Author Topic: Localisation for Great Britain (Read 998 times)

abcounties · September 01, 2014, 10:21:40 am

I recently installed Civi CRM and am just setting it up. I have just come across my first stumbling block. The EN GB localisation file includes a list of 'provinces' which is not particularly ideal. Unfortunately geography in the UK is a little bit more complex, and the current list of 'provinces' omits some of the counties.

Ideally it would be good to see the list just based on the counties and not local government areas (which change at the whim of a Government). It would also make the list shorter.

The other option would be to have an option of just having the historic counties (which would cover everywhere). In the end it is really up to how geographically astute the end user is!

For an authoritative list of counties, you can refer to the Historic Counties Standard. (http://www.historiccountiestrust.co.uk/hcs.htm)

clarkac · September 01, 2014, 11:48:49 am

I ran into this and there's no easy answer as British counties are a mess! Many people use counties that frankly don't exist (like Sussex or Yorkshire), while most don't use counties at all. And don't get started with Welsh counties or Unitary Authorities! And who needs counties anyway with the power of postcodes? But my first Civi client wanted to use the UK countries of England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland and the counties within them so I ended up manually updating Civi tables.

My point is that UK counties are a mess and I don't think you can expect Civi to support that. The best way, imho, is to eliminate them as much as possible which you can do by unchecking County (or State/Province) in the Admin/Localization/Address Settings (as I recently found out from Joanne). But if you want them, the present list is only OK as most UAs and the traditional counties are missing. The amusing thing about the list you mention is that the abbreviations are not the same as Civi has.... as I say, it's a mess.
PS. I notice you have a vested interest in the counties that don't exist...

abcounties · September 01, 2014, 12:07:05 pm

I manually purged the default 'provinces' and put in the historic counties instead.

It is hardly unreasonable to expect CiviCRM to support the historic counties as they have remained unchanged for hundreds of years. The real mess is people inventing new ways of describing counties to suit their fancies. It would be much simpler for CiviCRM to support the historic counties and then they would not have to change them.

Quote from: clarkac on September 01, 2014, 11:48:49 am

Many people use counties that frankly don't exist (like Sussex or Yorkshire)

Clarkac you really highlight the problem of people's understanding of geography in the UK. And as you allude, this very duplicity and confusion compounds the use of address look-ups in the UK The Media really have not helped either. Your comment could really make a Yorkshireman angry, but there we are. As an aside, if you would like to learn why Yorkshire and Sussex still exist, you can have a look at county-wise.org.uk and https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/englands-traditional-counties.

In my custom implementation, I started the ID for the counties at 10500 so as to minimise potential future conflict in the database. The CSV file is available should anyone want it in the future. It would however be nice not to have to do this manually.

clarkac · September 01, 2014, 12:22:49 pm

Leaving aside something that we would obviously disagree on

, CiviCRM does provide the necessary tables to support whatever counties you want, as I pointed out. It's a shame that the counties/UAs 'out of the box' are missing a few but it's easy to put right. I think it's mainly the UAs that are missing, but if you switch off counties altogether it's not a problem!

abcounties · September 01, 2014, 12:40:37 pm

Clarkac, thank you for being so diplomatic.

I think that the missing counties would just have to be added to the existing list, (I have seen this before) although obviously I would think it would be simpler to not have all the "City of" such and such as they are already in a county.

You could just include the include the Lieutenancies otherwise know as "Ceremonial Counties" and the historic counties. That could be a happy trade-off. That what you could select either Cumberland or Cumbria from the same list depending on your own personal preference.

The other option would be for another version of the EN_GB to be created, but that would probably be a bit much.

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Author Topic: Localisation for Great Britain (Read 998 times)

abcounties

Localisation for Great Britain

clarkac

Re: Localisation for Great Britain

abcounties

Re: Localisation for Great Britain

clarkac

Re: Localisation for Great Britain

abcounties

Re: Localisation for Great Britain