CD ROM Paradise Collection 4/CD ROM Paradise Collection 4 1995 Nov.iso/hobby/gim_308.zip/GIM11A.DOC

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          CHAPTER 11     LISTS OF SIMILAR PERSONS, FAMILIES AND NOTES

                                      OR

          SEARCHING YOUR FOLDER FOR SPECIFIC INFORMATION


PART A:  AN INTRODUCTION WITH BASIC EXAMPLES...

     AN INTRODUCTION...

          What is GIM LISTS?

               Simply put, GIM LISTS provides you with a way to search
               through your folder for a list of people, families, or
               notes which meet a set of criteria, such as couples with
               a marriage date but no marriage place, or people who
               died between the ages of, say, 15 and 18.

          Why use GIM LISTS?

               GIM LISTS is a powerful tool for finding possible errors
               in your folder.  For example, you can use it to search
               for persons who, according to the data in your folder,
               "died" before they were born.

               GIM LISTS is a powerful tool for finding those notes
               that you remember writing, but you may not remember
               where you put them.  GIM LISTS can search through all
               the notes in your folder for the notes you want to find.

               GIM LISTS is a powerful tool for finding those ancestors
               whose LDS temple ordinances are not yet complete.  For
               those researchers with an interest in LDS temple work,
               GIM LISTS can spotlight those ancestors who need their
               temple work done.

               GIM LISTS is a powerful tool for finding curiosities
               about your data, such as the oldest man and woman in
               your folder, or the youngest mother, or the longest
               marriage, or the number of women named Mary.

               GIM LISTS is also able to create lists of place names
               that are used in your folder, sorted in six different
               styles and formats.  By looking over these place lists,
               you can learn a lot about any misspellings that appear
               in your folder, and whether any towns are in the wrong
               counties, or in no county at all.

     A BASIC EXAMPLE...

          The best way to show what GIM LISTS is all about is to start
          with a straightforward example.  Let's suppose you want to
          make a list of all the German women in your folder.

          What exactly is a list?  Simply put, a "list" is a collection
          of things -- either people, families, notes, or places --
          that all share something in common.  Every list has a name
          (such as "Farmers" or "Single Parents"), and every list is
          sorted in some order (such as alphabetically by surname).

          GIM LISTS already knows about three lists, called "All
          Persons", "All Families", and "All Notes".  You don't have to
          do anything to create these; they always exist, and cannot be
          destroyed.

          Any time you want to create a new list, you have to build it
          from an existing list.  For example, you can use the list
          called "All Persons" to build a list called "Germans".  Also
          for example, you can use this new list ("Germans") to create
          a third list called "German Women".

          To make a new list, you need to tell GIM LISTS three or four
          things:

               1.  What you want to call the new list (for example,
                   "German Women").

               2.  What existing list you want to use to build the new
                   list (such as "All Persons").

               3.  Which members of the existing list ("All Persons")
                   you want to include in the new list ("German Women")
                   -- in this example, you want to include all the
                   females who have the word "Germany" in any of their
                   place names.

               4.  You may also want to tell GIM LISTS how to sort the
                   list as it creates it.  You can leave out this piece
                   of information; if you do, GIM LISTS will choose its
                   own criterion for sorting the list.

          You give GIM LISTS this information with four commands.

          GIM LISTS has about two dozen commands, each of which will be
          summarized in the next section ("A Glossary of GIM LISTS
          Commands with Examples").  For now, we are concerned with
          only five of them.

(MAKE)    1.  What to call the new list

               The first command to know about is the MAKE command.
               This command is used to tell GIM LISTS what you want to
               call the new list.

               To use it, type "MAKE German Women" (without quotation
               marks) at the GIM LISTS prompt, and press the enter key.

               (The GIM LISTS prompt initially reads "GIM Lists > ",
               but you can change it with the PROMPT command.)

(FROM)    2.  What to use to build the new list

               The second command to know about is the FROM command.
               This command is used to tell GIM LISTS what existing
               list to use to build the new list from.

               To use it, type "FROM All Persons" (without quotation
               marks) at the GIM LISTS prompt, and press the enter key.

(WHERE)   3.  Which members to select

               The third command to know about is the WHERE command.
               This command is used to tell GIM LISTS which members of
               the existing list you want to include in the new list.

               To use it, type the next line at the GIM LISTS prompt
               and press the enter key:

               WHERE any place contains "Germany" and gender is "F"

               (In this case, the quotation marks are essential.)

(ORDER)   4.  How to sort the new list

               The fourth command to know about is the ORDER command.

               We won't use this for the moment, just to keep the
               example simple, but if you were to use it, you would
               type (for example) "ORDER surname" and press return.
               This would cause the new list to be sorted by last name.

          Now, look at what you've just typed:

               MAKE German Women
               FROM All Persons
               WHERE any place contains "Germany" and gender is "F"

          Those three lines together comprise a single thought, and
          taken together, they completely tell GIM LISTS what it is you
          want to find out.

