Mike Talbot

Yes, and restore TMG4 b m d dates to Tree View. Cheers, Mike Talbot

I wish I had a good answer to your question. Maybe there is none. What I try to do is to give the place name at the time of the event and then note my data entry year and the then current place name in the memo field (I don't always succeed in remembering to do this). I give the data entry year, because a lot of place names have changed since I started entering data in 1985 to say now or present. A few Acadian event/place examples: date place memo 1641 Pentagoet, Acadie (1986, Penobscot, Maine) 1700 Port Royal, Acadie (2007, Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia) 1748 Isle Saint Jean, Acadie (1994, Prince Edward Island) This works for me. Good luck and I hope that you devise a better method, Mike Talbot

Unlike eggs, it is best to keep all of your exhibits in one basket (and all of your genealogy data in one dataset). I highly recommend a single folder in the Root, where all exhibits are to reside (I once had the nightmare of multiple exhibit folders). Maintenance, management, backups and life in general are so much simpler that way. If you are worried about exhibit sizes, I have about 9600 TMG exhibit files that occupy about 0.6 GigaBytes in a single folder for comparison, with no problems. It is very easy to do. Add the new folder in the Root. Move all of your exhibit files to it. Run VFI specifying only that folder (you should also change the exhibit folder name in Preferences and delete unused folders, at your leisure). TMG will thenceforth be quite "user friendly" to you. Best wishes, whatever you decide to do, Mike Talbot

The procedure given by lawrpaul will work, perfectly. There is another way (isn't there always?), where you don't need ID numbers. In the daughter's detail view, double click on the (Type) word 'Mother:' (near top left of display as per lawrpaul, the next step is different). In the pop up menu, click on the binoculars to the right side of the 'Parent' number line The Pick List will pop up. This is an aphabetical list of everyone in your dataset (or project). It is usually sorted by surname (but that can be changed by you). Start typing the mother's surname. The Pick List will position to a surname beggining with that character string. When you see the mother's name in the pick list, double click on it. A pop up will confirm your selection, click OK (if it is, otherwise try again). Notice that you can also enter your predefined reference number and/or a memo note on this pop up menu. Done. Don't ever get discouraged. Practice and it gets way easier. Someone is always here to help, Mike Talbot

I assume that you mean Image window, is that true? Only one image that you have designated as 'Primary' in the exhibit log will be visible in the Image window. To check, open the Exhibit log. Select and then right click on the image that you wish to appear in the Image window. Click on Properties, then click on the little box labeled 'Primary' in the lower left of the menu that appears. A check mark should appear in the 'Primary' box. Click OK. Then CLOSE the Exhibit log. Your 'Primary' image should now appear in the Image window (and in appropriate VCF charts). Let us know if it that does't fix the problem, Mike Talbot

Yes, it is a problem in any language. I would like to have a similar report to the type that you want. I hope that you can output your reports to a word processor. In either of the following possibilities, you will still need to do some hand editing in a word processor. The Descendant Indented Chart will give you almost what you want. It is really just a report with a few graphic characters to improve clarity. Concatenating Family Group Sheets is also a possibility. You will have to hand delete and patch the redundant output of data on person A for each marriage. Hope this helps and good luck, Mike Talbot

TMG 6.12 File Maintenance questions Several updates ago, my Progress Bar Graph disappeared during File Maintenance and other long running TMG features. The static title bar that displays the word “Progress” is still there. I have installed several TMG updates and the problem is unchanged (the dynamic bar graph soothes my computer program paranoia). How can I get the dynamic bar graph to be visible, again??? _____________________________________________________________________ Whenever I run File > Maintenance > Optimize, it displays that it saved about 4.5 million bytes or so. I can run it many consecutive times, each time it says 4.5 million saved, give or take, bytes, but the files do not get smaller (the .SQZ file is about 175 MMbytes, external images about 425 MMbytes are backed up separately) What is happening, here??? _____________________________________________________________________ A few updates ago, there was a problem with Backup upon Exit and one needed to go through the File Menu to perform a valid backup. This is time consuming. I have missed seeing any statement that the problem has been fixed. Is it fixed??? _____________________________________________________________________ Comments _____________________________________________________________________ Many messages on this forum, indicate that one should run File > Maintenance > VFI and Optimize and Resequence. I agree that the first two maintenance features should be run often. It is my understanding, that FM>Resequence just makes all of the TMG person numbers consecutive (ie: if you have deleted person # 2, Resequence will change person #3 to person #2, etc). Some people, including me, might wish to never run Resequence. _____________________________________________________________________ It is recommended that everyone who uses programs that add and delete records from random access files (like TMG / Foxbase) run Microsoft’s Disk Defragmenter, frequently. Not doing so will gradually slow your computer down among other ugly things. If you DEFRAG often, it will only take a few moments (on Windows XP, it took much longer on Win.98). Many thanks and best wishes, Mike Talbot

