Maccara

A little late into this, but I've recently looked into some similar issues. Analyst's Notebook & Sentinel Visualizer are ok for analyzing this kind of data, but as they are a bit cost prohibitive for me I looked into some alternatives and found out some interesting free (at least for non-commercial use) tools which can represent and/or analyze complex network data. Something that can read GEDCOM directly is Pajek. Example of Pajek usage to produce classic p-graphs (and Petri nets) can be found here. One very interesting tool for dynamic social network analysis is ORA and you might want to check out AutoMap as well (can be used to analyze narratives, for example). Many of these tools can be used collaboratively (which is why I have chosen them) as you can convert/import/export data between them. Much more tools and general information on social network analysis can be found at INSNA (check for example their software listings).

I'm afraid to tell you, but it is not as simple as you make it out to be. Even the site you refer to mentions, that for these tricks to work, the back-end needs to support unicode too (which, in this case, I believe is not true, as the SQL portion is VFP (but I don't have intimate knowledge of VFP to be certain of this limitation) - the article is using SQL Server for the examples) and furthermore even bigger problem is that you then need to work with binary representations of the strings only, which makes all kinds of string operations a pain to implement. [from the article: "Unlike SQL Server or most other SQL data bases Visual FoxPro can't represent Unicode data internally unless you use a binary format to store it."] I can tell from experience, that there is absolutely no point in "hacking" this kind of support as it will ultimately only lead to bugs. (my approach would be to change platform altogether to something more future-proof as VFP is officially EOL by MS - but this requires a re-write of the software and will take some time) There is no simple & fast solution to this problem. I trust Wholly Genes is well aware of this issue and is working on a solution, but it won't happen overnight by some magic trick.

Hi, I have been using Zotero (www.zotero.org) for my other research work (simply excellent), and I have been wondering, if it would be possible to get some integration between Zotero & TMG to share bibliography data. Is there a way to export source data from TMG in RIS or BibTeX format, for example (which I could then import to Zotero easily)? I noticed the 'export sources' function outputs something with an extension '.xso', but it seems to be some binary format (which I did not recognize). Where could I find a description of this format? (I might be interested in developing a converter for this format, if one is not available already) I especially like the Zotero Word AddIn and use it frequently (beats the Word 2007 built-in source/reference management system 10-0) as it allows me to use the same document for several publications by allowing me to change the citation style as required on the fly.

Yes, I agree. Seems most of the useful functionality would be fulfilled with just a simple "xso/xst <-> bibtex/ris" converter. That should be simple to implement. If additional functionality is needed or nice to have it would be just a matter of adding it later.

I forgot to mention it, but did you check the "Export Data" feature in TMG Utility? It also has the ability to export source information to an HTML page. It's pretty comprehensive, and includes more than the Make Source List feature. And the format is very fixed. Ah, didn't think of that! I'll check that out too. Do'h! I should've looked in hex editor for that file myself. It indeed has a standard ZIP ID & header in the first bytes. (and of course opens just fine as a zip stream ) Most certainly, thank you very much. Now that I know what those files contain and that I need to "reverse engineer" (checking schema or the html output you mentioned isn't really reverse engineering) anyway I have many options how to proceed. I think Zotero was open source too (besides being free) so I could probably even implement this as a simple import/export functionality in Zotero for "xso" files - that would make a good general solution and available for everyone using Zotero (it already has custom import/export for EndNote, for example, so this kind of implementation wouldn't be out of scope and probably could be accepted as a contribution). Only problem is, that I don't think VFP is multiplatform, so direct Zotero implementation might not be possible (or it might be difficult to get accepted). I'll check out if the html export output could be more feasible in this regard (but that won't allow 2-way import/export/merge). So currently I'm leaning towards a stand-alone implementation (would allow more features, like 2-way merges of exported files, duplicate checking etc), but this may change. Of course, there will be a few other issues to solve also (like, for example, how to handle custom source types etc - I don't believe Zotero is so customizable as TMG, and "output sentences" etc etc) but I think these are solvable. The biggest problem for me will be how to find time to do this. Maybe Christmas vacation would be a good time slot to implement this. If I come up with a nice & usable solution I'll release it also here for everyone to use (or if something is included in Zotero, I'll drop a note such a feature is/will be available in future Zotero versions). Edit: of course, if someone has some ideas what would be "nice to have" functions in such integration/utility, feel free to drop me a note and I'll check if those would be feasible to implement.

