dmEdit Page

Welcome to the dmEdit page. This page should provide all the information necessary for you to get a copy of dmEdit and learn how to use it.

Overview of dmEdit

A specialized editor has been developed to make it easier for the district alias team to work with the district map files. It is called dmEdit and has been developed to run under Windows.

The main functionality provided is the ability to:-

add, change or delete aliases singly
add batches of aliases, either
- the complete contents of a file
- by making multiple selections from a file containing the aliases
make a selection of several existing aliases and perform the following functions
- add / remove a leading ! to make a selection of aliases spelling mistakes / valid variations
- add / remove a leading % to make a selection of aliases date dependent / date independent
- split an existing list into 2
  - export the selection in a format suitable for batch addition to another district
  - delete the selection, normally after it has been exported
prevent incorrect aliases being made
view the district information within the file
view comments within the file
view only those districts with a certain type of comment
- eg a ToDo comment describing an extra activity that needs to be performed for a single district
check the file for duplicated usage of an alias
provide warnings of aliases that 'look wrong' (e.g. contain a ? character; contain 2 or more ! characters) but might actually be written that way. The transcriber can investigate the warning and change the alias if it is indeed an error.
provide indicators where it may be possible that the capitalization of the alias can be made more 'user-friendly' (this feature is not very mature and uses a related file called dm_lower.txt which needs to located in the same directory as the dmEdit executable)

dmEdit v3.6

showing the districts in the A.txt file in the left column
the aliases already known of for Abergavenny in the middle column
some aliases about to be created as spelling mistakes for Abergavenny
from the file displayed in the 3rd column when the "as Spelling"
button is used.

Where to get dmEdit

A zip file can be downloaded from here by using the right mouse button and using the menu option Save Target As or Save link as (for Internet Explorer and Netscape respectively)

v3.5.1 (34kb)
v3.6 (34kb) - allows conditional aliases when volume numbers do not match
- district displayed in red as a 'strong warning'
- variant displayed in cyan - (in v4.7 this is changed to brown)
v3.7 (36kb) - allows duplicates reported using the Complete Variation Check button to be saved to a file or printed
v3.8 (45kb) - performs checking on the contents of the Process File and requires the ! to be present when _ or * have been used
v3.9 (47kb) - context sensitive button Add! or Remove! added. Make multiple selections in middle column to switch between alternative spelling (Remove!) or spelling mistake (Add!) for all selected variations
v4.1 (54kb) - major new features have been added to make life easier after the '100 year ruling' has been dropped and several hundred new standard districts were added, and 3 more volume numbers were added for 1946-65, 1965-74, and 1974 onwards.
1. context sensitive button Add Date% or Remove Date% added, similar to the Add! button
2. Save Selected Variations button added which exports the selected list of aliases in a format suitable for import to another list using the Process File button
3. the Delete button now operates on the selected list of aliases instead of only a single alias, which is intended to be used after the list has been exported
4. extra fields at the bottom of the screen where the comments are displayed and above it a scrollable list of the types of comments used within the file. When a type other than All is selected, only those districts with that type of comment are included in the Districts column.
v4.4 (56kb) - explanation of reason for preventing duplicate aliases, so the existing aliases that may need to be changed can be found more easily.
1. when one or more aliases is / are rejected in the Process File way of working, a pop-up window lists the existing aliases which are the reason why the duplicate cannot be created. When this happens, often the existing alias will need to be modified.
2. In single entry mode, if there is a conflict with an existing alias (ie the same spelling for the currently selected district, either with or without a !) a message is displayed immediately below the OK button
v4.7 (58kb) - changes in the way wrong volume numbers are handled and support for 800x600 screen resolution
1. Wrong volume now shown in brown rather than cyan to make them easier to read and do not cause the Standard District to be displayed in red
2. UCF characters in volume number no longer require a ! to be used
3. A few changes in the 'wrong capitalization' algorithm
  e.g. ![A_][s_][h_][t]_[n_] no longer appear as wrong
v4.12 (58kb) - appearance no longer affected by colour theme or version of Windows
v4.13 (58kb) - changes to edit district map files which have an extra 'volume' number added for 1993 onwards

How to use dmEdit

To add new district aliases

There are two modes of using dmedit, either by making individual entries in the text entry field in the right column, or by preparing a file containing each spelling to be added on a single line and processing the file using the thrid column and the buttons below it.

