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This is a complex issue, so in this topic I am discussing just one part of the issue, the part where the display text describes an individuals multiple marriages. At present the English text displays like this:

He married 3 times. The 1st time he married Jane Doe, daughter of John Doe and Freda Smith, on 25 May 1977 in Some Town, USA. ………………. The 2nd time he married Bess Brown, daughter of Jack Brown and Alice Watson, on 14 February 2001 in Some other Town, Canada ……………. The 3rd time he married Joan Jones , daughter of Alan Jones and Helen White, on 31 December 2011 in That place, Australia

This follows a change made a couple of releases ago to use digits “ordinal abbreviations” like “3 times” and “1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. to make it practical to have a large number of marriages (greater than 10!)

However, this does not work well in some languages, especially (like German) where ordinals are not used.

I’ve been asked if we could change it to something like this:

He married three times. The first time he married Jane Doe, daughter of John Doe and Freda Smith, on 25 May 1977 in Some Town, USA. ………………. The second time he married Bess Brown, daughter of Jack Brown and Alice Watson, on 14 February 2001 in Some other Town, Canada ……………. The third time he married Joan Jones , daughter of Alan Jones and Helen White, on 31 December 2011 in That place, Australia

The answer is yes, it CAN, but SHOULD it? And if so should there actually be a mixture of ordinals for larger numbers (11th, 12th, 13th etc, ) and for counts (4 times, or four times) but full text for smaller numbers and if so where should the change happen.

For example, I might suggest that in English it would be normal to mix counts like this:

once, twice, three times, 4 times, 5 times……..

and Ordinals like this:

first, second, third, fourth, 5th, 6th, 7th,…..

NOTE: all of these counts and ordinals are translatable texts, so the answer does not have to be the same for every language. My question is really what should the [English] starting point be. Others can then make their own choice for their own language translation.

Finally, all of the above requires that the list of numbers must be limited. The original change came about because there were only 5 allowed for. As soon as someone found a person with more than 5 marriages (King Henry VIII perhaps?) the code failed. So do we extend 5 to 10, or 15, or what?
The advantage of the current purely digital display is that it is not limited at all. Its just a loop through as many digits as required with a couple (three) alternate suffixes added.

Nigel
My personal kiwitrees site is www.our-families.info