Strange sidebar behaviour

[Tony Goring]

In the People sidebar in a family file I have the surname GIL(L)MAN. I have entered the second L in brackets on the person card because some sources spell the name with double L and some with one L. However the name does not appear in the alphabetical list under names beginning with G but at the end of the names beginning with L, being sandwiched between LONGHURST and MARCHANT. Is this some sort of glitch whereby a bracketed capital letter within the name convinces the software that the name begins with that letter? Seems odd to me.
Tony

[Steve W. Jackson]

Re: Strange sidebar behaviour

In the People sidebar in a family file I have the surname GIL(L)MAN. I have entered the second L in brackets on the person card because some sources spell the name with double L and some with one L. However the name does not appear in the alphabetical list under names beginning with G but at the end of the names beginning with L, being sandwiched between LONGHURST and MARCHANT. Is this some sort of glitch whereby a bracketed capital letter within the name convinces the software that the name begins with that letter? Seems odd to me.
Tony

If I had to guess, I'd say that Reunion is interpreting the presence of the "brackets" as you call them (I call them parentheses) in a way that causes it to see the initial three letters as a prefix word. In the Reunion manual, search for "prefix word" and you'll see what I mean. Typically, this is a way for names such as the "Van Halen" example they cite to have sorting done without regard to the "Van" portion.

[SGilbert]

Re: Strange sidebar behaviour

Why not change GIL(L)MAN to Gilman/Gillman?

[fjvanbodegom]

Re: Strange sidebar behaviour

You should N E V E R use a slash in a name field. This gives undoubtedly big problems with gedcom (export) and re-import.

[SGilbert]

Re: Strange sidebar behaviour

You should N E V E R use a slash in a name field. This gives undoubtedly big problems with gedcom (export) and re-import.

If you say so. Then how about Gilman-Gillman or Gilman & Gillman or even 2 separate listings with source for all?

[theKiwi]

Re: Strange sidebar behaviour

If you say so. Then how about Gilman-Gillman or Gilman & Gillman or even 2 separate listings with source for all?

I would use

Gilman or Gillman

Roger

[jbastin]

Re: Strange sidebar behaviour

You should N E V E R use a slash in a name field. This gives undoubtedly big problems with gedcom (export) and re-import.

I agree. Many file systems (including Mac OS X) use the / as a delimiter, and things get formatted improperly.

I have all the family names in my database as folders on my hard drive, with the sources for each name in the appropriate folder. In the case of similar names that are in the same family, I use both names (or three, or whatever) on the folder, separated by commas, i.e. EICHAR, EICHER or BASTIN, BASTINE, BASTIAN and so forth.

Hope this helps.

[fjvanbodegom]

Re: Strange sidebar behaviour

It's not the file system (although that is also true, never use a slash in a filename), but it's of the structure of separating first names, last names etc in the gedcom:
1 _UID 09D09223B85644D9BD37A35CE2C308F14AF7
1 NAME Joseph Patrick /KENNEDY/
1 SEX M

[Tony Goring]

Re: Strange sidebar behaviour

It's not the file system (although that is also true, never use a slash in a filename), but it's of the structure of separating first names, last names etc in the gedcom:
1 _UID 09D09223B85644D9BD37A35CE2C308F14AF7
1 NAME Joseph Patrick /KENNEDY/
1 SEX M

The problem is solved by removing the brackets (I didn't use a slash) and renaming the person card 'GILLMAN or GILMAN'. I'm grateful for the responses.

[John Meara]

Re: Strange sidebar behaviour

....renaming the person card 'GILLMAN or GILMAN'.....

I use this but the "or" shows as UPPERCASE, as in "Or".

In Relatively Yours (v3 for PCs) that I used many years ago, it had an Alias function different to Reunion where the Alias (surname and given names) was attached with equal status to the Person ID (or RIN). It therefore allowed the user to select which name to show as the "preferred" name and you could swap between them or select/search them at any time. Maybe something for the wish list?

[theKiwi]

Re: Strange sidebar behaviour

I use this but the "or" shows as UPPERCASE, as in "Or".

If you enter

Gilman or Gillman

into the Last Name field, and you have a checkmark for "Initial Caps", you can avoid

or

becoming

Or

by holding down the Option key when you tab out of the field. This will preserve it as

Gilman or Gillman

Roger