Adding individual entries

Entries can be added one at a time using the data entry field in the rightmost column.

Open the appropriate district map file (i.e. [A-Z].txt file)
Select the district to which you want to add an alias in the first column
Type the alias in the data entry field
- If it is a spelling mistake, precede it with a !
- If it is a conditional alias include the appropriate type of condition using the %
Press the OK button
Press the Save button to save the work, either to a new file or by overwriting the existing file

Processing a File

Different people use different techniques to prepare the file to be processed. A link to a best-practices page will be added here in the future. The spellings that are to be aliased must be on individual lines inside the file, and if there are lines containing other information only the Apply selected and as Spelling buttons below it can sensibly be used.

Open the appropriate district map file (i.e. [A-Z].txt file)
Select a district in the first column
Press the Process File button and use the browser window that appears to load the file prepared earlier that is to be processed
If all entries are to be added to the same district in the same style, press the Apply all button if they are to be added as variants, or the as Spelling button below it if they are to be added as spelling mistakes
If the file contains entries that are to be treated differently
1. Look at the entries in the third column and decide which district to add to next
2. Select the district in the first column
3. Select one of more entries in the third column, taking care not to mix those which are to be added as spelling mistakes with those that are to be added as variants
4. Press the Apply selected button if they are to be added as variants, or the as Spelling button below it if they are to be added as spelling mistakes
Press the Save button to save the work, either to a new file or by overwriting the existing file

From version 3.8.3 of dmEdit upwards, any entry in the file that uses the UCF (uncertain character format, such as _ or *) is required to be preceded by a ! character to indicate that it is a spelling mistake. Conditional aliases can also be included in the file in the format as described on the File Format page. The as Spelling buttons can only sensibly be used for those spellings that do not include UCF characters. If dmEdit detects a mistake in the Process File, such as a missing leading ! character, a pop-up window appears with the message 'There were invalid variations shown in red that cannot be processed'. These red entries are ignore when the Apply buttons are used and the check boxes cannot be used to include them in the lists. However it is not necessary to correct the original file to make the correction. Instead this can be done by clicking on the red text itself, which causes the single entry to be displayed in the 4th column where it can be corrected and applied in the usual way for a single entry.

To review the existing aliases

Identifying changes to be made

Mostly the existing aliases are reviewed on an ad hoc basis. This can be when creating a new 'standard district' or as a result from an email from a searcher, or when something strange is noticed while new district aliases are being added or while looking at any of the files relating to district usage such as district-map-all.html. Note that this page takes an exceptionally long time to load, even on broadband. From dmEdit version 4.1 onwards, some activities that are necessary to identify if changes need to be made are included as comments that are recognised by dmEdit as ToDo, and these are displayed in dmEdit and also the list of displayed districts can be filtered to display only those district that have comments of the type ToDo. There is no organized activity to review the existing aliases in a structured manner, although this may be added as a regular activity at some point in the future.

Checking date dependent aliases

At present there is no software that has been produced especially for checking that date dependent aliasing has been done correctly. However where there are 2 or 3 districts with similar names (eg Stoke upon Trent and Stoke on Trent) that existed at different times and where the names were used interchangeably, the date dependent aliases can be checked as follows

select the district (or districts) in question
except for those districts that existed at the start of registration, search for all entries earlier than the start date. The start date can be seen in dmEdit in the first column by selecting the district and then scrolling to the right to look at the columns with titles Founded and QtrF
Note: See below for the impact of late registrations which may be the cause of this
search for all entries used after the end date. The abolished on date can be seen in dmEdit in the first column by selecting the district and then scrolling to the right to look at the columns with titles Abolished and QtrA.
Note: This is the last quarter when the district was used, not the first quarter for which it was abolished.

Notes:

There is now a Download button on the Search page which allows you to save the resutls in a file and work with it when you are off-line.
Before you decide whether to change the alias of not it might be useful to see how many times the spelling has been used by consulting the file CountUsedAliasesByVol.txt which can be downloaded either from the District Aliasing Tools page at http://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/aliasing-tools.pl of by using the right mouse button and using the menu option Save Target As or Save link as (for Internet Explorer and Netscape respectively)
You may decide that before aliasing the entry that you want to look it up. You can open the downloaded file in Excel and copy / paste the entries for the line into the Extras_from_Testing.xls spreadsheet which can be downloaded in zip format (9kb) and return this at the end of the round of aliasing for inclusion with the other lookups and possibly a correction being submitted against the entry or your lookup being uploaded

Impact of late registration on date dependent aliases

When late registrations occur, the districts that are used are those that existed at the time of the late registration, not those that existed at the time of the original event. So if a district is used before it's start date, this could be the reason why.

