Mike Talbot

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

On my TMG, when multiple spouses exist, the FGS generates as follows: subject (lacking marriage data on spouse1) ..spouse1 ....kids1 subject (lacking marriage data on spouse2) ..spouse2 ....kids2 subject (lacking marriage data on spouse3) ..spouse3 ....kids3 etc. Is there a way to avoid the verbose redundancy (with confusing marriage data) and generate a FGS as follows? subject (with marriage data on all spouses) ..spouse1 ....kids1 ..spouse2 ....kids2 ..spouse3 ....kids3 etc. I hand correct each FGS that I generate using MSWord. But this is time consuming, error prone and demoralising when you have several to do. Thank you, Mike

I totally agree, please restore a user defined number of people for the view history window. If you can't, set the number at 20-24. Ten is never enough. TMG v.5 and 6 were four steps forward and 3 steps backwards from TMG v.4. The sqz backup file size increased by an order of magnitude for the exact same user data. The TMG program became unstable with less than 512 megs of RAM and too slow with less than 2 mhz clock speed. On the bright side, stability was improved from TMG 5 to TMG 6. TMG 5 seemed to corrupt your entire database if anything went wrong. Thankfully, there have been no corrupted databases from using TMG 6. Also, please consider restoring b/m/d dates to the Tree View, they were extremely helpful in TMG v.4 for data checking and just plain fun to see. Best wishes, Mike Talbot

Just a thought. As Terry mentioned, if you do not know the full capabilities of your uncle's genealogy program, there are more things that you can give to him in addition to the GEDCOM. For example, a CD can hold much more than a single GEDCOM. Consider: Generate an Ahnentafel Report to disk in your mutual word processor format and copy that file to CD with the GEDCOM. If the report is not too long, you could also print it for him. Generate some pretty box charts on some of your uncle's interests and print them so that he can see and discuss something right away. These can also be exported to your favorite bitmap graphics format and copied to the CD in case he later wants more copies. Remember, on a pc there are two ways to complete the CD copy. You can make it so that more files can be added later, great if you know the intimacies of unlce's CD drive/software. Or you can close the CD so that no more files can be added. Unfortunately, this second way is compatable with more CD drives/software. The possibilities are almost endless, been there before, best wishes, Mike Talbot

I agree. But let's go one step farther and remember the entire file spec. Then, let's arm the F3 key to stamp out exhibits of coats-of-arms, tartans, etc. for other members of the family. I would recommend, however, that you keep all TMG exhibits in the same folder for standardized supported organization and backup purposes. Mike Talbot

We can all agree on the definition of a genealogical family. My previous message was intended as an attempt to offer one possible expaination to Jim's excess of FGSs (the issue). I could not resist the temptation to plug for a simplification of the FGS output format, with no loss in useful data. But, his question concerened Family Group Sheets which by "a long-standing convention in genealogy" consist of a subject, all spouses of that subject and all children of that subject (parents of subject and spouses, a preferred option). Repeating the subject's data (which can be quite long), with each spouse creates defacto multiple family groups, adds nothing to the report and obscures the sought after forest with some unuseful trees. BTW, on your 2nd reply to Jim, generating a FGS report for each person in a database (assuming no multiple marriages) should result in exactly the number of FGSs as there are people, not double. If you selected only one sex, you should get half the number of FGSs as there are people (assuming each person is married, once). Best wishes and thanks for your many helpful posts, Mike Talbot

Unfortunately, the TMG FGS report treats each marriage as a family group. So, If you print a Family Group Sheet on a person with two marriages, you get 2 complete family group sheets. The only work around is to merge the FGSs by hand deleting the redundant data for the subject person with your word processor. It has always been high on my wishlist that TMG stop repeating redundant data for the subject person for each marriage. So far, deaf ears. Best wishes, Mike

While TMG 5 and 6 took many steps forward from TMG 4.0, it took one giant step backward. The partial BMG dates were removed from the Tree Window. The mouse-over dates of a single individual do not help. With the large LCD screens (even 17" on Laptops) there is no excuse to not have full BMD dates for everyone on a second line (smaller font) in each person's box. If one wishes to eliminate some "over-crowding", the seldom useful ID number can be removed from this display. The dates are not just for decoration, but are a huge aid in discovering date errors over 6 generations and down 16 lines. One cannot detect a date anomaly with a single mouseover date. Please consider this, Mike Talbot

VCF gratefully allows pictures to be imported into charts (click the top icon that looks like the moon over mountains). However, when resizing the pictures, there is, now, no way to retain the original picture's aspect ratio. This has to be done by, often poor, sight judgement. Most good drawing programs maintain the aspect ratio when resizing an image by dragging a corner handle. VCF does not. If implemented and one wishes to distort the image to become short fat people or tall skinny people, one could still drag the side handles. It would also be great if VCF supported dragging pictures from the Windows Explorer and other applications into VCF, as do most other Windows programs. Inserting a picture via the above VCF icon is a bit awkward and very time consuming. Many thanks, Mike Talbot

