Thursday, December 26, 2002 - Thu, 26 Dec 2002

I can’t tell you how many useful ideas I’ve had during my morning shower. This morning my mind starting thinking about some of the inadequacies of GEDCOM and how I might get around them for version 2 of Behold, when editing is added. I want a Place entity, but GEDCOM doesn’t have one. It struck me that I might be able to use the Repository entity to hold my Place info as well. But the Repository has very few pre-defined fields, and not all the ones needed for places. What I need is a way to extend GEDCOM that follows the rules. Then it struck me. I can use the NOTE fields. They will be read in into any other program as text so they will not be lost. And I can include GEDCOM fields within the notes that Behold can then interpret properly. Note field exists in almost every type of GEDCOM entity, so it will give Behold the ability to extend GEDCOM very significantly, while keeping the GEDCOMs 100% compatible with other programs.

In the shower, I also thought about my next task, which I can now go back to Dec 15 when I was wondering what to do with the selecting a name from the Name Index when its GEDCOM has been deleted but the deletion has not yet applied. This conflict can occur because the Organize and Name Index windows are separate and non-modal (need not be closed before the other is accessed). My solution I thought of on Dec 15 was to mark those names from the deleted GEDCOM in the Name Index to indicate their GEDCOM was deleted. What came to me in the shower was the thought of what then happens if I cancel the Organize page changes which will cancel the deletion of the GEDCOM. In that case, I would have to go back to the Name Index and unmark the names. But I don’t want my “cancel” to have to do anything to any other Windows - only the “apply” should cause everything to be updated. So now, it is apparent that the deleted GEDCOM (or any other non-applied action) should not ever change other Windows. So what must be done instead is if a name in the Name Index is selected to add to the Families list, but it is from a deleted GEDCOM that is not applied, then at that time a message will have to be given to the user to indicate so.

Some of my showers take a half an hour. I am thinking so much that I forget whether I’ve shampooed my hair yet, so I do it again. I’m sure my hair is very, very, clean today.