Note: It is preferable for an alias to be made to the district that existed at the time of the late registration. This helps the build software to create a System Link on the later entry that links back to the earlier entry.

Making changes to existing aliases

Later versions of dmEdit provide the following types of bulk changes that can be made to multiple aliases to a single district. The initial step is to construct the list of aliases that are to be changed as follows.

Open the file that contains the district for which the alias or aliases need to be changed
Select the district in the left column
Selecting the aliases to be corrected in the second column, using any of the standard techniques for making multiple selections using Windows

Once the alias(es) has / have been selected, make the desired change

Use the Add! / Remove! button to change the alias(es) from 'Variant' to 'Spelling mistake' and vice-versa. (v3.9 and higher)
Use the Add Date% / Remove Date% button to change the alias(es) from date independent to date dependent and vice-versa (v4.1 and higher)
Use the Save Selected Variations button to save the list to a file (export) in a format suitable for importing to another district using the Process File button (v4.1 and higher)
Use the Delete button to remove the selected aliases from this district, which is foreseen to normally done after using the Save Selected Variations (v4.1 and higher)

Note that changes can be made to a single alias by selecting it in the 2nd column, and using the text entry field in the 4th column to make the necessary change and then pressing the OK button.

How to prepare to return your files after edit

Checking of the files should ideally be done in 2 stages.

Each file that is to be returned should be opened in dmEdit and a check for the same alias being used twice or more within this file should be performed by pressing the Complete Variation Check button
When working on several files that are to be returned at the same time, after the above checks have been made for each file, a check can also be done across all of the files. This can be done by creating a single file from the single files and running dmEdit across all the letters you have worked on together
Note: The majority of duplicates detected are when the conditional % mechanism has been used.

Before we started to do volume dependent aliasing where the volume number was mistranscribed or incorrect in the index, a problem free file had no error messages when opened in dmEdit and all districts are displayed in black. Any use of color means an error or warning of some sort, but now there are so many aliases that have wrong volume numbers and these no longer need to be investigated before the files are returned at the end of each round of aliasing. However a description of the meaning of the various different colours used is given here. Clicking on the coloured item results in a description being displayed.

The colour codes used are:-

Column heading	Colour	Meaning
District column	red	Something is very probably wrong in this district (possibly an error in the volume number either as it is transcribed or in the original index) and the reason can be investigated by selecting it and looking at the variations column
Variations column	blue	Error - would cause the database update to fail a duplicate entry unconditional and conditional assignment of a single alias to a single district
	red	Warning - an invalid alias that the search software cannot handle (containing a ? character)
	magenta	Warning - would cause the list of aliases to be longer than necessary a leading or trailing space an entry with 2 ! characters, which is not automatically wrong but could be as a result of a ! character being inserted in front of the 2nd or subsequent word in an alias as well as at the front, either due to a manual error on data entry in the 4th column or during preparation of a file to be processed
	up to v4.4 cyan / brown v4.7 onwards	Warning - is this intentional? a conditional alias using a volume that does not match. There are now many of these and since the start of scan-lookups by the district aliasing team the number is increasing significantly during each round of aliasing..
	green	For information - something looks strange unusual usage of capitalization
Change file column	red	An error in this line of the process file which means it cannot be selected. However it can be corrected by clicking on the red text itself and making the correction in the 4th column

Use of green in the district column 'for information' is to be expected when uncertain character format has been used during transcription, and magenta for misuse of the [ ] brackets around a correctly spelt district. These do not need to be corrected, but should be where appropriate. When changing capitalization it is imperative not to change any of the characters except A-Z or a-z (not spaces and punctuation).

However all red and blue warnings and errors seen in the 2nd column should be investigated.

Improvements

How to request improvements to dmEdit

email to Ian Brooke

District aliasers' home page| 'how to' page | file format page

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