(GO)      All you need to do now is tell GIM LISTS that you are ready
          for it to go to work.  To do so, type the word "GO" at the
          GIM LISTS prompt, and watch it go.

          When it's complete, you can use the DISPLAY command to
          display the members of the list.  The DISPLAY command will be
          discussed in detail below, in the section entitled "How to
          Get the Most Out of the DISPLAY Command".  For now, just type
          "DISPLAY" (without quotation marks) to see a list of the
          German Women in your folder.

     ANOTHER BASIC EXAMPLE...

          You should read the previous basic example and make sure you
          understand it.  Practice it, and practice some variations,
          and then read this section.

          For this example, let's make a list of direct ancestors who
          were married exactly twice.

          To start with, let's make a list of direct ancestors.  After
          we've done that, we'll use that list to build another list of
          people who married exactly twice.

          After reading the first example, the following GIM LISTS
          commands should be more or less familiar:

          MAKE Direct Ancestors
          FROM All Persons
          WHERE gin NE 0

          The only surprise here is the new WHERE command, which needs
          some explanation.  In a roundabout way, it tells GIM LISTS to
          select only direct ancestors from the list of All Persons.

(GIN)     What is a GIN?

               Every person in your folder has a GIN number.  The GIN
               numbers of direct ancestors are positive numbers, and
               the GIN numbers for all the rest are zero.

               The WHERE command above selects only those GIN numbers
               which are not equal to zero, which is another way of
               telling GIM LISTS to only pick direct ancestors out of
               the list of All Persons.

               For more information about what GIN numbers are, see the
               glossary in Appendix B of this documentation.

               For more information about how to set GIN numbers, and
               what to do if your direct ancestors don't have GIN
               numbers, see chapter 15 of this documentation, under
               the Reset-GIN function of the Utilities Area.

          What does "NE" mean?

               The word "NE" is called an operator, whereas "gin" and
               "0" are operands -- things that the operator operates on.

               GIM LISTS provides scores of operators.  Some operators
               represent "is not equal to"; others represent "is less
               than"; others represent dates that are on or before
               other dates -- such as a birth date before 1700.

               In the first example above, we saw two operators.  One
               was the word "contains", and was used to find any place
               that contains the word "Germany".  The other was the
               word "is", which is used to find a value that is the
               same as another value.  These and other operators will
               be discussed in more detail below, in the section
               entitled "Operators Used in WHERE Commands".

               GIM LISTS provides a number of synonyms for each
               operator.  Instead of using "NE" to mean "is not equal
               to", we could have used any of the following:

               <>
               !=
               isn't
               is not equal to
               doesn't equal

               ... and many others.  "<>" has meaning for Pascal and
               BASIC programmers; "!=" has meaning for C programmers;
               and "NE" has meaning for FORTRAN programmers.  These
               provide a shorthand way of expressing the thought, but
               it would have been just as effective to use this...

               WHERE gin doesn't equal 0

               ... in place of the WHERE command that we used.

          Now that we've explained the WHERE command we used above, it
          should be clear that we're telling GIM LISTS to select direct
          ancestors from the list of All Persons, and to put those
          selections into a new list called "Direct Ancestors".

          To have this command take effect, we type "GO" and press the
          enter key like we did before.

          When GIM LISTS is finished, the new list is available for our
          use, and we can use it to create a second new list, which we
          will call "Double Marriages".  By now you should have guessed
          how the command to do so will begin:

          MAKE Double Marriages
          FROM Direct Ancestors
          WHERE spouses = 2

          Now again, we have a new WHERE command, and we'll explain it
          briefly:

          What is "spouses"?

               "Spouses" is another operand, like "gender" and "gin".
               It means "the number of times a person married", and is
               a number, just like the GIN number.  All of the avail-
               able operands will be discussed below, in the section
               entitled "Operands Used in WHERE Commands".

          What is "="?

               Like "NE", "=" is an operator, and tests two numbers for
               equality.  In this case, it is testing whether "spouses"
               (the number of times a person married) is equal to 2.

               Like "NE", there are a number of synonyms available for
               "=", including:

               ==
               eq
               equals
               is equal to

               ... and many others.

          As you can see, once we type "GO" and press return, GIM LISTS
          will select only those members of the "Direct Ancestors" list
          who have exactly two spouses.  Everyone who shows up in this
          new list will be both a direct ancestor AND will have two
          spouses.

          Now, having said that, we can create this new list in one
          step instead of two by combining both WHERE commands into a
          single command.  Study the following set of commands to see
          how this is done.

          MAKE Direct Ancestors with Two Spouses
          FROM All Persons
          WHERE gin ne 0 and spouses eq 2
          GO

          For more information on the use of "AND" and "OR" in WHERE
          commands, see the section below, entitled "Conjunctions Used
          in WHERE Commands".