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To be understandable we need to be able to use full words where appropriate.
To be computer readable we need to seperate separate the parts in a way which a script can easily recognise and, more importantly, in a way which would never occur in real language. So it would be no good to mark a ''name'' section with the word ''name'' if we also can use the word name somewhere in the file where it is not meant to be a marker.
To be simple enough to remember the system should not be too complicated, after all GRAMPS Gramps is meant to store the real information, this is just a supplement.
== What 's in a name-parts do we need? ==
It would be nice if we could have files called
Marriage of Mary Angus Jones and Matthew Williams, 2nd Dec 1923 (William Angus is to Mary's right).jpg
But this meets only one of the criteria above, that of ''understandable filenames''. How can a computer know who got married? what their surnames are? and so on. And anyway because of the limitations of [[Portable_Filenames]] ''Portable Filenames'' we can't have file names like that. We have to drop the reliance on capitalisation, drop the spaces, drop the comma and drop the brackets. To be computer readable we need to separate the sections with a system of markers to indicate where the surname, event name etc are.
So what sections do we want to be able to identify? Here's a basic list that should be enough for most situation, remember that GRAMPS Gramps stores the more complex information, we're just trying to give a useful structure to our files.
* Surname
* Firstname
* Source
* Note
Some more important criteria. All file names:
* Must be unique
* Must have all necessary information
* Must have no more information than necessary
So if I find a file somewhere strange in my system, or if someone I sent a file to seven years ago says "that file you sent me - that's not Jean it's her daughter" I know where my archive copy of that file will be.
= GEDCOM based =
== Source events ==
The GEDCOM 5.5 standard defines so few events as to be useless. The GRAMPS Gramps XML schema defines no events as these can be made by the user. This all seems fair enough since events are highly culture based. The situations where I think a set of events should be defined are those which will be connected with source records. GEDCOM has a reasonable group of those but they are heavily based in western christian culture. The solution must be language and culture dependent. Here's my list:
'''marriage''' is for an actual marriage event and all the associated documentation, including possible divorce and separation documentation.
EVEN--marriage_SURN--jones_GIVN--mary-jean_SURN--williams_GIVN--matthew_DATE--1923-12-02_NOTE--william_angus_to_right_of_mary.jpg
This could be parsed (by GRAMPSGramps?) as the description:
'''Event:''' Marriage
SOUR--census_PLAC--uk__england__london_DATE--1840-03-21_SURN--jones_GIVN--mary-jean.pdf
This could be parsed (by GRAMPSGramps?) as the description:
'''Source:''' Census
== SWOT analysis ==
Over at Wikipedia there is a good explanation of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis SWOT analysis]. {| border="1"{{prettytable}}
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! Aspect
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= GRAMPS Gramps ID based = {{man note|This is another attempt by [[User:Duncan|Duncan Lithgow]] to find a good system. It is not finished so feel free to add comments and correct any obvious mistakes.}} Here's the records we'll use as examples. They involve Mary Agnes Williams (daughter of John Williams and Anna Matthews). She married Anders Sørensen (son of Anders Sørensen and Anna ?) and they had a daughter Anna Sorensen, note the spelling change. * Census record: mentioning her and her siblings and parents. It is from the 1810 census in the London parish of Dangerfield on Saint John Road.* Portrait: a hand drawn portrait of Mary, undated, assumed to be from before her marriage.* House picture: her parent's Saint John's Road row house in London, from some time around 1810's* Court record: Anders Sørensen was before the district court for drunk and unbecoming behaviour on January 3rd, 1820. Engelfield, London.* Marriage certificate: She married Anders Sørensen, 2nd December 1823, in London.* Wedding portrait: in the picture is Anders Sørensen's father, also called Anders Sørensen (on the back it says that Anders Sørensen's (the son) mother is called Anna).