I agree (don't forget tartans and notes). Recommended mechanics: A simple way (for the user) is to expand the funtionality of the F3 key. Currently, if you are editing a field in a tag, pressing F3 places the last entered value of that field type in the field. If you are not editing a tag, just make the F3 key create a copy of the last tag or exhibit that was edited in the open person's record. Even better wishes, Mike Talbot

You have to be very lucky to have complete dates of evereything for most people. It seems that an incomplete date only signifies that the date is not complete. For example, many Social Security records only specify the month and year of death, others contain complete dates. An almost totally reliable indicator, since thankfully, most people die before burial, is to put a b for before leading the actual burial date into the Death Tag. Perfectionists can add the comment Burial in the detail field, for instance. Best wishes, Mike Talbot

My first message was correct but too simplistic. Use Windows Task Manager to help diagnose your problem. To get more data on your problem, exit all of your programs. Hold down the [alt] and [ctrl] keys and press the [del] key. A window will appear. Click on the Performance Tab. You will see a moving graph showing the CPU usage plotted against time. The % usage should be close to zero, certainly under 5 % (not counting short duration spikes). If not some program of which you are unaware is running. If usage is high, seek professional help. If the usage is low, then execute TMG. The usage will be high for a couple of minutes while TMG loads and initializes itself. The usage should then drop to what it was before TMG was executed. Mine does. If usage is high seek TMG Tech Support. There are two other tabs that will provide additional information. Click on the Applications Tab. There should be nothing in the list other than The Master Genealogist. Click on the Processes Tab. There should be around 35 or 40 processes running. I know of no legitimate processes with a name in all caps. Too get more data, RE-BOOT windows and repeat the above. Good luck, Mike Talbot

Once upon a time, I had 2 datasets. The reasons why were valid at the time with my old genealogy program, but with switching to TMG were no longer relevant. Separate datasets were a nightmare even with TMG. File maintenance was more difficult, some reports that I wanted but spanned the 2 datasets were impossible. I merged the two datasets and life has been much simpler and happier, ever since. I don't know what you consider to be a huge dataset. My data contains about 73,500 people with over 8000 images in a single dataset of a single project. It is a joy to maintain with TMG. A data set of 70,000 would be no more difficult to keep organized than one of 7000 with TMG. I do have other projects containing multiple datasets. They are data from friends and relatives that I use for reference purposes, only. Other projects are also used to test GEDCOMs that I make for colleagues. As you have guessed, I strongly recommend merging all of your data into a single dataset, single project. You have to manually resolve duplicate people resulting from the merge. Resolving duplicates will just get more difficult as your research expands. TMG has no known dataset size limitations other than that imposed by your computer memory. This topic has been addressed in past threads. Good luck and best wishes, Mike Talbot

Do you have spy-ware and virus protection programs that are up to date? If not, get them, that could be your problem. Good luck, Mike Talbot

Can one get the Spouse name of the last viewed spouse included in an Ancestor Box Chart? How? If not, is this in TMG future plans? I'd settle for a separate spouse box, but would prefer to have just the name in the focus person box. The marriage data is there, but it looks a bit silly without the appropriate spouse name. For 8 years I've been typing in the appropriate spouse name, manually, via VCF and kept forgetting to ask if there is a better. Thanks, Mike Talbot

Very, very clever. I will keep this in my bag of VCF tricks. In this case though, you are left with a big box containing a tiny picture in a corner of it. The text still takes up space which is at a premium, here. Thanks, Mike Talbot

Have you considered using the Memo field of the Primary Name for your purposes? To access the Primary Name Memo, in the Person Window, right click on the Primary Name at the top of page. A menu will pop-up, click on Edit Tag. You now have access to the Pimary Name Memo field. You can use CTL[c] and CTL[v] to copy your entries from the NAME VAR Tag Memo to the Primary Name Memo. Just do steps in the right order. When done, delete the NAME VAR Tag. Alternate suggestion, consider using the NOTE Tag. End Topic. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I wish CTL[c] and CTL[v] would work properly for replies in this forum's editor. When attempted, all formatting including new lines, bold, italics and spacing, etc. are lost. It would be niice to formulate replies offline and cut and paste them to this editor, like most PC applications and other forums. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good luck, Mike Talbot

No, I would not make such a chart. But I have added many images to VCF Ancestor and Descendant Box Charts, added captions, and everything else that's needed to do so. I assume that you are happy with the text only layout in your descendant box chart. You have two choices to create a picture only chart, both require manually pasteing the pictures on top of a copy of your text Descendant Box Chart. 1. You can use VCF, but it doesn't successfully support drag & drop images. You have to click on the strange little icon up-top that looks like a "moon coming over mountains" to import each image. Move the image atop the desired box and size it to taste. 2. If you have a favorite drawing program, like Corel Draw: a. use VCF to export your box chart to JPG. Be sure the spacing between boxes is the way you want it before exporting. b. Import the JPG chart into your favorite drawing program. c. Drag & drop each image from Explorer windows to your drawing, move each over the desired box, size it to taste. Whichever way you go, save your intermediate work often. You don't want a glitch to wipe out all of your hard work. In either method you can add captions. Also in either case use the align images features to keep your pictures in straight lines. Good luck, Mike Talbot