Thanks for clearing up those points for me. The "resequence" misnomer was my mistake. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get back my dynamic progress bar graph? That was the important question, the rest, except for backup, was just curiosity. Thanks again, Mike Talbot

Dear Leslie: I implore you not to split your database. Please reconsider! And please forgive this comment since it is completely none of my business. I speak of the many pitfalls with the voice of sad experiences, since I once had 2 datasets. I didn’t split my datasets, but started with 2 separate datasets over 20 years ago due to my old genealogy program limit of about 32,000 people per dataset. Though I had only collected manual data on about 1500 people when I computerized, I could see that the European portion dataset would one day spproach that limit. As I neared the dataset size limits, I switched to TMG about 10 years ago. Had I not been so clever to plan around my old program limits and use 2 datasets, I might have been lucky and discovered TMG several years sooner. (I can’t imagine how I got along without VCF for all those years) You may see some tales of multi-dataset woe in the forum archives. Splitting the database using Terry’s posted procedure will be easy and effective. The rub will occur when you try to maintain 2 sets of data or want to generate a report or chart that crosses datasets. Should you ever wish to recombine the 2 datasets, the real nightmare will begin. You will have to make many manual patches and links after the recombination. Even over 6 years after combining my data into one dataset, I still occasionally discover another manual patch that I overlooked making. I can’t see a single advantage to ever splitting a TMG dataset into two or more pieces. There are many, many disadvantages of doing so. Separate projects and datasets are very valuable for keeping data that you receive from others while you review and check their data for things that you might need. Another valuable use would be working on some super-secret project that you plan to copyright one day and don't wish to give away by accident. Please reconsider your plans based on this lesson from the school of hard-knocks. If you do decide to split, make a fresh backup of your unmodified data and copy to an external media before you begin. Best wishes, whatever you decide, Mike Talbot

There are no wrong methods to do a fun hobby like genealogy. Do it the way that brings you the most joy and minimizes your agrivation. TMG is flexible enough that each user can please (or almost please) himself. If you were to use the ? as a simple, one character, estimation suffix in the birth date field, per your example 1918 ? or 1734 ?, TMG treats either of these as a regular date. All TMG calculations, display and editing features will then function normally and without any annoying warning messages regarding your guesses. I never guess at marriage or death dates, though I do use the before, after and circa date prefixes whenever the phrasing of a reference warrants them. I do enter a marriage tag for every marriage. But, only fill in the invisible sort date to reasonably order tags in the Person Window whenever the marriage date is unknown and leave the visible date field blank. In each applicable TMG report and VCF chart I print the following sentence, one time in a highly visible location: Any birth year followed by a ? is my guess of an unknown year of birth and is for reseach purposes, only. Best wishes, Mike Talbot

addendum: Estimating those missing birth years I have just noticed that somewhere over the years, TMG began sorting "?" suffix dates in one group and all other dates in another group in some features. I have just noticed this on VCF Descendant Charts, but have not identified other features where this sorting anomally occurs. The work-around, if desired, is to remove the "?" suffix from the sort date field but leave it in the main date field. Sorry about that. Best wishes, Mike Talbot PS: Use known dates from in-laws to tweek your estimated birth years (ie: spouses of siblings, etc.). Remember you are estimating/guessing a reasonable birth year not making a scientiific calculation.

