John Moran

Actually, I think you missed the point of my original question. I already know I can do it in MS Word. It isn't difficult. I want to know if there's a way to do it within TMG.

Maybe.

      It is my understanding that

      The Master Genealogist makes

      heavy use of "leading spaces"

      in the Descendant Indented Chart.

      Perhaps you could try using

      U+00A0(0xA0):No-Break Space(s)

      in your other reports.

Good luck,

John

Editing Note: There was a thread on non-breaking spaces on the TMG-L list a couple of years ago. I believe it concerned HTML web pages. It was both educational and confusing to me because most (USA) users referred to Alt+0160 as the required keystroke, but one user claimed it had to be Alt+416. Drove me nuts trying to figure it out.

Turned out the user of Alt+416 as a non-breaking space was using a computer and keyboard set up in English/Hebrew in Israel. (An extra 8 bits worth of characters were added to 160 to make it 416) However, it may be that Win XP will remap Alt+160 as a NBS in languages and keyboard setups used by most TMG users. FWIW.

Alt+160

Translation? Can this be an add-on or external utility to TMG?

MS Word dominates the Text Editor and Office Suite market.

If you currently have a recent version of MS Word and are familiar with *Styles* (see help in MS Word) you may already be using the feature to create and select from different paragraph setups within Word documents. If not, see MS Word Help on the subject of Styles.

But if you only have an older version of MS Word, it may be worthwhile to download the free Office Suite software application from the OpenOffice.org web site. (200 mb!!!). OOo Writer, the text editor in this suite handles paragraph styles somewhat differently from MS Word, but the competition has resulted in better paragraph style control in both programs in recent years.

The Style feature of either program may help with the margin changes you desire.

Can the margins in reports, particularly the narrative reports, be controlled for a portion of the text? I have a tag for Obituary, where the text of the obit is put into the tag memo area. I know how to put the obit into a new paragraph, so to speak (two [:CR:] can do that), and I make it in Italics to help set it off from the other text. However, it would look better, and be structurally more correct, if I could indent both margins somewhat, showing the obit essentially as an extended quote structure. I did not see anything in the Getting the Most Out of TMG book, but perhaps someone out there has a trick for this.

 

I know I can send the report out to MS Word for structuring like this, but the more TMG can handle such things within its own code, the better, at least in my book.

Sounds like a good excuse to download the new release of OpenOffice.org writer to read up on "Styles".

After upgrading from TMG v6.09 to v6.11, I notice an unusual long delay before the Report Definition screen (e.g. for the Ancestor Chart) comes up. TMG seems to be very busy for more than one and a half minute (!!!!) before finally the screen is shown.

Then, when selecting another configuration name, this configuration is loaded, but this also takes about one minute. Saving a changed configuration also takes this amount of time.

 

The same problem occurred some time ago, maybe this was in TMG v5. TMG v6.09 was OK.

 

I hope the problem can be fixed soon, since it is an annoying discomfort that makes the generation of a report (with a number of try and error loops) a time-consuming task.

Free AVG anti-virus (and probably others) is really getting carried away with e-mail and other script scans these days. (Perhaps it is to let us know how valuable they are before Microsoft cuts them off at the knees with the release of Vista.)

Try temporarily disabling the AV software to see if that is the problem.

Hi

 

Can some kind person please help me.

 

I have only just started to use TMG although I have had the software for quite a while.

 

I have transferred my Gedcom over with no problems. I am now trying to add the information from the 1841 census against various people including the reference number of the page.

 

I know I am getting old (lol) but I have read the manual, used the help button and watched the video, but I still cannot understand what I have to do.

 

Could someone please explain in plain english what I should be doing.

 

I know I will look back on this and think what an idiot I am but at the moment I just feel useless.

 

Regards

 

Half Pint

Can't help with the "keying", but if you meant "source" instead of "spurce" someone will jump in pretty quickly.

Good luck,

John

I've had much trouble with PDF format files with every application program tried except the PDF program and no longer use them.

