JonP

I suggest that users write emails to Wholly Genes support, and to the management if you have an email address. Here is a copy of an email I am sending now (including text from previous correspondence):

Dear Wholly Genes support,

 

I just wanted to draw your attention to the fact that Unicode support and reliance on Visual Foxpro continue to be a problem for Master Genealogist users. Beyond that, users express frustration that Wholly Genes has offered no official acknowledgement of the problem and has not indicated that the problem will be addressed in future versions of the software.

 

I do hope the company can be made aware of the importance of this problem to users and can address the issue directly.

 

Please see this thread on the forum, and the many others that deal with this issue.

 

Thank you,

_________

 

From: Phil [mailto:phild@whollygenes.com]

Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 9:54 AM

To: _____ (by way of Dorothy Turner <Dorothyt@whollygenes.com>)

Subject: Re: Question regarding database and unicode characters

 

_______,

 

Management is very aware of the desire by users for unicode support. As you noted that's not possible currently. I'm not privy to what is being considered for the future but management also recognizes the need to migrate to another database engine in the future. As you can imagine that is not a simple or inexpensive effort.

I'm sorry I can't be more helpful but that all I know at this point.

 

Phil

Wholly Genes Tech Support

 

 

 

 

At 08:57 AM 5/20/2010, you wrote:

 

Hi, I'm a user and would like to be able to use Unicode text in my TMG project. I understand this is not possible because the underlying database relies on Visual FoxPro, which is no longer being developed and does not support Unicode.

 

I've posted a thread to the forum (here's the link) concerning this, and wonder if Wholly Genes recognizes the problem and is making an effort towards changing the underlying structure and moving TMG forward. I ask because I have been using the software through several iterations and have a large project. I'd really like to stay with TMG, but am also thinking I may have to do something else in the future.

 

Can you give me an idea if/when this underlying issue will be addressed?

 

Thanks very much,

_________

 

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You are not introducing any new issues here. The FoxPro issue has been discussed ad nauseum. And Wholly Genes is unlikely to make any statements regarding future plans. The focus at the moment is getting TMG8 out the door.

Thanks for the helpful reply Jim. My thinking is this: prospective users of TMG 8 might be interested to know that it doesn't handle unicode and is based on a completely outmoded database. So it is unfortunate that TMG8 is being pushed "out the door" right now. This forum is a place for discussion. I'm trying to discuss. Each time anyone writes something about this unfortunate defect in the software, they are told that this is a useless point to make because it has been made "ad nauseum". My sense is that people talk about the things that are most important, the pressing items. So, the foxpro debacle is a pressing item, people talk about it. Rather than receiving a negative reply, perhaps what we need is to mount a campaign to get TMG's developers to actually address the issue in a statement? To actually commit to changing the underlying database? To actually take steps to change the situation so that we can stop talking about it?

It would be great if prospective purchasers of TMG8, who are going to shell out money for the product, would come to this forum and discover that there is a serious, fatal flaw with it. If they would refrain from buying the product until it is fixed. And if old users who have faithfully upgraded from 5 to 6 to 7 as I have could be rewarded for the trust they put in TMG, and the hours they spent entering their data into the program. Unfortunately, these users are more or less trapped. But they won't take it much longer and will find a way out. This forum is a community of users of TMG. We all find ourselves in this terrible position. Is Wholly Genes responsive to the "community" it serves? The answer so far is a loud NO.

Jon

I'd just like to revisit this issue again: I'd like to just raise the issue of how important it is for Wholly Genes to address the issue of The Master Genealogist relying on Visual Fox Pro as its database. This program is deprecated and will not be supported in future versions of windows. Furthermore, and most importantly to me, it does not permit the use of Unicode, so that it is impossible to use this software effectively with most non-English languages or non-Romanized languages. Has Wholly Genes made any statements about this?

Thanks!

Jon

Right. And it certainly appears from all discussion on the web that VFP9 is the final version of VFP, which is already outmoded... Not to belabor the point, but just to point out, Unicode is the standard for broad foreign language support, and is now standard in the vast majority of applications, including browsers, which is why browsers will now correctly allow typing and display of, for instance,

Vietnamese: Cái thằng chồng em nó chẳng ra gì.

Chinese: 现代汉语词典

Lao: ອາໂປກະສິນ

Etc...! Alas, it can't be done with ANSI

OK, enough for now, thanks for listening. Hope the TMG will respond (if not on the forum, then perhaps by making changes to the software )

Thanks for the note about allchars, Mick. I think the problem is that while the characters work for displaying people's names, place names, etc., in the underlying database the various characters would not be disaggregated--that is to say that an ơ and an o might appear different, but might be the same character in the database in some way (I'm not an expert on this, so bear with me...). This would result in confusion between entries that are otherwise identical: people who were born in Møn, Denmark might appear to have the same birthplace as those born in the Mon Kingdom in Burma, for instance.

This is somewhat hypothetical, but it does appear that the underlying database does not distinguish unicode letters, and that is one principal issue. The other, of course, is that if all of TMG is based on a database structure that is no longer supported, then eventually TMG will start to cause crashes, will not work, etc., as users upgrade their computers and use new operating systems.

Thanks Jim.

I did a quick search for some of the issues I raised, and noted it in a few threads. I thought it might be useful to bring it up as its own new thread in case Wholly Genes is at all receptive to comments from users in the forums. I'm sure prospective users of the new version of the software will also be interested by the issue of the outmoded underlying database, lack of support for unicode/foreign language scripts and keyboards, etc. (also mentioned in a wikipedia description of the software).

Anyway, as I said, I'm particularly interested in staying with TMG, since I already use it. In the meantime I've used a number of tricks to represent characters that aren't supported (for instance, I write \o for ơ)...

I'm interested to know what Wholly Genes plans are for future versions of TMG. Specifically, I'd like to know if Wholly Genes is aware of and interested in replacing the now abandonded Visual FoxPro database with something that is more current. My main interest in this is that I'd like to be able to use Unicode characters, enabling other languages in TMG. Beyond this, I'm worried about saving a lot of data in TMG which will then not be compatible with more up-to-date software in the future. There is a fair amount of discussion out there about the GEDCOM files produced by TMG not transferring all data to other programs (ie., GRAMPS). I'd really much much rather continue using TMG, which seems to be the best program available for Windows operating systems. But I would like to know from Wholly Genes developers if the product will continue to be supported and improved on.

Thanks for a great product,

J

Hi, is there any word from Wholly Genes on using Unicode? If Visual Fox Pro is no longer being supported, will Wholly Genes change the underlying database to a new database management program? This is a really important issue for users. Thanks,