* Birth certificate: of Anna Sorensen (daughter of Mary and Anders) dated January 18th, 1824* Family tree: a hand written family tree called "The Dean family from 1735" by an Angus Dean written in 1972 which connects the families Dean and Williams. == Justification == {{stub}} == Aims == This system tries to meet the following aims:* simple enough to remember* just enough information, and no more* all media for one family name is under one directory (portability for travel)* all media for generating reports is under one directory (for portability) == Record types == The record types tell us what the record is about. Gramps ID's use the first character to denote the type of item the ID refers to. Sticking to something already thought and taking the most relevant ones to stored records these can be used as the following tags for record types: * I-- Individual* P-- Place* E-- Event* S-- Source (see also source types) '''Question'''* Records about repositories?* Correspondence with family?* What about records covering more than one type?* What will happen on old 8+3 file systems? == Record properties == Properties tell us just enough information to make the file name meaningful and recognisable, and split this information up so we can search for parts of it with our file manager. It's the what, where, when, why and how of what's in the record. By making all properties of each record compulsory we avoid extra tags like GN for given name and so on. We can see what a property is by where it is in the file name. * family name is their surname before marriage, but including deed pool changes, MacArthur for example* given name is their official first name* uid is a unique identity, in this example the (original) Gramps ID of the media file* source date is the date in ISO 8601 format when the information left the people or organisation responsible for it* event date is the date in ISO 8601 format when the event occurred or started. YYYY-MM-DD, ie. 2008-12-28* event type is a noun describing the event, chosen from a list of event types, ie: marriage* title is the name of a document (book, letter, census) or object (gravestone, heirloom), ie. williams__arthur_headstone* source author name is the name of the person or organisation most responsible for the information. For people always use family name first followed by two underscores (__), ie: church_of_lds* note is for notes. Names should always be family name first followed by a double underscore == Naming structure == Now we can outline a single schema for all record types in which the following rules apply. * File names are written directly to the file name, not copied from another program.* File names start with a single capital letter representing their record type.* Record properties are separated by two dashes (--). This can not be used for anything else.* Missing information is replaced by a single underscore (_).* Names in notes should always be family name first and separated by two underscores, ie: ''doe__john'' which can be represented as ''John Doe'' or ''Doe, John''.* Place names should start with the largest geographical region followed by a double underscore before the next geographical region, ie: ''oz__far_far_away__yellow_brick_road'' which can be represented as ''Oz, Far far away, Yellow brick road''.* If the family name is unknown it must be replaced by an underscore. This will give three consecutive underscores (___), ie: ''___john''' should always be interpreted as meaning ''[no record], John''.* event types should always be drawn from a list to avoid separate words being used for the same event type. (Maybe use the event list gramps uses?) # <record type>-- (I, P, E or S)# <source type/event type>-- (needs expansion.)# <1st persons family name[__2nd persons family name]>-- (two names for couples or families, alphabetical)# <1st persons given name(s)[__2nd persons given name(s)]>-- (two names for couples, same order as for family names)# <country code__region__city>-- (use as many divisions as needed)# <date>-- (ISO date, YYYY-MM-DD)# <note>-- (usually not needed)# <uid> (a Unique ID, possible derived from the gramps ID) Here's a version of the naming structure for quick reference.
= See also =
* [[Organise_your_records]]* [[Portable_FilenamesOrganise your records]]
= External links =
* [[http://www.northernjourney.com/photo/articles/filenaming.html File Naming Conventions for Digitally-stored Images]]
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata Metadata] at Wikipedia - data about data
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_tags Meta tags] at Wikipedia
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(computer_science) Ontologyin computer science] from Wikipedia* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_science Library science] from Wikipedia* [http://www.43folders.com/2006/10/23/file-naming?page=2 File naming] at 43folder.com* [http://whatdoiknow.org/archives/000442.shtml File Naming / Organization Methods?] from [http://whatdoiknow.org What do I know?] [[Category:Documentation|F]][[Category:Developers/General|F]][[Category:Media]]