Unknown birth years happen frequently! Having a birth tag for each person is very handy, especially in large databases. If the date of birth is unknown, "make up/guess" a birth year. It is important to be able to distinguish "made up dates" from actual data, relative and approximate dates (b:before, c:circa, a:after). I have used the following method for over 20 years, about 10 years with TMG with very pleasing results. The only way to uniquely, highly visibly indicate made up/manufactured dates in TMG while maintaining the sort order is by using the "?" as a suffix to made up birth years. The "xxxx ?" will be a legal date in TMG and highly visible on your editing, display, index screens and on reports and VCF boxes. Some rules of thumb for making up birth years: The average child is born when parents are about 30 +-2 years. So just find the nearest person with a known birth year and add or subtract 30 years per generation to estimate (make up) that unknown birth year (I usually round down the estimate to the nearest five years for dads and round up for moms). Another rule of thumb, is when parents have multiple children, they are most often spaced about 2 years apart. NOTE: I never make up/guess a death or marriage year. For example, if the parents' calculated birth year is 1580 and they have 10 kids of known birth order, the middle/average 5th child would be estimated to be born in 1610 (30 years younger than parents), the first child in 1600 and the last in 1620, each estimate spaced 2 years apart. When you find birth years that were previously unknown, you can tweek your earlier estimates. Many purists will not like estimated birth years, I have no quarrel with them. If you don't like, don't use. Keeping a birth tag for every person solves many problems. If you only use the sort date, you lose all visibility. Visible birth years do resolve the sort order for multiple children. It also acts as a BullS**t filter. In many highly respected genealogy references, I have seen children compute to be older than their grandma. An error that might not be caught without "every person" birth years. It becomes up to you to decide if the reference gave erroneous parents or grandma's date data was wrong. Having a birth year for everyone makes anachronistic birth year anomalies within and across generations become visible, so that you can reject bad referenced data and do further research. If you can't estimate a resonable birth year for each member of a family, chances are it is not a family. When adding people with unknown birth years to your database, you should always do these birth year calculations to assure that the new data is reasonable. Why not preserve the results in TMG birth tags to save future work? Best wishes, Mike Talbot

Seek out a public library that maintains newspaper archives of that area and period. Good luck, Mike Talbot

The following important funtionality has been lost in TMG 6 vs TMG 4: 1. There are no BMD dates on the TMG 6 Tree View (the mouse over dates do not help when comparing genrations or across generations) 2. You are limited to the last 10 viewed people with the View button in TMG 6 (20 or user defined as in TMG 4 would be better). 3. The standard Picklist does not have color Accent ability (I find the extended Picklist to be awkward) 4. Can you do what you did in your example to make the Family view useful, without screwing up the more important Person and Tree views? I sincerely wish that these good TMG 4 features were restored to TMG 6, best wishes, Mike Talbot

The VCF "Reinstall from disk" problem has been fixed. It would occur after you generated a VCF chart, but did not save it. All you need to do, when it happens, is exit TMG and re-execute it. If you save every chart generated, it will not happen. It is reccommended that you do whatever it takes to upgrade to TMG 6.12. Lots of annoying things will go away. Be sure to fully backup your data before you do. Good luck, Mike

Yes, moviing the exhibit folder would do that. To fix: File>maintenance>verify file integrity the first question allows you to define the new folder that contains exhibits. VFI can then find and correct the missing ones. Run your chart to test. As a general rule, you should run verify file integrity (VFI) and optimize, periodically. One day you should change preferences to make everything consistant. Mike

addendum I ran experiments on 11 generations VCF charts (finally, I should have done that first). There’s good news and bad news, The bad news is that on my computer (3.4 GHz Pentium 4, half-Meg RAM) it takes almost 2 minutes of processor grinding for VCF to move a large selection of chart data. Making the selections is not easy either. Around 400 to 500 selections need to be moved to minimize chart dimensions. So full compression is impractical, unless you have the patience of a saint. The good news is that full compression is not needed if only two 11 gen. charts are needed for your project. Using the Ancestry Box Chart for 11 generations (Max on the left), an uncompressed chart of 23 x 226 inches was produced (2 x 19 feet). Full manual compression would only save about 4+ inches of the 2 feet and 3+ feet of the 19 feet. It doesn’t seem worth it. For comparison, using the Ancestry Box chart for 11 generations (Max on the bottom), an unwieldy chart of 12 x 636 inches (1 x 53 feet) was produced. Naturally, the chart sizes are data sensitive. While the ancestry of Thomas Francois is very nearly complete to 11 generations, there was some inbreeding (there were nearly 400 boxes in the 11th generation instead of the theoretical 940). I would guess that modern GSDs have a higher consanguinity level than medieval European nobility, resulting in a shorter chart than my test in the longer direction. Even better news, you won’t need a lot of manual VCF work for your charts, if 11 gen. charts will do. I’m still a bit confused on how many generations are needed to get Max to the original GSD and is that the maximum desired generation for your project? Best wishes, Mike