As a side note: I could also go "TMG Utility way" and access the DB directly, but I was envisioning more of a general solution which would allow me to easily do 2 way transfers (and maybe eventually some duplicate checking etc). Direct write access to DB, in my view, is not a general solution (too risky, and I would have to check & double check compatibility for each new TMG version in case of schema changes etc) and that's why xso specs would be preferrable, in case there are any. (well, extracting data is safe, so 1-way tool would be ok, even if it would break between TMG versions) Of course, best would be, if TMG supported standard open formats already itself.

Zotero does better importing from straight RIS or BibTeX format for this purpose (they are designed for bibliography information, after all!), but that was an interesting idea. Zotero translators for web-import is only a convenience feature and there are serious limitations what you can do that way (depends on meta-data available mostly). (Zotero is not limited to web, it only has good convenience features for that! Especially for JSTOR et al direct collecting etc) Checked what kind of output TMG Utility does, but that seems mostly useless for this purpose. And, designing a "translator" (as Zotero calls them) for ambiguous web page source would be more work for me than developing a file converter for a well defined format from scratch! (that is, if the "xso" file is anything remotely well defined )

Well, I thought it might be good to check, as I've only seen that directory structure happen when there's malware in effect... (there might be legitimate cases where it could happen, but I haven't noticed one yet) And I think assumptions are dangerous... Otherwise, I agree, reading the info on data file storage first is the main thing.

Actually, Are you sure you copied the directory names correctly?? There should be NO such directory as C:\Documents and Settings\Documents and Settings\ at all in XP systems normally! (note the duplicate 'Document and Settings') Virginia, you surely don't mean those dirs are normal, but were thinking about the login/all users (which are normal) entries when you wrote your reply?

I'm not saying "conclusion - case closed", only as a conclusion on what I've experienced before and how it would seem in this case also. But it is still unlikely this is due to TMG software error, since similar issue can sometimes be replicated with other software too. (and I know this kind of error would be difficult to cause by a programming error, unless you are programming a software which is supposed to handle user credentials directly, which TMG is not, so it is more likely something happens inside windows together with the components TMG incorporates)

Ah! Very valuable piece of information - I continuously thought that it will fail for all other users but the 'Administrator', including users in the 'Users' group. I have actually run into this issue in the past (with other software) and the reason is that there are some minute differences in security handling between local built-in 'Administrator' login and users who are part of the 'Administrators' group. So, I offer some thoughts (not really helpful, but may give some ideas). You should double check to make sure 'full control' for filesystem in every file is really for AdministratorS and not just Administrator - I've seen such bugs. (especially check this for everything related to TMG) 'Administrators' are not really meant to be used for normal operations and should only be restricted to administrative tasks (like system changes, installations etc) - but it is really surprising it causes some issues sometimes running software when the "Real" Administrator account does not. And there are no provisions in XP to actually prevent usage of admin accounts for normal use (unlike Vista). There are also some clear security policy (admin tools -> local secpol) differences between builtin admin & members of admins group - check those too. For some security policies, only the builtin admin is enabled, and for some just the admins group. (just make sure that anything that referes to administrator is changed to administrators - although some you can't change as they do not allow groups; in that case add the login directly) For your information, I was not able to solve the issues between admin - user admin even with the help of Microsoft and the issues go really deep into the OS. Really mystified and no-one seems to know why it happens (and I didn't want to waste too much time on the issue). As a result, I actually use the built-in Administrator login and do not even bother with the self-created admins (you just need to enable the system to allow Administrator login always and not just in safe mode - few different ways to do this). For other people I have the normal 'User' accounts created. I know this doesn't really help, especially if you've used the 'other' admin account for a long time and would be a pita moving everything over to other login - but as a future reference might be helpful for someone on XP. All I can say as a conclusion is, that this is not really a bug of TMG - at least i don't believe so (unless they _set_ file security in installer or software - that's a "no-no" and installer/software engineers who do this should be beaten with an ugly stick for a good measure; there is no reason to do this _ever_ in normal "userland" software and anyone who tells differently don't know what they're doing). I would be very interested to hear if you manage to find the actual cause.