 

For trouble free images, JPG is recommended, if your scanner program supports it. BMP format is also trouble free, but is a memory hog.

 

I hope that your images in PDF are large. The only way that I know to translate them to a widely useful format results in a loss of resolution.

 

Good luck,

Mike Talbot

It has been my experience that jpg image files wrapped in PDF files typically extract at low "monitor screen" resolution from Adobe 7 Reader. However "low budget" PDF editing utilities, such as PDF995edit may be able to extract the jpgs at full resolution.

John

You could create ancestors named 'Unknown' to block out how ever many levels deep you wanted the ancestry chart to show. Kind of an icky workaround but it would do the trick.

I haven't looked, but is it possible to fully populate an Ancestry Box Chart and then change the font color in certain boxes to white so that names do not print?

In the TMG-L August 2006 archives, there is a short thread on "surprise" or ""hidden" borders in charts sent off for printing by TMG users.

In quick experiments I just performed with TMG's Sample Database with PDF995 (but not the Wholly Genes PDF Writer) selected as the printer driver at 36"x108", it is possible to see the cause and effects of this phenomenon - if one does enough mousing around.

Files saved and reopened as *.pdf extension from Visual Chartform with Pdf995 driver seem to open as intended, albeit with potentially lower resolution.... Files saved and reopened as *.vcf may give unintended border/margin results if customer and operator of large format printer are not on same wave length. FWIW.

OK. I'll admit I'm winging it here.

I seldom actually crank up TMG or any other Genealogy program except to experiment. Having said that, I have at one time or another set my Regional Settings and/or languages to Vietnamese to use it with Family Treemaker, and have also selected Hebrew to see the right to left problems problems in TMG memos. I became interested years ago when some guy wanted to use UFT with Cyrillic.

By accident, before I uninstalled the Hebrew support "recently", I found that FTM memo fields seemed to handle the right to left script in Hebrew correctly, although TMG did not - as of a few updates ago.

But it looks like the Vietnamese character layout is just a slight modification of the Windows Western layout, so if you have no other persons in the database requiring German or French characters (and perhaps sorting conventions), you might be able to get by with Vietnamese only.

That's about all I know about the subject. You get 256 different characters to play with (up to 0xFF in hex) in your TMG database. You can think of each character as being whatever you like, as long as you have a subset of a single byte "font" to print out each of the characters you actually use.

As to why you cannot use different languages simultaneously in TMG as you can in M$ Word, I gue$$ it all boil$ down to dollar$ and cent$, and workload, and perceived demographics of the respective customer bases. TMG does not support "unicode" at this time.

John

I have to add a number of Vietnamese names to my v6.09 database, and they have some additional accents aside from the usual french ones. I have the fonts installed on my computer, and they are mapped to the numbers. I can get the names properly typed in Word and Wordpad, but not in TMG.

 

Number 1-4 are mapped to give the accented letters ă, â, ê, ô respectively and work fine, number 5 through 0 are mapped to apply an accent to a previous typed letter, but give me in TMG instead other already accented letters, or the accent as a separate character.

 

Does anyone have experience with this?

 

Thanks for any help,

Afina

In WinXP, select Start>>Run

type in "Charmap" without the quotes

Repeat to start two instances of Character Map. Use Mouse in blue at top to separate the two Displays. Set one Charmap to Windows Western. Set the other to Windows Viet Nam.

This will let you see what you are up against: Namely two different character sets. Might as well be English vs Cyrillic or Greek. TMG only supports one 8 byte (256 character/font) set at a time. But maybe you can see the location of the characters you need and then fake it in Word by making two different printouts with two different languages selected, and then interleaving the sheets and throwing away the extras.

Thanks for your reply Jim. I really don't know what I'm doing. I keep referring to Terry's book and to the manual, but I'm stumped. I'm going to Salt Lake City FHL next week and I'm trying to get reports with as much detail as possible on them. . . . . . Kaye

This is probably unrelated to missing memo problem, but there have been reports in the past of erratic printing of FGS graphics due to printer resolution mismatch. If you are printing direct from TMG, try setting the printer resolution to 600 dpi or less.