Dear Julie: Sorry I can’t answer your question on where the details went in your new post. I have only one custom tag in my system. It links unmarried parents (in the marriage tag group). I send GEDCOMs to friends and cousins too often for using many custom tags. I have never used the Hourglass Chart Report to produce a hardcopy document, but have played with it a little on screen. With equal option settings the Hourglass will produce the same ancestor portion as the Ancestor Chart (with RIGHT orientation for both, Max on the left). A few strange things do occur with TOP orientation (Max on the bottom, the Hourglass chart factory default). It’s good news (in a way) that Max has only 21 generations (if his 18th g. grandpa is the original GSD). Or, do you intend to include some ancestry of the original GSD. For 21 generations your second chart will need be only 7 generations. Or maybe you would prefer two 11 gen. Charts (the last guy on Max’s chart is repeated in the continuation chart). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Recommendation: Double check your option settings, use Terry’s post as a guide. You can tweek some options smaller, once everything works on your charts. I used an image maximum size of 68 x 72 pixels and all minimum connector line lengths in my example. Use the Ancestry Chart Report with RIGHT orientation. Max will be on the left, his ancestors to the right. Reason: Chart size grows linearly in the generation direction but exponentially across each generation. You really, really want that exponential size growth on the shorter side of the boxes when doing many generation charts. For example, the chart on Thomas Francois, attached to my first post (Ancestry Chart with RIGHT orientation), will further compress to 7.5 x 9.5 inches without degrading “viewability”. The same ancestry, with TOP orientation. compresses to a whopping 7 x 25 inches. Also it took more work to compress the TOP orientation chart (bigger is harder to move around). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ So, pedigreed dogs average about 5 years per generation. People average around 30 years. That’s pretty close to the “dog-years” old saw of 7. You have a database with 200,000 German Shepherds!!! There are some people on this forum who have claimed wonders with translation of known format data files to spread sheets and spread sheets to TMG and the like. Maybe one of them will be interested. Good luck finding that missing chart data, there are lots of good folks reading about your problem, Mike

Dear Julie: It’s my turn to WOW, now! It’s a truly magnificent project that you have undertaken. I did not realize that your plans were that advanced. I feel a bit like a lowly undergrad student attempting to advise the Leonardo DaVinci of German Shepherdom. I would assume that you have many other things to prepare before August. I had thought that this was a rainy day project with no time constraints. To avoid ulcers, I would respectfully suggest that you display and donate a smaller “tease” project at the show this year and promise to expand upon it next year. I assume that you would need to use the TMG printing service for large charts. If so, allow time for at least a redo. Sometimes, things that look great on the screen are not so good, even lame on hardcopy. Just a stray thought, go with what you know this year. Perhaps two of your 3 x 8 feet charts would be a good “tease” donation to display at the show this year (I’m surprised that 15 generations can fit on such a “small” sheet). Complete the one 15 generations chart on Max that you are practicing with now. Do a similar chart on the ancestors of your favorite dog that is in the 15th generation on Max’s ancestry chart that has a fully known pedigree to the “Original Registered German Shepherd”. That one would be about 14 generations. The 2 charts together would be summa-cum-sexy, although a very incomplete ancestry of Max. It does hit the high spots. Also, just place a sticky note on the first chart linking it to the continuation chart, no need to glue the charts together or to make the linkage permanent. Your data sounds to be very valuable contribution to the dog world. An idea to consider for your “final” donation might be a multi-volume set of books with a page devoted to each unique dog (maybe a 5 gen. chart per dog with comments. This would allow the inclusion of a bigger, better imported picture of the subject dog in a “white space” of each subject's chart) plus maybe some pages on a few significant Shepherd breeders, with pictures. A main challenge would be to devise a meaningful index. Were I ever in your shoes, I would display the “tease“ project at the coming show, hear comments and discuss with peers’ at the show, mull them over later at leisure. Then make plans for the “final” project, that you will have almost a year to implement. Would you please generate and post a small 3 or 4 generations subset of your chart, here? Edit and compress this small example chart as you would do for your larger chart. VCF can export the chart to JPG format, suitable for this forum. Seeing might inspire others to comment. It will certainly make any comments more relevant and useful to you. Just curiosity. How many calendar years separate the birth of Max from the birth of his original 28th generation ancestor? Best wishes, Mike

Thanks, wish I had thought of that. Mike

I wish that I could do that!!! How did you get the above linkage to that message in your message? Very best wishes, Mike Talbot A new trick a day keeps Altzheimer's away.