I've tried VB (and VirtualPC) besides VMWare, but I found VMWare most stable of those (at the time) and have stuck with it since (especially VB had stability issues then). That's why I was asking about Win4LinPro, hoping you would've had experience in both and could compare (as the specs sheet didn't offer anything "revolutionary"). And yes, VMWare definitely isn't open source, but at least they offer free versions. Good point about licenses - never really thought about that as I have "unlimited" test licenses (with MSDN account) and a few normal licenses for production use. But, you can also install without activation, if you're just testing. It will work for a while before the activation is mandatory. (but you probably can't use windows update until you activate, so better to use slipstreamed install media with the needed service packs or download the service packs separately) I also suggest to "stick with what works" once you find any, but I'm always looking for alternatives to try myself (comes with the job - better to know all available options so I could be qualified to recommend different options to customers). It has been a very very long time since I've tried Wine and immediately dismissed it as "not working" and have not bothered since - I probably should take another look on one of these days.

Why in safe mode? (maybe because you can't get "Administrator" login otherwise?) Safe mode affects how windows installer behaves (however, I do not remember if TMG installer uses the MSI engine anyway) so I would suggest a clean slate first: (unless Virginia or Jim disagree, but I think this would help a long way to find out what has gone wrong and where) 0. backup any projects (for all users who have any) first and copy the backups to a safe location 1. uninstall in safe mode as administrator 2. delete c:\documents and settings\all users\Application data\the master genealogist 7 directory 3. delete c:\documents and settings\{the login(s) you want to run with}\Application data\the master genealogist 7 directory 4. delete c:\documents and settings\{the login(s) you want to run with}\My Documents\the master genealogist directory (I hope you copied the backups to a safe place first!) 5. reboot 6. login with a user who is a member of "Administrators" group (I guess Peter (admin) in your case) 7. install TMG 7 with all defaults (all users, c:\program files etc) 8. reboot (as the installer probably requests this already - if not, do the reboot anyway) 9. login with a user who is a member of "Administrators" group 10. run TMG once 11. check that c:\documents and settings\all users\Application data\the master genealogist 7 directory is re-created (and has something in it) (i don't think the installer creates these dirs, so that's why run once as admin so these get created) 12. re-login with the user you want use for TMG 13. run TMG and restore any backups you created - by this time you should have also again tmg7 directories in my docs and app data folders Now we should have a normal & clean installation which should work as-is for all users. Now we should be able to analyze further what goes wrong with the reports (if they still don't work, that is). This process helps so that no-one has to go "phishing" for information and what has been done at what point.

AND the users running the software needs to have at least "Power User" privileges (normal user accounts don't have write access in XP either) ...so, no administrator privileges needed, but normal user accounts wont work either with v6.12. (not sure if home/pro version of XP differ here - these are the defaults for pro today (was not so in first version of XP, not sure if this became the default with SP1 already or SP2))

I haven't tried Win4Lin, so would you have any opinion why one should choose this over vmware server, which is free, works with tmg7 and is compatible across multiple platforms? Edit: quote feature does not seem to like emails as names

Exactly so, it seems, and that's one of the reasons why I have my host (XP x64) "main" HD as "F:" drive and run vanilla XP 32bit in vmware server -> this configuration allows me to map the host "F:" drive AS a "F:" drive in the virtualized system too, so any program which unwisely uses absolute instead of relative paths for any data files will still work fine.

