ordering custom fields

[Piotr Banski]

Hi again,

I was wondering if there is a way to order the display of custom fields
in the Entry pane of the Lexicon view. We have quite a few such fields
in our dictionary and would love to be able to impose some ordering on
them, to make it easier to maintain all of that.

It seems to me that the ordering may come from the order in which the
data for the individual custom fields were encountered during data
import, with the field that displays at the bottom having been
encountered first, and so on. Had a look at the movies (btw, they are
great!), but wasn't able to find a solution there. I'm not sure if I
searched the help system properly but I didn't seem to find this info
either, it just says, under "Showing and hiding fields overview", that
one cannot change the order of fields, quite a sinister message -- does
it apply to custom fields as well?

One thought I'm having now is to manipulate the input data in such a way
as to present the relevant bits to FLEx in the reverse order of what I'd
like to see on the screen, but that feels kludgy and promises to be
rather tedious, so I thought I'd ask here first.

Thanks in advance,

Piotr

[Robert Hedinger]

My feeling is that the custom fields appear in the order in which the are
added. When one sets up a project it would therefore be possible to enter
them in the desired order. However, in an long established project this is
not so easy as you don't necessarily think of all the custom fields you may
want.

I too would like to be able to reorder the fields in the entry pane. This
would make seeing related fields more easily.

Robert
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Piotr Banski" <ba...@o2.pl>
Sent: Thursday, November 03, 2011 5:05 PM
To: <flex...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [FLEx] ordering custom fields

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[Piotr Bański]

If you add them by hand, that may be the case. I first define them in a
certain order in the header of my LIFT file, and that order is not what
I see displayed after import into FLEx. But I'm almost certain that what
I see when I see the ordering

field3
field2
field1

it is field1 that has the greatest chance of being present in the input
(it occurs in almost all entries), followed by field2 and field3, etc.

Well, whatever the cause(s) of the ordering, we certainly agree on what
we would like to be able to do with it afterwards :-)

Piotr

[D.Rowe]

As I recall in FW6.x when I created the custom fields, they were
displayed in the reverse order of the order I used when I created them.
(A quick look at Flex 7.0.4 seems to show the same ordering.)

I think I ended up deleting the custom fields and recreating them in the
reverse order of how I wanted them displayed.

D.Rowe

----- Original Message -----
From: Piotr Ba�ski <ba...@o2.pl>
To: flex...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [FLEx] ordering custom fields

[Piotr Bański]

Rrright, you've given me an idea of how to experiment: I will try to
predefine these fields next time in a new project (for now, I let the
import process build them from the information in the LIFT header),
maybe by creating a fake entry to hold them, and will import over that.

Thanks!

Piotr

On 04/11/11 09:32, D.Rowe wrote:
> As I recall in FW6.x when I created the custom fields, they were
> displayed in the reverse order of the order I used when I created them.
> (A quick look at Flex 7.0.4 seems to show the same ordering.)
>
> I think I ended up deleting the custom fields and recreating them in the
> reverse order of how I wanted them displayed.
>
> D.Rowe
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Piotr Bański <ba...@o2.pl>
> To: flex...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: [FLEx] ordering custom fields

[Michael Galant]

Hi.

Is it still the case that custom fields cannot be reordered in the Lexicon Edit pane, or is there now a way to reorder them?

Thank you,
Mike Galant

[Ronald Moe]

I was under the impression that the fields are arranged in the order in which you created them. But I just looked at two of my projects and the custom fields are in reverse alphabetical order in both projects. So I did some tests to see what the behavior was:

 

I added a new custom field to see where it was placed. It was added at the top of the group of custom fields (right under the Cross References field). Then I closed the project and reopened it. The new custom field had been moved to its alphabetical position.

 

I renamed several custom fields. They were not re-alphabetized. They stayed in their original positions.

 

I added another new custom field. It was added at the top of the group of custom fields. But when I closed and reopened the project, the field remained at the top and was not re-alphabetized.

 

So I’m a bit confused. This seems to be inconsistent behavior. You could try to create a new custom field, copy the contents of one of your old custom fields into it, then delete the old one. Doing this for each custom field might enable you to reorder them all. When you are done, you can rename them to whatever you want. That’s the best advice I can give you, but I don’t know if it will work.

 

Ron Moe

 

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From: flex...@googlegroups.com [mailto:flex...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Michael Galant

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[J V C]

I seem to remember that there was a way to do this "under the hood" in a
config file somewhere, but not via the UI yet.

Of course, sense-level and entry-level custom fields are always going to
be presented separately.

Jon

[Michael Galant]

Thank you, Ron and Jon.

It sounds like the situation is still as it was a while back, which is fine - just thought I'd check.  It would be great if there were eventually an easy way to just drag and drop to change the custom field order, but no big deal.

Thanks again,
Mike

On Thursday, November 3, 2011 9:05:43 AM UTC-7, pbanski wrote:

[Jeff Heath]

Sorry to re-awaken an old thread, but this is exactly my question. I would like to re-order the custom fields, even if it involves doing something "under the hood". Are there instructions for that somewhere?

Thanks,

Jeff

[Michael Galant]

Hi, everyone.  I am wondering if any changes have been made regarding this matter.  I actually used the technique described above (adding new custom fields in the opposite order that I want them to appear), and that worked yesterday, but when I reopened my project today, they had been slightly reordered.  It would really be great to be able to manually change the order of custom fields.

Thanks,

Mike

[Jeff Heath]

I would suggest you write to flex_...@sil.org to ask for help. I received some offline instructions from Ann for how to do this when I asked the question in 2019, but she said that she didn't want to post the instructions on the flex-list, because it requires editing the XML FLEx database directly with a text editor, and any error made could destroy your database! So they want to be involved if you want to attempt to do this.

Unfortunately, I don't remember for sure if those instructions were successful or not in the database I was working on. Initial efforts failed, but I had a weird custom field, so it may work better for others.

Best of luck,

Jeff

[mikeg...@gmail.com]

Thank you very much for the suggestion, Jeff.

 

I am not sure I want to risk destroying my database 😊, but I’ll think about it.

 

Best,

Mike

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[Jeff Heath]

Actually, the process is pretty safe because you make a copy of your database, make the change and then test it out. If there are any problems, you can revert to the old copy. There may be some additional issues for a database that is shared, but I think it would be treated the same way - just tested before you do send/receive. If that's your situation, it would be good to verify the procedure first.

[mikeg...@gmail.com]

Thanks, Jeff.

 

This is encouraging.

 

Best,

Mike

 

From: flex...@googlegroups.com <flex...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Jeff Heath
Sent: Sunday, September 24, 2023 4:46 PM
To: FLEx list <flex...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [FLEx] Re: ordering custom fields

 

Actually, the process is pretty safe because you make a copy of your database, make the change and then test it out. If there are any problems, you can revert to the old copy. There may be some additional issues for a database that is shared, but I think it would be treated the same way - just tested before you do send/receive. If that's your situation, it would be good to verify the procedure first.

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