Help page text corrections

[KristinaGadzhieva]

• 1. Correct text in the View results section
  User's comment: text says results are given as qtrs Sept etc. but it is now shown as "Jul to Sept".
  Also text suggests that MMN etc is only available after 1993.

• 2. Entry information section
  User's comment: "Persistent URL" term needs explanation
  User's comment: Scans are of indexes, not original documents (needs clarity)

• 3. Entry information section
  Change "clicking the envelope icon" to "selecting"

• 4. Database section
  User's comment: "Page maps" needs explanation

• 5. Search section
  User's comment: confused on wildcards, it only describes * but there are others frequently used when transcribing records (example _). Perhaps the others cannot be used in searches?

• 6. Add clarification on the Help page about the distinction of ‘Registration Date’ and ‘Registered Date’ fields

• 7. Rename 'Download or Share your results' section to 'Download and Share your results

• 8. Add a description of the TSV format to the 'Download and Share your results' section

[richardofsussex]

I have dealt with all except 4 and 5 - waiting for @Vino-S to push to test3. I think 4 is already explained, and I don't know enough about the details of wild card searching to comment on 5.

[KristinaGadzhieva]

@Vino-S could you please have a look at point 5 wildcards search, any suggestions?

[richardofsussex]

The in-page navigation links on the Help page have two which are wrong on test3. /help/explore_help should be /help/database_help and /help/accuracy should be /help/accuracy_help. These are declared in the TopLevelPages hash in help.rb - I'm not sure if that is where these values are actually taken from on test3.

@Vino-S has now fixed these links on test3.

[richardofsussex]

On point 5. I've just read the search help about wildcards on the FreeBMD1 site: https://www.freebmd.org.uk/search-help.shtml#wildcard. This makes it clear that the only character apart from '*' which you can use when searching is '?'. ('+' is a special case - see below.) '*' matches zero or more characters; '?' matches a single character. I have tested both on test3, and can confirm that they work as intended. Except ...

FreeBMD1 search includes special treatment when searching forenames. You can put '*' at the start of your forename search string, and it will look for middle name(s) beginning with what you have typed. In other words, it will pretend that the first forename isn't present, but otherwise do a standard forename match. If you put '**', it will search anywhere in the forename field beyond the first name found. You can instead put '+' at the start of your forename search string, in which case it will search for that name whether it is the first or a 'middle' forename. None of this functionality has been implemented in the FreeBMD2 code.

[Vino-S]

Initial code has been deployed to beta

[richardofsussex]

In response to the comment which triggered this discussion - the UCF characters which we use when transcribing have a different purpose from the wildcard characters we use when searching. Also, fields containing UCF characters are less searchable than those which do not (see notes in the FreeBMD1 help). This isn't surprising when you think about it: how can you match an inexactly specified search to an inexactly defined field in the data?

[richardofsussex]

5. I have added a description of the use of '?' as a wildcard character to the help.