Shared entities - or tags

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Keith Wilson
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Shared entities - or tags

Post by Keith Wilson » Thu Nov 29, 2007 12:02 am

Originally posted by gavroche

I had an idea today which I fully realize might be complicated to accomplish, perhaps even too difficult for serious consideration. But if possible, it would be a great addition.

The thought process began in what many may consider a strange place. I was looking at a photograph of my great grandmother from the 1930s holding her Pekingese, and I wondered - where do I put ChooChoo in the database? I wouldnít even know about ChooChoo except for the photo, and my mother happening to remember the dog from her youth. Iíd like to pass on information about all the pets I knew as a child to future generations, and sure, there are other places to record the information, but many people do think of their pets as ëa member of the family.í I know they arenít exactly the same thing as an adopted child, but even if I thought they were, I would want to associate the animal with all members of ëthe packí so to speak. So the first dog I ever knew, Daisy, would be linked to my record, the records of my siblings, and the records of my parents.

I can write up an essay on the animal and store it in ìstoryî for every person the animal is associated with, but that feels redundant, and I would like to be able to click on the name of the animal and see a link to every person they are associated with.

Then I realized this goes beyond animals. What about houses? Houses often get passed down through generations, and it would be nice to see at a glance who all lived in the same place. Family heirlooms?

At its most generic, and most flexible, I envision category tags like you see on Wikipedia. Click on the tag, and you will see a list of all the entries that are associated with that tag, along with room for a description. The tag could be a petís name, which when you clicked on it, you would see a picture of the animal, a story of its life, and a list of all the people who knew and loved her or him. Or it could be a picture of a house, a town, or even something as simple as a shared profession. In that case the tag itself is almost the complete description, but youíd still be able to see a list of everyone that tag was associated with.

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Keith Wilson
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Shared entities - or tags

Post by Keith Wilson » Thu Nov 29, 2007 1:59 am

Hi John,

In the iFamily database there is a table for AssociatedPerson - it has never been implemented - it was intended to record " Business Associates" " Lifelong friends" , Groomsmen, Bridesmaids, Witnesses or whatever, so maybe before I implement AssociatedPerson I should change it to be more generic and make it AssociatedThingy which could include whatever you like. Will think about it.

In the meantime here are two ideas that will work ...

Option 1

Add the picture containing the dog to its owner's pictures gallery - crop the picture of the dog and and write the story in the Notes for the Picture.

OR

Option 2

Use a word processor to write the story, complete with pictures, save it and then drag the word processor file into the appropriate person's pictures gallery - any file format will be accepted (RTF, RTFD, DOC, PDF, Pages, Excel, ...). Then you can double click on its icon in the pictures gallery and it will be opened by your default word processor. Right click on it and you will get a list of other apps that can display the file.

Keith

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Keith Wilson
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Posts: 20
Joined: Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:12 pm

Shared entities - or tags

Post by Keith Wilson » Fri Nov 30, 2007 1:14 am

Originally posted by gavroche

Thanks, those are good 'meanwhile' options, though I am happy to hear that there could be a potential solution down the road.

:)

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