Baptism Surname field - Mandatory or not

[dreams-togo]

Should the person surname field be manatory It's needed as many non-conformist records and adult baptisms specify this but should we be filling it in as assumed from the father's or mother's surname. The flexible CSV field guide is silent on this

[dreams-togo]

FreeComETT data dictionary specifies personsurname as mandatory at present. Whether it should be inferred is a matter for FreeREG policy. You can bypass any mandatory field check for this record only by putting a '?' as the only character in the field.

[DeniseColbert]

Dale to go back to Bev for more info

[dreams-togo]

stsccfr said: After discussion with Bev, there are two parts to this issue. The first is an undesirable usability consequence of making a field mandatory, and the second is whether to autofill the child's surname based on the father's surname. The latter issue can lead to the transcription not being faithful to the document, and Bev and I think it would be safer not do autofill this particular field. The first issue is that if a mandatory field is in fact blank in the original record, then the user must enter an explicit ? rather than just leaving the field blank (it comes down to the difference between using one key (Tab) or two (Shift plus whatever key gives you a ?). Another possible problem is what FreeREG users will think when they see an explicit ? in a record field (FreeComETT writes the ? to the CSV): does it mean that there was something in the field but it was illegible, or does it mean the field was blank? In general, Bev and I would like to minimise the number of fields that are marked as mandatory.

[Sandra-AW]

Hilary will remove the autofill of the person surname to father's surname

The only mandatory fields are bap date, person surname, and person forename. Many fields are preselected for inclusion into the package but they can be removed if not needed, and are not mandatory.

[DeniseColbert]

Whatever character ComETT requires here should not be written into the CSV