Re: PAF 5 - Sorting names
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In reply to:
Re: PAF 5 - Sorting names
Jack Walker 12/26/00
Thank you, but my needs are for finding and editing individuals in my database.Your itens 1 and 3 just show lists of family members - but I can't, for example, click in one name to edit that person.In item 2, take another look there, the names are listed by surnames first - and you can't choose another option.
This is enough for Americans, that usually have short surnames (only one or two, in most cases), but not for people of other nationalities, whose surnames are long, with many combinations.
In my case, for example, imagine how to find a cousin "Andrea Ferreira de Souza Carvalho Rodrigues".The name is only Andrea, but the surname is that big.If I could sort by given names, I could find her very quickly by just typing "Andrea"...and she would immediately appear as the only Andrea in the family.Many other govem names also count very few, while surnames have a high frequency (of course, due to the fact that family members have combinations of same surnames).Besides, the preposition "de" between surnames also count when sorting. Surname "Ferreira de Andrade" is not the same as "Ferreira Andrade" - but there are a lot of both.
In PAF, with individuals sorted only by surnames, I must first type all the long surname and then the first name, to finally find someone.Or, then, type only the first surname "Ferreira" and then scroll down all the Ferreira's only, then all the Ferreira+surname2, all the Ferreira+surname2+surname3...and so on (to be exact, Andrea is the 278th in the scroll list starting with Ferreira).
Other softwares, like Legacy and Cumberland Family Tree, perceived this problem for foreigners and actually allow sorting also by given names.Both in Legacy and CFT I need to type only Andrea... and immediately find her.For Myrian (also with a big combined surname) it is even simpler: it is enough to type only "My" (the only given name starting with "my").Yes, only two keystrokes! - while in PAF it would be 39 (37 for the complete surname, plus the 2 of "My").
I advised PAF programmers, many months ago, about this problem faced by non-american users.They said would consider this, but unfortunatelly insisted in the same...limitation.What a pitty.