Changes

Jump to: navigation, search

Meaningful filenames

2,088 bytes added, 15:05, 16 September 2009
Added a possible strategy focused on Sources with multiple pages or other subunits.
* Marriage certificate: ''S--marriage_certificate--jensen__williams--anders__mary_agnes--uk__london--1823-12-02--_--00864.pdf''
* Portrait: ''I--portrait--williams--mary_agnes--uk__london--1823-12-03--wedding_portrait--000967.jpg''
= Source based =
 
One possible shortcoming of using an event and/or individual based naming strategy is that it could "clash" with the relation between a filename and the source. This only applies to filenames that are a representation of a specific part of a source.
 
An example: having found the baptism record of Anna in page 51v of the 1843-1850 Baptism book of a certain Church we save the image (which displays pages 50v and 51f, i.e. it is an image of the "open book") and name it something like BAP--Anna--1850.png (just an example, any individual and role based mechanism will yeld similar results). This works fine and allows one to easily extrapolate information from the file name.
 
However, we latter find that in the exact same page, but a few paragraphs below, we have the baptism record of another individual, from another part of the family tree. While we can simply use the original file it wouldn't convey the right information. We can duplicate the file, but that doesn't make much sense, especially since when adding the file to the Source gallery we would end up with a duplicate, which makes little sense.
 
One way to deal with this is to use a purely source-based approach in naming the files. The downside is that event and individual information can't be gleaned by looking at the file name - one would have to use GRAMPS itself to maintain the appropriate relations, which is after all something that is part of the source referencing work that should be done. On the other hand, and when talking about Sources that are books, it allows for easy grouping of content related to the same source, e.g. all the relevante pages on a certain book. An example filename would be "PBL--BAP3--F51-52.png", where PBL is the short name of the source author and BAP3 the short name of the specific source. Longer, more descriptive filenames could be used by using full names instead of codes.
 
Obvisously this method is limited in scope to some kinds of sources, and doesn't make sense for naming photos or documents that aren't part of a larger source (e.g. an ID card).
= See also =
14
edits

Navigation menu