GeoNames Home | Postal Codes | Download / Webservice | About 

GeoNames Forum
  [Search] Search   [Recent Topics] Recent Topics   [Groups] Back to home page 
[Register] Register / 
[Login] Login 
Form of name field in admin1CodesASCII.txt  XML
Forum Index -> Administrative Divisions
Author Message
rich.smith



Joined: 05/04/2007 15:26:02
Messages: 4
Offline

There is a great deal of variation in the content of the 'name' column in the file admin1CodesASCII. As an example, here are a few entries from today's export:

GB.E3 London Borough of Enfield London Borough of Enfield 3333146
GB.E7 London Borough of Greenwich London Borough of Greenwich 3333147
GB.E8 London Borough of Hackney London Borough of Hackney 3333148
GB.F1 London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham 3333149
GB.F3 Haringey London Borough of Haringey 3333150

The 'name' column sometimes contains the string 'London Borough of' and sometimes does not. This is true throughout the file. Until recently the 'name' column fairly consistently contained only the simple name and the 'ascii name' column contained the full name. Here is the same portion of the file from a couple of weeks ago:

GB.E3 Enfield London Borough of Enfield 3333146
GB.E7 Greenwich London Borough of Greenwich 3333147
GB.E8 Hackney London Borough of Hackney 3333148
GB.F1 Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham 3333149
GB.F3 Haringey London Borough of Haringey 3333150

I realize that the 'ascii name' column is intended to contain the ascii equivalents to the 'name' column, but this doesn't seem to always be the case.

Is there a way to include a column that contains the short version (i.e. no 'London Borough of') of the ascii name?

marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
Offline

Hi Rich

The admin1Codes files are convenience files. The same and more information is available in the alternatenames file. It is difficult for us to know what users want to be in this convenience file. What do other users think? Maybe we have to ask the question on the geonames mailing list.

The second and main problem you are referring to is the 'short name' problem. We have recently started to flag names with isPreferredName (used to be called isOfficialName but we change it to isPreferredName). There is no flag isShortName as of today. Would you like to help us go through the list and flag names as short names?

Geonames is aggregating information from various sources. This is the change you have noticed in the file admin1CodesASCII. The short name was from the FIPS names and the long name by the normal geonames database.


Regards

Marc

[WWW]
rich.smith



Joined: 05/04/2007 15:26:02
Messages: 4
Offline

marc wrote:
Hi Rich

The admin1Codes files are convenience files. The same and more information is available in the alternatenames file. It is difficult for us to know what users want to be in this convenience file. What do other users think? Maybe we have to ask the question on the geonames mailing list.

The second and main problem you are referring to is the 'short name' problem. We have recently started to flag names with isPreferredName (used to be called isOfficialName but we change it to isPreferredName). There is no flag isShortName as of today. Would you like to help us go through the list and flag names as short names?

Geonames is aggregating information from various sources. This is the change you have noticed in the file admin1CodesASCII. The short name was from the FIPS names and the long name by the normal geonames database.


Regards

Marc 


Would it be possible to make the queries that generate the admin1CodesASCII file available?

Are the short names in the database? Are they simply additional rows in the alternate names table?

Is it possible to keep the FIPS names in the database and use that table to generate a 'FIPS name' column? Or perhaps the FIPS names can be used to generate the isShortName flags.

I'm unclear about how someone goes about editing the database. Can you elaborate?
marc



Joined: 08/12/2005 07:39:47
Messages: 4412
Offline

Hi Rich

The FIPS names are in the file admin1Codes.txt, they are not yet integrated in the geonames database.
My idea with the isShortName flag is to populate it with the Fips codes. There are several ways you could help. One is should we add the flat isShortName to the edit interface so that you and other users can edit it on the frontend with their browsers. An other option would be that I generate a spreadsheet file before loading it into the database and you look at it with a spreadsheet application (excel).

A question we also have to discuss is : Do we need to know for which long Name the short Name stands for or is the flag isShortName sufficient? Do we also need the flag 'isPreferredName' together with the flag 'isShortName'?

Cheers

Marc

[WWW]
 
Forum Index -> Administrative Divisions
Go to:   
Powered by JForum 2.1.5 © JForum Team