Firstly, let’s examine your desired playing field. There are 43,200 square inches of surface on a 10 x 30 feet sheet. A VCF individual box with picture will occupy at least 2 square inches (my settings are close to Terry's, only a smidge smaller), including a minimal of white space. Optimistically, the maximum number of individuals that will fit on a 10 x 30 feet chart will be about 20,000. Secondly, let’s examine your stated goal of 30 generations of ancestors on a chart. There are 2 multiplied by itself 30 times (minus 1) individuals in a 30 generations ancestry chart. The result is about 256 million individuals on such a chart. This chart would occupy at least 100,000 (10 x 30) sheets. More chart sheets are needed if you want to be able to follow and read the chart (all “white space” is not a waste). Even if you reduced your goal to showing only 1% (probably this is more than is known) of the ancestry you would still need 1000 sheets. Clearly, you mustn’t want to do this. (Additionally, it would take several lifetimes to enter data on 256 million individuals, even though most would be duplicates, into TMG.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All is not lost. Forget the 10 x 30 feet constraint. Let the chart feet fall where they may (within reason). You may need to redefine chart size several times while building, tools>diagram>diagram measurements. Once a composite chart is achieved that contains your desired results, you can then begin to prune, divide or compress the chart to realistic or economic constraints. One way to build a composite chart follows. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a number of generations that must be documented for a dog to be considered pedigreed (I don’t know for puppies, but for European human traditions, 5 generations of noble ancestors [only 31 individuals, counting the subject] are needed for a subject person to be considered truly noble). Assuming dogs are no more snooty than humans, 5 generations will fit on 8.5 x 11 inches chart with some manual compression editing of the VCF chart (see attached example of a manually compressed chart result. This only took a few minutes, after days of practice.) required. Additional horizontal compression is feasible in this example at the 3rd and 4th generation levels, as desired. All dogs are not created socially equal. Use the above (assumed) 5 generations chart as a base to build a composite chart and connect the 5th generation members of this chart to “famous dogs” generation by generation to whatever generation necessary. Perhaps instead of having 256 million dogs, you, most likely, will know only a few thousand. Maybe they will all fit on a single 10 x 30 feet or similar sized sheet. Don’t prejudge. In building a composite chart you will generate a combination of VCF ancestry box charts and descendant box charts (be sure to pre-configure compatible A/D box sizes) then copy and paste the needed boxes and connector lines to your desired/destination VCF composite chart. Move stuff as needed. The TMG relationship chart will be useful in determining the best VCF box charts to generate, even though the TMG relationship chart output, itself, is ugly and its graphics are otherwise useless for this project. To begin, practice and become familiar with compressing and coping parts of VCF charts and pasting and moving selected parts of charts into VCF composite charts. It is not hard, but requires a little experience and patience. You may wish to use some of those unavoidable white spaces for imported pictures of yourself, others, habitat or captions. It is easier to do than to describe. If I can help to clarify parts of this message or with other advice, please don’t hesitate to ask. Been there done very similar to that. You will loose a few hairs, but hopefully the results will be worth it. Always maintain a backup of your intermediate VCF results. As chart implementation complexity grows, religiously maintain father, grandfather, etc. VCF backups. Note: I have always gotten “pound puppies”, but my mom and kids have sometimes gotten pedigreed cuties. They come complete with a 5 generations ancestry chart papers from the puppy factory. There is a story of a girl who had an abortion because she didn't believe that it was her baby. Also see my 19 Dec 2005 message in this forum titled “Holiday fun with VCF” concerning composite VCF charts. Best of luck, Mike Talbot

Agreed, your way has some small advantages. I can see no advantage in the "last viewed spouse" TMG policy. Good luck, Mike Talbot

There have been many questions on this forum concerning the maximum size of a TMG dataset. It seems that someone on this forum mentioned a dataset size of about 140,000 people, but no other details. I know of no TMG limits. Years ago, I switched to TMG because my old genealogy program was limited to 32,767 people per dataset (resulting in the nightmare of people in separate datasets). The old program also had no exhibit and limited comments capabilities. It would be helpful to have data available when questions on TMG limits arise. Would others please post the sizes of their large, working datasets? Have I left out any important size parameters? There is only one dataset in the following project: Number of persons : 77,702 Number of names : 78,062 Backup file size .sqz: 168 megaB, external exhibits are not included, and are backed up separately. # of external exhibits: 9190 (mostly jpg format files) External exhibits size: 425 megaB, this may be misleadingly low since over 1000 exhibits are used more than once. Computer RAM memory 512 megaB. Spare hard drive memory 180 gigaB. Thank you, Mike Talbot

Thank you very much for those upper limit considerations. I would guess that individual memory size, spare hard drive room, multitasking policy, CPU and disk speed would play a part in indivdual user effective or experienced limits. When I had only 256 MB RAM and only about a gig of spare disk, a couple of years ago, I had all sorts of problems and crashes with both TMG and VCF. I fogot to mention that I only multitask with AOL, MSWord or VCF, seldomly, while running TMG 6.12 under XP on a 3.4 Ghz Pentium 4. Best wishes, Mike Talbot