime, you could export the output as a csv file, import into your spreadsheet of choice, and use its string-handling functions to split the filename at the...

The plugin is now available in the Plugin Store . I will leave the link at the top of this thread in place, but it now points to the store version and expires automatically at the end of next week. I noticed that Jane’s original plugin is shown as version 2.0, last updated in 2017, but the Version H...

I may quibble whether pdf is a purely a document format (yes, I do know what the d stands for :) ), as “how do I display my pdf images?” crops up here quite frequently. However, we’re probably getting off agreeing the general principles and more into the weeds of exactly what the plugin does - that’...

Sounds like a good framework. Some initial thoughts - I think I’m fairly relaxed about adding files without specific confirmation, but I can be persuaded either way. Wary of the plugin doing conversions. What happens if a user has pdf files they want to change to images so they display in FH? Will t...

Yes, the original wording was probably a bit woolly, but we’re all on the same page. Effectively, John is adding another general principle, that a plugin shouldn’t break the integrity of the current project and rely on a subsequent step to restore it. That sounds reasonable to me, and limiting the p...

I think it would be reasonable to allow Change All, similar to the way a search and replace box operates.

A completely different type of change probably needs a separate confirmation, but I don't think that will happen very often in a single plugin run.

Would it help to generalise my thinking behind the steps? No irreversible changes without specific and informed user consent (reversible = Edit > Undo plugin updates, not recovering from a backup). No changes that leave files in a potentially unstable state that depends on a subsequent step to corre...

But here it is not even necessary, so it's more of a general approach to be adopted in the future.

Pedantically, they should probably be events rather than attributes, as they occur at defined points in the space-time continuum, but I would do the same as FH does not permit event values, and using the value field is much more visible than relegating the institution name to a note.

Dedicated plugins for that type of action is a good idea. I'm not opposed in principle to making such tools available to users who haven't got to grips with plugin authorship, just wary about what can go wrong if somebody doesn't realise the potential implications of what they are doing.

I wonder if the warnings have made the help text a little complex? I had to read it several times, and I’m familiar with the process. Taking a step back, there might be a much simpler solution. We'll park whether a plugin should be able to leave a file in a potentially unusable condition by changing...

Their London coverage is quite good for users with family in that area, but I too just buy credits as needed.

You can use the date however you want. The vast majority of my media records are document images, and I use the date as the date of the event recorded therein. Most of my people images are not original photos, so the stored image data are of little use to me, and I manually enter my best guess of wh...

I suspect we’ll never get agreement on the preferred UI style (we’re probably at the two extremes, and most users are too polite to express a preference :)) or even the difference between “plugins need to be able to…” and “I want plugins to be able to…”, but how about one simple principle that all a...

It would help if CP defined what plugins can and can’t do, and under what conditions, but they don’t engage with FHUG (Simon hasn’t posted since 2022, or logged on since last summer). Even if I asked them the specific question, I doubt I’d get a direct answer, so we’ll park the debate on fixing the ...

That’s correct - in fact, the plugin won’t let you restore the backup from a different version of FH, as they are not compatible. Where you would use it is where you are migrating to a new PC at the same time. Here, you would install FH6 on the new PC first, then run the restore to get the new FH6 l...

My two penn’orth.. To expand a little on the point I made earlier, I think Store plugins should not be able to create a situation where a file extension is inconsistent with its format. You and Helen have both claimed that it is “necessary”, but that’s a circular argument. IMO, the risk outweighs th...

A quick check of Jackson’s video shows that is exactly what he’s referring to. He’s a regular contributor to these pages, so I’m sure he’ll be along shortly to clarify what has happened to the downloads.

It’s interesting how the two providers have implemented hints. FMP seems to be just a mechanical lookup of their databases, but Ancestry hints are often fuzzier, so can take an overview of of the data and do things like find a female relative under her married name. Much more dross as a result, but ...

Be careful though - the administrative county of London is different to the City of London (not unlike New York City and New York State), so context is key here. Most of modern London wasn’t in London for censuses up to and including 1881, but in the historic counties of Middlesex, Kent, and Surrey....