John,

 

Are you speaking in terms of locating each gravesite in a cemetery or just the location of the cemetery? I think I missed something somewhere.

I was thinking of the genealogist taking a long walk to a specific location away from the automobile with a portable gps unit capable of maintaining a lat/long vs. time log "in hand."

Edited

What caused "yesterday's" handheld GPS units to become obsolete?

.

Time marches on. If the genealogist in the cemetery remembers to write down the lat/long of each photo s/he takes, yesterday's standalone GPS unit is fine. Otherwise a running breadcrumb trail (waypoint log) referenced to real time can come in mighty handy a week later back home.

Taking an occasional closeup picture of the GPS LCD display (if any) and a timepiece is probably a satisfactory method for most of us.

I am going to jump in here on the subject of creating GPS data logs vs. location.

At this point in time many, if not most, small point and shoot digital cameras record time of exposure to the second. Assuming that the user has a reasonable clue to the actual time of day and time zone setting, this data can be useful many years later. Taking a picture of a clock or wrist watch (with a scribbled note of the time zone next to the watch) every now and then can go a long way toward establishing meaningful time comparisons at a later date.

Software currently exists to compare camera time hacks to GPS tracking logs within a couple of seconds to put time and place together.

But when it comes to logging and saving the gps tracks, the state of the art is not so good. This is particularly true for consumer grade handheld units. So anyone considering purchasing a handheld should do their homework first. Sony has just come out with a unit for that purpose, but broke no new ground that anyone on the camera forums seemed to be aware of.

Whatever standalone handheld GPS unit is purchased should have the capability of both downloading and uploading from a laptop to be useful. Cell phones will probably lead the way, but it may be a few years before everything comes together. Today's GPS units require much more battery power than either cell phones or digital cameras. Yesterday's hadheld GPS units are obsolete.

Are you using a wired mouse plugged into a port? Do you have a hotel plastic "Do Not Disturb" sign cut to fit over the Thinkpad mouse pad?

On the subject of embedding searchable keywords in various documents, it might not hurt to take a look at the current Wholly Genes PDF Writer. The Amyuni PDF writer in TMG 6.09 appears capable of embedding searchable metadata, including keywords, in both Adobe XMP and Microsoft fields.

The metadata in the Adobe fields is exposed in Adobe Reader 7.

The metadata in the fields from both Adobe and Microsoft is exposed by right clicking on the pdf file and selecting Properties. The properties metadata is exposed in a manner similar to the one used by Pixvue for digital image files.

The entire computer can be searched from Adobe Reader 7 for XMP metadata embedded in pdf files, as well as pdf content data.

Only the Pixvue Gallery folder, which must be created by the user, can be searched by Pixvue for XMP/IPTC metadata in image files. Other applications are available to perform similar searches of image metadata.

Hi, I have tried to transfer VCF to a disc so I can send a chart to rellies in other parts of the globe. When I try to open it from my wife's PC it tries to open, but then closes immediately. 1. Have I left a file somewhere? 2. how do I load the chart when it does open? Forgive me for being dumbjava script:add_smilie("","smid_22"), but we all gotta start somewhere!

mikew

blush.gif

Try "printing" to the Wholly Genes PDF writer. It appears that this "virtual printer" might generate a pdf file for you with a "virtual" sheet size of up to 36x108 inches @ up to 600 dpi. (might work at 1200 dpi?, but 600dpi is more universal, and 300 dpi will create a smaller file for just emailing and viewing.) Please go into Control Panel>>Printers and faxes to set up the pdf writer before generating the chart from VCF.

I specify an Exhibit Folder in Preferences but I would still like for TMG to remember the location of the last exhibit and open in that folder when I add a new exhibit, instead of insisting on opening the Exhibit Folder in Preferences. That's great for a default place to start when the program starts but when I'm adding several image exhibits which are all located in a sub-folder several layers down from the default location, it would be really nice not to have to navigate there-- as well as being consistent with most other Windoze programs <ducking>.