I can confirm this. (tested on one XP x64 so far) Received all 3 messages ok & fast. Thank you for a prompt fix!

"Safe mode with networking", just to make sure (barebones safe mode doesn't have network connections enabled). Haven't tried that one, but I have tried on a _clean_ XP SP3 install without any antivir or additional firewalls installed (disabled the MS builtin FW).

...and before someone asks the obvious "then why suggest this fix at all, if it doesn't work?", it allows you to use TMG while someone figures out a proper fix for the problem (as otherwise you might not be able to start TMG at all as the message manager tries to run every time you start TMG). I.e. this fix only for if you can't start TMG due to this error - otherwise just disable the message manager autocheck from the preferences as usual. Message manager itself won't start magically working for you until there is a proper fix. I don't have other issues with starting (except it takes long when message manager is run), but I also never have received any messages (according to TMG-L, there should've been some by now). Also the "autoupdate" feature doesn't work at all. (network connection handling is seriously borked in this software - have tried on 2 different OS architectures (one of them a pristine clean XP SP3 setup) to make sure the errors are not in my end)

Has anyone encountered this? (tried to search but couldn't find anything relevant) In TMG (v7.03) pressing F1, selecting help from menu, or pressing "Help" button where available does not open the help (nothing happens). I can browse the help ok if I open it separately (from the shortcut), but as a new user it would be nice to be able to get context sensitive help too. Running XP x64, so that may be the cause, but if anyone could confirm if this is the case or any ideas how to fix, I would appreciate that. (I've also tried re-installing/repairing etc just to make sure that is not the cause)

Sorry, forgot to mention that works just fine. But note, that it is using WinHelp instead of HTML help - different helpsystem altogether, different API (although should be quite simple to convert from winhelp to html help). I noticed there also exists a HTML help for the chartform, but that can only be invoked from the shortcut Edit: Forgot to also mention, I have checked that HTML Help works in other applications (32 & 64 bit) still to confirm the whole help system wasn't broken for some reason. Only TMG is affected.

Figured as much; was good to confirm anyways. Do you happen to have any idea, what API is used (and how) to call the HTML help? I.e. the standard would be something like: HtmlHelp( GetDesktopWindow(), "c:\\MyHelpFile.chm::/intro.htm", HH_DISPLAY_TOC, NULL); with normal HTML help SDK to get the table of contents. I don't even know in what language TMG is written in, so no point for me to start debugging and trapping system calls at random.

Same location for xp x64 - Vista has it different. Checked that the help files (etc) are in place and "discoverable" (can locate, even from 32bit applications, and open them just fine). Next idea I tried was to remove the whole shared prog data. All well and re-created upon next start of TMG and all, but alas, still the F1 or "contents" from help menu does not work...

Yes, of course; I realize that. This is exactly what I meant - if I can generate ".doc" -files from TMG without Word installed; thanks for the confirmation. And now that I think of it, I should've realized that myself. Of course it should work without having Word installed, since the problems discussed above are due to the 3rd party module that is used for the .doc generation (hence, no native Word is used in the first place). (I'm a bit perplexed since I'm just overcoming a learning curve for a new software and many other software requires it for report etc generations and I've used it myself as a shortcut many times in my own app devel so that I don't have to include a 3rd party module so got hung up on that ) That should work. Thanks!

So this definitely is not only a 64bit issue then. Any ideas what to try to fix this? (reinstalling already tried) Btw, have you installed TMG in the default location (would be c:\program files(x86)\... in normal x64 env) or somewhere else? (I have installed in f:\program files(x86)\...) With that in mind, I already tried simple "subst c: f:\" in case drive was hardcoded (seen this in ATI installers, for example) but that didn't help and surely the "(x86)" -part should not confuse any (decent) software.