Some may disagree. For colonies which did not become and remain independent countries, I leave the COUNTRY field blank and enter the colony name (as recognized at the time of the event or a widely recognized abbreviation thereof) in the STATE field (ie. MA, Quebec [yes, I know it's a Province, not a state], LA, Acadie, NC, etc.). For colonies that did become and remain independent nations, like Mexico, Panama, Kenya, etc., I enter them in the COUNTRY field. Despite Texas and CA being independent countries, briefly, I put them in the STATE field, anyway. Just because a field is there in TMG you don't have to always fill it. Choose the way that pleases you and fulfills your TMG needs. But do try to be consistent. Best wishes, Mike Talbot

How interesting. I definitely don't even pretend to understand things, Norwegian. Is the birth surname considered primary? Does one have to go to court, like in the US, to legally change one's surname? How does the government keep track of taxes, fines, etc.<g>? How do family members keep track of each other<gg>? An added possibility to the ones already discussed, is to list the surnames in date order at the end of the TMG given name field. Put the birth surname in the surname field to maintain birth family considerations. This way every surname will appear in all reports and especially in VCF charts. Good luck on this one, Mike Talbot

The electronic age does present us with a plethora of challenges in exchange for its many benefits. The problem is that we are in the early stages of computer and electronic communication evolution. Your presentation on references is probably the best that we can do, for now. Things to consider: On-line references are tough, site names and URLs come and go. Many just cease to exist, without warning. Off-line electronically published references are nearly as difficult. One had to keep copying old references to the latest new disk or tape media. Who can remember the old 8 and 5.25 inch floppys and various track tapes or find the hardware to read them? Now, we are faced with clever "copy protect" algorithms. One day your reference ZIP disks, CDs, DVDs and the like will be dinosaurs like the old 8 inch floppys. But you can no longer make a copy to the new in-vogue media. What to do? Electronic evolution continues at an ever increasing pace. When I started with computerized genealogy, 5 megabytes was a really huge hard-disk. You can no longer say "good morning" to a computer in less than a gigabyte. On the bright side, you couldn't afford the memory to keep a picture on your disk in the "good old days". Now I have thousands of digitized pictures with plenty of disk space to spare. Hey, but it's still lots of fun! We all do what we can. Best wishes, Mike Talbot

Oops. sorry about the blank message. I have no quarrel with custom tags, unless a standard tag will serve the purpose as well or better. To confine this opinion to the original subject of this thread, a suspected father, with no evidence to support his paternity, is better served by the low-key NOTE tag linking the participants together. Theories with no proof, do not need to be shouted, just usefully recorded. I do use GEDCOM, a lot. It seems that none of my cousins had the good taste to use TMG <g>. In Frappr, there is only one other person in Louisiana with TMG, unfortunately, we are not acquainted. Can we fix that? Best wishes, Mike Talbot PS: Computer generated text, strangely enough, does look like computer generated text. The dead give-away is that the same phrases are repeated over and over, hundreds of times in long reports, no matter how cleverly well phrased.

Numerous scenarios of a custom tag could be created, however: The standard NOTE tag is highly recommended for most data not specifically covered by a standard TMG Tag. It can link two people together and has a memo field for you to explain the linkage. Custom tags are best kept to a minimum. The only custom tag that I use is a RELATION tag to act as a MARRIAGE tag when unmarried people have children together. In your case, each child can be linked to the theoretical father by a NOTE and mother and theoretical father can be linked by another NOTE. Date, detail field, etc. in the NOTE tag will also be useful to you. When you click on the NOTE in one person's record it transfers you to the linked person's record. The father field of each child would be left blank. Since there hasn't been a slave for about a century and a half (other than the Mid-East and many African countries), there should be little need for tact. But, you can be as tactful as you like in the explanatory memo fields of the NOTEs. VCF is ideal for merging mother and father ancestry or descendant charts, as desired. If the subject parentage is ever resolved, all data is there to properly define the father in your database. The NOTEs can then be edited or deleted. Best wishes, Mike Talbot Metairie, LA

Static means that all charts and reports that a browser can see, must have been generated and placed on a webpage by the site owner before the browser's visit. Dynamic means that the browser can generate any chart or report that is supported by the site's software during his visit. The site owner does not have to be clarvoyant as to what browsers would like to see. Reports and charts need not exist prior to the browser entering the site nor must they exist when he exits. Off line analogy: Dynamic is like TMG. Static is like a bunch of paper charts tacked to a wall. Best wishes, Mike Talbot