Missed comma in Display Name Editor

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Hi! :raising_hand_man:t4:

I do not understand the reason because of comma miss when i select this edited option for Display Name in Preferences.

It is supposed that extra commas are removed, but in the example SURNAME, (Title) Given Common i expect that the comma does not disappear because is together SURNAME if this is present. However, i expect that the parentheses only appear when Title is present. Really, comma and parentheses are removed if Title is not present :thinking:.

With this logic, if Given is not present, will be ‘)’ character removed? :thinking:

This is something that, from my point of view, has no sense to me.
Maybe an mandatory or scape character, like ! in CSS or , can be added in future to solve this.

What do you think about this? Have i missed something?

Another topic about this here:

imaxe
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Unfortunately, this is a quirk of Gramps.

Unless you really need the comma between SURNAME and (Title) here are two options.

SURNAME (Title), Given

or

SURNAME, Given (Title)

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To collapse the comma, wouldn’t it need another comma?:

SURNAME, (Title), Given

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For most entries, without a title, the displayed name would be perfect. For those people with a title both commas would display as shown in the setup. “SMITH, (Dr), John”

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Differences in grammatical structure are the problem here.

Maybe SURNAME, (Title), Given is correct in the English language, but for others, it might not be.

There might be a way to correct the lack of commas too, but it is not perfect. Who wants to sometimes see two commas? Not me.

Certain surnames work like given names too

I use Surnames, Title Name Nick. The purpose of the comma is to separate surnames and the given name. For example, Vicente Lorenzo Silvestre and Rodrigo Lope are possible names for a person in Spain. Each word can be either a given name or a surname. I know how Gramps is configured, so I do not have problems with this. Could you identify which is the given name or the surname if I share a report with you?

You could suggest that Title Name Nick SURNAMES is another way to display the name, but this has two problems. First, it is not correct in Spanish to write with CAPITALS, so Spanish people are not used to it. Second, I dislike seeing two or more surnames in capitals.

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2 succesive commas without content separating them will not happen. The display formatter is designed to collapse commas and spaces.

The question seems to be about how to build a custom display format that properly collapses a section when : it lacks a comma between 2 optional terms but has parentheses around one of those terms.

It isn’t a display format for everyone. It is just something a particular person wants.

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Names have an advanced Gramps complexity that I did not learn about, or appreciate, until after using Gramps for a few years.

First some basic information.

The Display Name editor takes the various name fields and allows the user to combine them to achieve the desired way for names to display. One of the options is to enter the field as all capital letters. As an example, when the user uses SURNAME in the display editor, the surname field will be all capitalized; “Smith” will display as “SMITH”. If the display editor uses Surname, “Smith” stays displayed as “Smith”. Actual name entries should not be entered as all capital letters.

If your surnames are all entered in capital letters the Fix Capitalization of Family Names tool can fix most names. Problem names may be “MacDonald” or “O’Leary” as examples. There is an addon to do the same to fix capitalized given names.

Next to understand is that a person can have more than one name added to their record. In the Person’s edit window, there is the tab Names where more names can be added. You can right-click to alter which name will be added as the Preferred Name. It is the Preferred name that will be used in most reports and how the name is sorted in lists.

When adding additional names, an advanced Name Editor window will appear. This allows for more functionality for a name entry. From the name list, you can edit the Preferred Name which brings up the name editor. There is also an edit icon found after the Suffix field in the person editor.

The Name Editor allows users to attach a source/citation for the name entry as well a note. It allows you to attach a date (or span) to the record. It also allows the user to override the display and sort of the name that you set as the default for all names in Preferences. The Group As function allows for similar surnames to be grouped together in any grouped surname list.

What became clear to me in the name editor was the multiple lines for surnames. More lines can be added building a complex surname. One of the surname lines can be set to Primary which will set how the name is sorted.

You the user has many tools to put together a person’s Name for their record.

FYI: My defualt name display I set in Preferences is: Title Given "Nickname" Surname, Suffix. Certain names I do override how their name is displayed.

I override all of my name records to use the name sort: Given

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In the example I gave: “SMITH, (Dr), John”, there is a way to fix this but it would require a simple hack of the code which not every user may be comfortable doing. There is more than one way to display a name.

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Hi!

First of all, I want to apologize for the way I express myself. I am not used to using English, and I find it a bit difficult.

I am so sorry! I used the example SURNAME, (Title), Given because I thought it would be clearer and simpler to explain.
In reality, Surname, Title Given Suffix “Nickname” (in Spanish, Apellido, Tratamiento Nombre Sufijo “Apodo”) is the one I use daily.

You might have thought that parentheses were important to me. I am sorry. I didn’t mean that.

Otherwise, I do not agree. The title may contain important information about a person. It can be an abbreviation or a complete word. What do you think if you read ‘Connery, Sir, Sean’ or ‘House, Dr., Gregory’? Furthermore, we must consider that it may be grammatically and orthographically incorrect to write it this way. Languages have rules of correctness that must be followed.

You said it. I can, but a person without knowledge would find it difficult.

Conclusion:
The way the name is displayed is important. It is what the end user will see in the interface. It is how we will share our data in charts and reports. It should be powerful and simple, but also flexible. In this case, it loses flexibility by not allowing the addition of a simple comma without a workaround.

I repeat this now, I know. But I think the solution could be to add a character that indicates that a character should always appear, for example, Surname!, Title Given, where ‘!’ would signal to Gramps that the following character must always appear.

I think this solution is better than associating the comma with the previous word. With this approach, we would lose the advantage of removing extra commas and parentheses when the subsequent field is empty

After this paragraph, I hope I haven’t forgotten anything.

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This is why I never display names in reports, etc with the leading Surname, ...

The most basic display I use is Given Surname, Suffix. or Title Given Surname, Suffix

Yes, this does not alphabetize the people list, but if I need to peruse an alphabetical list of names, I will always do it using the Grouped People view.

The major problem using the leading Title, it does alter the alphabetical list so I started setting their alternate sort to just Given. But because I actively use the Group As options using Given as the sort has both “Jane Clark” and “Jane Clarke” sort before the grouping of “John Clark” and “John Clarke”. If I did not set the sort to Given, “Jane Clark” and “John Clark” get sorted before any “Clarke” names.

Now I just sort all names regardless of their display as Given .

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