Mamine

Oh good It was feeling very lonely out here hehe! When you say "appear" - du mean that the data model puts the source against each tag? Or just that the source always "shows" through to each tag? If the latter then my view is that this is correct (although it depends how you chunk your sources) ... because one element of a source (e.g. a name or a date/place of birth) cannot be taken in isolation ... If one piece of that birth cert is found to be wrong in some way then it may affect all the Tags related to it - they would certainly all need to be re-checked or you could end up with bad citations hanging around which are no longer valid. Yes I do effectively want to transcribe the source here ... so is there a way of getting the sort of standard labels I was talking about into the Source Memo (Comments) field?

I can see what you're saying but I'm not trying to get this data to appear in a footnote (in fact I actively do *not* want it to appear in a footnote) ... I'm looking for a centralised place to store it where it keeps data integrity. I think the concensus here is I should use Citations and/or Tags in TMG (as with many other genealogy programs). I guess what I'm looking for is a way of structuring the "Actual Text" field of the GEDCOM SOUR tag.

Hiya Buzz, I obviously can't comment on what is right for TMG but what I would *want* to do if I were you is store all the siblings in the "Source" as they appear in the actual source document; then attach the Source (via a citation) to the relevant people/siblings and their names and birthdates etc and also as a citation to their relationship to each other with a note in the relationship Tag (if such a thing exists in TMG) explaining that they all appeared together in your birth cert. That way if anything breaks (e.g. you find a birth cert for your sibling which contradicts the one where he/she is listed with you) you don't have to go through and correct all the previous citations and/or tags, all you have to do is amend the one siblings birth and the rest still hangs together. But hey I'm obviously out-numbered here (and not successfully using TMG!) so follow the gang

See my previous message ... I think we treat Tags/events/facts whatever slightly differently ... I see these as deductions made *from* the source rather than part *of* the source and what I am looking for is a way of storing the data that is *in* the source - in its native format. It doesn't make much difference if you only have one Citation per Tag but if you get different versions of the same Tag/event then some interpretation is needed e.g. say I have a birth and baptism record for the same person citing slightly different names ... I know you could create two different Names but personally I prefer to have each Name in its own Source and one Name which is my interpretation/deductions from combined analysis of both sources. Same goes for 2 different birth sources quoting different dates for the same person .. I would have one Birth event with two sources with its own details of source.

Hiya Jim, Thanks for the detailed info. My problem is that by putting the details of the source in the citation (rather than the source itself - or some other entity closely related to it) the data is duplicated and fragmented thereby losing data integrity. So whilst I can see how this may work in TMG I'm afraid I don't think it's what I was looking for. Thanks again for the input tho' It has been interesting to see why I'm not getting what I want hehe

I have done but he doesn't seem to explain what I'm trying to achieve. I think I have to assume that TMG doesn't do what I want Thanks for your help

Hiya Terry, I'm obviously doing something really strange here yet to me it seems really obvious ... so can I ask the question another way .... Given that I have 100s of birth certs to enter ... and each one has the same subheadings ... what is the best way to save myself the hassle of having to type in things like "Name:", "Mother's maiden name:", "Father's occupation:" etc each time I enter one of the certs. Obviously the *data* under each of these headings will be different but the sub-titles will always be the same and it would be nice to have these as "fields" that I am prompted for when I enter a cert. Thanks again

Hiya Michael and thank you for your patience I do understand the concepts of sources, citations and events etc ... just not yet sure how TMG handles them ... The "Source Type" birth certificate has fields for: title, name of person, event date, registration date, registration district and "Rd Ref" but nothing for say Mother or Father. I can add other things like "Informant" or "Second Person" and I can even create something called "Mother" or "Father" (based on the "Second Person") but I can't add both since there isn't a "Third Person" Could you explain how I can set these up please? Many thanks

Aha! I've twigged! CD=Citation Detail .... fair enough the sort of thing I'm after could go there but the question remains as to how to set it up so that I am prompted for (and can subsequently display) the appropriate fields (child's forenames, parent's names, occupations etc) when I enter the associated Source Type?

Er ... maybe that's my problem! I took one of the standard "Birth Certificate" Source Definitions and then tried to add things to it. What's the "CD" of the source ? (to me a CD is a shiny disc thing that fits in the PC ) I don't think the tags will do what I want which I guess is to record the source as accurately as possible ... ie to be able to represent the sub-headings and elements that appear in a birth certificate. My understanding is that tags reflect the deduced event rather than the source? I'm not really bothered about changing how the source is cited (am happy to take one of the pre-defined formats for that) but really want a way of representing the source details internally in the same way that they are in reality. Does that make any sense?

Hiya, I'm a newbie here (just evaluating the new version of TMG 7 (UK edition)) so please forgive any naivety! I'm trying to construct a "Birth Certificate" source which will prompt for the relevant details (e.g. child forenames, mother's name & maiden name, father's name & occupation etc). From what I can gather I should be able to do this by creating Source Elements and adding these to the Source Definition. I've read in another post that the ordering can be a bit strange but taking that aside I can't seem to find sufficent existing Source Elements to be able to set up more than the main person and one other .... so how can I add a Mother and Father, for example ? Can anyone help? Also please advise if there is a simpler way of achieving the end result (ie entering child/mother/father details for a birth cert) in case I've missed something really obvious! Many Thanks