Exhibit Properties>>Info

__Ctrl C (copy last exhibit folder path)

Right Click>>Insert New Image>>Select Existing File

__Ctrl V or Right Click>>Paste (paste in last exhibit folder path) >>Open

Repeat as required. Close enough?

John (or anyone else interested in this subject!)

 

From searching around this forum, you seem to have several posts which address the issues that I'm currently working on. But you have done much more research on the subject, altho I think your last post about any of this was in January 2006.

 

Here's what I've been doing (and please excuse my ignorance on some of the technology):

 

- I have recently committed to use TMG

- I had been using PhotoShop Album for organizing my photos, and Microsoft Digital Image programs for generating hardcopy output

- I don't love Album, so I decided to do some research before I finish identifying all my photos

- I have been evaluating whether or not to switch to Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 Library (I like the interface of Library better than Album, but I miss some of Album's features; I like being able to use Library to filter the images I want to work with, and go directly to the Editor)

- then I started reading about whether or not the info about the image is attached to the image itself, and realized that this is the most important criteria for me, in selecting a photo organizer

- so I downloaded PixVue, but then I'm also reading about alternatives such as IRFANVIEW, XNVIEW and CPICTURE....

- my husband suggested using PixVue in conjunction with Album or Library (ie, enter the data via Album or Library, but know that I can see it easily in Explorer...)

- I tried entering some info via Album, to see if it would appear via PixVue; some does and some doesn't

- I tried entering some info via DIP Library, to see if it would appear via PixVue; it didn't

- I'm confused and overwhelmed and floundering around, from program to program!

 

Ideally, I want to be in TMG, attach an exhibit to an event, and have TMG know some basic info about the image - such as the date and caption/title. It seems ridiculous that I should have to reenter this info!

 

I want to use a photo organizer to enter data about my images that will x-over and be seen/recognized in other applications....

 

It seems as if you've been using almost all of the programs that I've listed above....

 

Do you have a recommendation?

 

Thank you most sincerely!

Marion in Rochester

Marion-

I don't know how far to carry this thread that you bumped two weeks ago, but I have just discovered a new twist in discontinued MS Picture It! 10 Library. This may also apply to MS Digital Image Suite.

PictureIt! Library, the gallery/album searchable viewer will sort and display certain image files, including jpgs, by various schemes, including date and keywords it enters into the MS properties fields. No big deal, except that it will also remap and search by keywords entered in IPTC/XMP fields via Irfanview or Pixvue.

But once you add one keyword in a jpg file from inside Picture It!, it will no longer expose nor use keywords in IPTC/XMP fields. No big deal. It doesn't erase the IPTC/XMP keywords and it seems to be fail safe, but it just adds to the confusion. [Edit: Can be reversed, and might be a useful method of pasting keywords into MS metadata keyword field.]

John M.

As I interpret the Googled tea leaves re: Vista digital image management (DAM), "Vista Gallery" will provide a user experience roughly equivalent to XP with the latest version of MS Digital Image Suite.

In Vista, native support for embedding XMP/IPTC fields will not be provided!

Keyword search in Gallery will be, what was the word? "overutilized?", as in existing MS Picture It! and Digital Image Suite, for XP. In short, Pixvue and IMatch will not be put out of business.

The Vista Gallery will be maintained by copying full folders of image files to the top "gallery" folder. Selection of just a few files from the master folder for gallery indexing will not be permitted to protect the user from him/herself. This will mean that Vista Gallery users will be required to maintain at least three sets (hierarchies) of image data if they wish to cull out the bad shots before placing them in the gallery.

In short, business as usual with a "free" copy of MS Digital Image Suite included in Vista. But also with a Vista file system limitation of only one 64k block of data for Adobe and others to play with for XMP/XML purposes (as of January).

(NTFS apparently allowed use of more than one 64k block. Dunno about that. Above my pay grade.)

