cassb

Ah, OK -- so basically the highlighting thing actually edits the image file itself. I thought it might be a coordinates stored that puts the highlight on the image at runtime. Now that would be a cool feature! :-) OK, I get what you mean by tree now... a folder tree. I do have a separate folder set up for photos, one for videos, one for documents, etc. So if the db is restored, then all of the exhibits would get put back into only one folder? And the link to them gets changed to point to the one folder that was restored and not the separate folders I have them in? Hmmm... that's not good either.

Hi Jim - thanks for your explanation. So it seems the Exhibit table has a one-to-many relationship, but you cannot set up a many-to-many with it. That's OK, but requires that I change how I use exhibits in my data. I was using them as sort of a 'photo album' in UFT, where a certain photo could be included in many albums (person records), or many albums (person records) could contain the same photo. The TMG design is to use the event or history tag as sort of the intermediate table then? So for example, if your photo is of a family reunion, with say 30 people in it, then you would create one history tag of "Reunion" that's not associated with any individual, then add that tag to all of the person records that are in the picture? I like the image highlight idea though! So you can have a different highlight for each person tagged in the photo somehow? I'd appreciate specific instructions on how to set all this up for my group photos and documents. I'm not sure what you mean by "exhibits stored in a tree" though. Sorry for all the techie questions... I think like a programmer, so I want to understand the underlying structure of the database before I start commiting data to it. :-) Bryan

Now that I understand a bit more about tags, I don't really like the idea of creating a new tag for every photo a person is in. What was the original idea in TMG when they introduced the ability to link exhibits to people? Was it just that you might want to store one portrait of a person as an afterthought? What I had done in Ultimate Family Tree was store a variety of pictures of my ancestors - like one as a youth, one in middle age, one in older age as a record of what they looked like at different stages of life. Most of the pictures include other people in them, which I linked to that photo as well. In UFT you store an exhibit as its own record, and then you can 'connect' whatever people you want to that exhibit record. Like, land deeds would usually connect to both a husband and wife; reunion photos would connect to everyone at the reunion event. But there still is only one exhibit with one title, date, place and description. Being a programmer and database developer, I'm trying to figure out the database schema and what the rationale was for requiring multiple exhibit records for a single image file. It should be set up with a Person table, an Exhibit table, and then an intermediary index that links the person to the exhibit. Bryan

OK, thank you Terry. I really appreciate your help. I have also bookmarked your web site -- I read through your TMG Tips page so far and I am sure to use some of your tips! :-)

OK... that's um... weird. So the "exhibit" I create really does not represent a single exhibit item then. It represents a link between a person or place and an 'exhibit item', which may be the same document/photo/file over and over again. So there is no database table that only holds the exhibit items (or a path to them if external)? That means that if I have a group photo of 20 people and I want to link it to 20 individuals in the database, I have to create 20 exhibits and also duplicate the exhibit info (like caption, description, photo date/place, etc) 20 times? Not real efficient and I would not have programmed it that way myself, but OK. :-) Thanks! Bryan

Thanks, Terry. Can you please give me a step-by-step for the "create a new link to the same image for each person"? That's the part I don't know how to do. Thanks! Bryan

I am new to TMG. I have figured out how to load a new exhibit (image). I would now like to link it to several people. How do I do that? Thanks! Bryan

Thank you, but I would like to hear from TMG regarding my request for enhancement. This will determine whether I want to commit to TMG with my genealogy data. I am currently reviewing a copy of FTM 2012 for Amazon and am finding it lacking in the ability to import all of my UFT data. I would like to put a plug for TMG in my review if it imports better than FTM does. Thanks! Bryan

Back in 2001, I had an email conversation with Dave Conover about using GenBridge to convert all my Ultimate Family Tree data to TMG v4.0 Gold. However, there was an issue that stopped me from continuing to use TMG and I am still using UFT for my genealogy data. I wanted to check and see if this issue was finally resolved and then I will purchase TMG v8 and convert. This was the request I posed to Dave in Feb. 2001: "I would like to submit an enhancement request then. This is the text of the request: 'Add the ability to automatically change an internal exhibit to an external one. The new function should save the internal exhibit to a file, link the external file to all of the persons and events which the internal one is already linked to, then delete the internal exhibit from the database.' I'll wait for this enhancement to get into a future release. It's just too much work to mess with manually. Thanks! Bryan" Dave's response about 18 months later in Sep. 2002: "Hi Bryan, Look for a change in version 5.04. Sorry, I do not have a release date. Dave" Even better would be the ability to do this conversion of internal to external exhibits in the GenBridge process, but I'm not sure what enhancements were made between v5.0 and v8.0. One other question I have before I commit to TMG -- I need to be able to generate a web site automatically from a selected list of people from the database. Currently I use UFT to do this, and the web site I create and update is here: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancest...om/~cassb/CASS/ I will need to continue to generate these web pages in TMG for my users. Thanks! Bryan Cass