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Message from discussion Book Production in GEDitCOM II 1.7
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John Nairn  
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 More options Apr 23 2012, 8:25 pm
From: John Nairn <j...@geditcom.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2012 17:25:34 -0700
Local: Mon, Apr 23 2012 8:25 pm
Subject: Re: Book Production in GEDitCOM II 1.7
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On Apr 22, 2012, at 10:35 PM, Jim Eggert wrote:

> On Apr 22, 2012, at 11:47 PM, John Nairn wrote:

>> On Apr 21, 2012, at 10:40 PM, Jim Eggert wrote:

>>> Here are some problems I have with Generations LaTex Book:
>>> 1.  In running a descendants report, the descendants, though appearing in the proper generations, are in some arbitrary order within the generation.

>> Each chapter is in aphpbetical order. All relatives are found and then grouped by generations. I wanted some order,but could not think of an obvious genealogical ordering, so they are listed in alphabetical order.

> For ancestors, I would think ahnentafel order is appropriate.  For descendants, register order.

I am not sure what "register order" means. Also, a large book finds all ancestors first and then for all tree tops (last ancestor in each line), if finds all their descendants. The descendants, therefore, might be from multiple and perhaps rather disconnected trees. The only exception would be the special case of a book target to one individual (books can have more than one target) and a book with no ancestor generations.

>>> 6.  Backslashes aren't escaped.

>> The script does escape them and it works for me. Do you have an example of where they are not escaped?

> Backslashes don't work for me in surnames.  Maybe I shouldn't put backslashes in surnames.  How should I encode someone named John Smith/Jones?  (Not Smith-Jones.)

This was another LaTeX limitation I did not know about. Back slashes are escaped by using LaTeX verbatim (or \verb) command. I just read, however, that the \verb method cannot be passed as an argument to LaTeX style definitions and names are often put in such definitions. I current do not know a better way to escape them (for example, \\ does not work because that means new line in LaTeX). The best solution now is to not use backslash in the name (also don't use '~' or '^' for similar reason)

Regarding John Smith/Jones:

I am not sure what you are trying to document in this name style - is it an unusual name or you are not sure which name. Some ideas:

1. Forward slash will not work because that conflicts in GEDCOM uses of slashes to signal surnames
2. Backslash is fine, except for books (i.e., GEDitCOM II is fine with them, by LaTeX is not)
3. If you mean the person's name is John Smith OR John Jones, you can give the person two names and enter each one as a full and complete name. Only the first name, however, will appear in books.
4. You could explicitly include the second name outside the surname such as "John /Smith/ (or Jones)". The slashes indicated the surname and you can add anything after like a comment.  This name will appear in the index window as "Smith, John (or Jones)." If you want the Jones closer to Smith, it can be in the surname by entering "John /Smith (or Jones)/" (i.e., a surname with spaces indicated by the slashes).
5. You could pick almost any other character except '/ ', due to GEDCOM; '-', to avoid confusion with hyphenated name, and '\', '~', or '^', which are all done with \verb command. All other special LaTeX characters (namely '$', '%', '&', '_', '{', '}',  and '#') are OK as is any character that was not mentioned here (probably). You can probe into Unicode characters to find something special.

>>> 7.  Not all Unicode in comments turn into TeX-friendly codes.

>> A real limitation of LaTeX, unfortunately. Unicode is done be encoding the file in UTF-8 and then using the package:

>>    \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

>> But the documentation of this package admits it does not do all UTF-8 character. It seems to work well with characters found in names and places (i.e., any accented letters), but does not do well with non-letter characters and seems to completely fail with non-printing characters.

>> The script has a list of bad characters and handles each as a special case. The other option is a different package, but I wanted something that would be part of the standard LaTeX install.

> How about using XeLaTeX instead?

Have considered it, but script working now and reluctant to change (in case other issues). I will experiment. I have used LaTeX for many years, but never used XeLaTeX.

>>> 8.  Unicode in source IDs messes up BibTeX.

>> Source IDs (in GEDCOM sense) will never have Unicode. Do you mean in the text of the source citation?

> No, I mean in GEDCOM IDs.  Maybe I shouldn't do that either!  So far GEDitCOM has let me get away with it, but I can fix it.

Normally GEDitCOM II creates IDs for you. I guess you have created you own (which is allowed), but not anticipated by the book script.

 
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