* Easy military facts entry?

[Valkrider]

I have recently come across a whole bunch of military records. Entering the detail fact by fact is pretty tedious to say the least. (I do have the military fact set installed).

Does anyone have a strategy (Ancestral Sources for Military would be great) for the entering of all the detail in a multi page attestation for instance. Choosing Attested, then height, hair, rank, regiment etc etc as separate facts takes for ever.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Sounds like a classic application for a plugin that creates multiple facts (using variables you define) linked to the same source... A field for each value extracted from the source, and then one button click to make all the Facts.

I'm up to my neck, or I might volunteer to write it... it's the kind of thing that could be easily customised for other complex source types (list of values which you can fill in with corresponding facts that you could select -- saveable as templates that you can reuse).

How long can you wait? I'd love to do this.

[Valkrider]

Helen

I can wait there is no rush. I have to do one urgently for a relative so will do that manually and after that no desperate rush.

I may even have a look at doing this as a plugin myself. I have no experience of LUA all my dev experience is website so html, css and php.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Colin,

I'm getting to grips with Lua after a lifetime developing in other languages, but (fortuitously) have been spending most of my time recently working on templates that create records of various types.

My suggestion would be a plugin that:

• Allows you to define a set of target fact types (with parameters) -- a 'template'(with New/Save/Copy/Delete/Rename facilities -- maybe Import/Export as well)
  
  Allows you to select (a) individual and (b) a template and (c) a Source -- maybe the plugin could create the Source record including Media; and then to specify the parameters and create the corresponding facts for the individual. Should be possible to not create a fact if the user chooses not to i.e. the data is unavailable)

I've already got some components that would be useful and am happy to share. Or to do it myself -- let's not duplicate effort though.

[Valkrider]

Helen

You are a lot further along than me. I am hoping to get some time next week to explore LUA and I will take a look and see if it something that I can do if not I will let you know. I agree with your thoughts they are the same as what I thought.

[tatewise]

An alternative approach is to have just one custom Military fact with labelled meta-fields in the Note field.
See how_to:narrative_report_fact_sentence_templates#custom_fact_fields|> Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates > Custom Fact Fields for detailed example.
Although that is presented in the context of Narrative Sentences, the technique works for any context.

So your Military fact would have labelled fields for Height, Hair, Rank, Regiment, etc, etc.
They would be created by default with each newly added fact, so you don't need to remember the labels.

Then you only need to add one Military fact, fill in the Note labelled field values, and add one Source citation.
The unused labelled fields can be deleted.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Mike, an approach based on templates would support that approach or the creation of multiple facts...

[Valkrider]

Helen

I had a quick look at LUA last week and have decided to stick to websites rather than dipping my toe in to the murky waters of LUA. So if you do get chance to develop something I would be more than happy to test it for you.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Colin,

Happy to give it a go -- I've just 'finished' the plugin I was working on (pending bug reports and enhancement requests...) so I'll start on this one. Might take a while.

[ColeValleyGirl]

Colin, see New Multifact plugin (16685) which might be what you want (or as close to it as I can get).

[Valkrider]

Thanks @Helen I will give it a go.