Re: Global changes to location names
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In reply to:
Re: Global changes to location names
Bob Hunt 8/24/08
There are more sophisticated text editors than the simple “search and replace” facility in FOW. Word, for instance, lets you use “^p” to mean “new paragraph”, as well as “^l” for “manual line break” and “^t” for “tab”. So, in Word, you can “delete” a space at the start of a new paragraph by substituting “^p_” to “p”, where “_” is the space. Changing it that way insures that you don’t change all spaces, which would make
This sample line of words
Look like:
Thissamplelineofwords
EDT, an editor far more sophisticated than “Word”, is another example, but it does not run on Windows. It runs under Open VMS, an operating system used on mainframes.
But – FOW is a genealogy program, not a word processor. It does many things “Word” (or even EDT) cannot do, for genealogy. Stuffing FOW full of text-editing tricks would be like adding a nail-file blade to a socket wrench.
On a second note, the company that markets Family Tree Maker used to market FOW too. They gave it second billing when they remembered to mention it at all. Many of us felt it was a better program. So, Bruce Buzbee, the genius behind FOW, started his own company. The corporate behemoth he left owned the rights to the name “Family Origins”, so he writes the same fast, supple, well-designed code as “Roots Magic”. FOW 10 is the last FOW we’ll ever see. RM 1 was basically FOW 11, with a new title. I’m using RM 3.2.5, and RM 4.0 is coming soon.If you wanted to upgrade you’d find it very similar. You’d still have to change those 200 place names by hand, or export your data as a text file and attack it with a real text editor.
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Re: Global changes to location names
Bob Hunt 8/24/08