Using Abbreviations
The Administrator who sets up a new chronology can define entries in its Abbreviations Glossary.
Chronology users can also add and change glossary entries. In a multi-agency chronology, Chronolator keeps track of which agency defined each abbreviation.
Abbreviations can be up to 10 characters long, and their Definitions up to 50.
Displaying and Editing the Abbreviations Glossary
Use File > Edit > Glossary to view, change, add and delete abbreviations.
The resulting display shows where an abbreviation was originally defined, and includes buttons to implement whatever actions are allowed.
It also includes a button to add a new abbreviation.
Permissions
What you are allowed to do with an abbreviation depends on where it was originally defined:
- Entries defined by the Administrator who set up the original chronology cannot be changed or deleted.
- Entries defined by one of the agencies in a multi-agency chronology can be changed, but not deleted.
- Entries you define in the current document can be changed and deleted.
Changing an abbreviation
Since agencies can add their own entries to the Abbreviations Glossary, it is possible that two of them might add similar entries (for example, AD/Alan Daniels and AD/Adam Donoghue). Chronolator always keeps track of where an abbreviation has been defined, but if you want to use the Anonymisation feature (to be added in a future release) all abbreviations and definitions must be unique.
When you change a glossary entry, Chronolator updates the document to match.
It also keeps a record of the original definition.
Using the glossary to search a document
You can use the Search > Criteria feature to search for events containing entries from the glossary. See Searching and filtering events.
Future enhancements
The following additions to the Abbreviations feature are planned:
- Anonymisation / Personalisation. Switch the display between abbreviation and definition and vice versa
- Browsing. Use DVD-like buttons to go from one glossary entry to another in a chronology