I have tried several photo album software packages over the years, and never found one that is simple enough. I want to use Windows Explorer to organize and view my images.

"PixVue is an image management application for Windows. PixVue provides a series of extensions to the Windows Explorer, enhancing its functionality as it relates to digital images." (As quoted from Pixvue Help)

What I found after getting past the basic positve Explorer experience with Pixvue, is that it includes a user friendly, boolean searchable, "Gallery" consisting of those folders and files you choose to put in said "Gallery". You will have to do a limited amount of preparation work in Windows Indexing Service to set this up, but it is clearly explained and optional.

Caveat: Just don't go a little too far while in Windows Indexing and try to remap the XMP property fields into the "Windows metadata" fields to be compatible with the "new" TMG just yet, unless you know what you are doing.

Ah so. Reminds me of a long ago experimention with another widely distributed genealogy program. What was the name? I forget now. Similar Lead Tools "third party" functionality. No matter what format the image files were in upon import, they seemed to be opened as a bitmap and then resaved.

So it's better to start with original images in bitmap or a "lossless" compression file format for best quality internal file. But when printed to paper, it doesn't seem to matter.

What happens if you wrap your OCR image files in a PDF file and then you want to unwrap them?

Hmm? Copy/Paste from Adobe Reader 7 will only take it to the Clipboard at screen resolution of 72/96/120 ppi at best!

You will need a PDF editor capable of working with the embedded image file type. Pdf995edit can extract jpg images at original compressed quality, but may not be capable of handling PNG files.

FWIW

John M.

This PNG discussion brings to mind some reading and experimenting another genealogy program user and I did a few years ago. All implementations of PNG were not the same! Adobe Photoshop at the time was reported to be using an inferior compression method that coincidentally created PNG files that compared unfavorably in size with Adobe proprietary files at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNG#Comparison_with_TIFF

Photo Editors other than Adobe produced different varieties of PNG that were not necessarily of the same quality. A little searching on the subjuect of PNG file sizes and alpha channel might be in order.

As to putting a PDF wrapper on OCR files, those who use professional quality Adobe PDF generating programs may have options that users of Ghostscript based "pdf creators" do not have. Many of the free or inexpensive pdf creators will provide only jpg image compression, and there may be little control of even that.

From what I have read, Ghostscript developers were headed toward incorporating PNG a few years ago, so there might be a few inexpensive PDF creators that actually use a PNG version of Ghostscript.

But the Tiff format was apparently also upgraded in the last few years. When combined with limited PNG support in Microsoft browsers, widespread acceptance of PNG (at higher bit levels?) was set back for a while. Doesn't seem to matter much for b/w OCR, though.

FWIW

John M.

I'm still clueless how XMP factors into this, but I'm hoping that will become evident.

Welcome to the club. Remaining clueless is usually a sign that the application one is using is working.

For those who want to enter XMP metadata now, at no cost, become less clueless later, and be compatible with TMG "when/if" my recommendation would be Pixvue (Pixvue.com)

For those who wish to become less clueless now, and enter metadata later, regardless of the cost, my recommendation would be download Pixvue just to read the the Help/Instructions.

For those who need a quick opening viewer to go with Pixvue, at no cost, there is Irfanview.

But Pixvue should be used for entering the Metadata, not Irfanview, because Pixvue uses XMP fields as primary, but is backward compatible with older IPTC fields. Irfanview seems to use older (frozen) IPTC fields as primary, but does seems basically forward compatible with XMP.

As to entering data in Microsoft Picture It!, Microsoft Digital Suite, Adobe Album (free?), PhotoImpact, or ACDSee, or any other photo album software more than a couple of years old - that's probably not a good idea unless you are already heavily invested in the process.

As to ICC color profile metadata fields, if you get your pictures developed at Wal-Mart or the drug store, you can remain clueless. But there are a lot of professional photographers who understand and use color profiles, but are just now learning to cope with the XMP indexing of their files. And so it goes.

John M.