Lee Irons

I find it useful that a name variation of a principal or witness can be selected in a tag entry. It would be even more useful if the name variation could be created from the tag entry window. It should be as simple as clicking on the drop down banner for the name variation in the tag entry and selecting <New>. It appears that I would have to exit the tag entry go to the principal or witness, create the name variation tag entry, and then reopen the original tag entry to select the name variation that goes with that tag entry. Is there an easier way?

Thanks Beth! Missed this in the voluminous Help content. Trying it out, I notice that not all of the variables are in the right-click menu. Also, some variables have symbols in them that aren't explained in the Help content. FOr example, the Role variables show up with a % in them. Is this explained somewhere in the Help content?

Now that I have been trying TMG 8 for a week, I am beginning to like it. It really helps with my way of documenting research and evidence. One thing I don't like, however, is the inability to control the sequence of tag sentences in a narrative report independent of how the event tags appear in the Person View. Whatever the sequence is in the person view, that is the sequence in which it appears in a narrative. So, users have to use the sort date field in the event tag to establish the ordering sequence in the person view so that the narrative reports print the way the user wants them. The problem with this is that every person who is a principal or a witness to a given event tag get the same sort date. To make a long story short, I need to be able to set the ordering sequence of each witness to an event tag independent of each other. In order to get the sequence the way I want it for each person, I have to be able to give each witness a different sort date. This could be solved by giving each witness a unique sort date. This field could be added to the Edit Witness window. Aside: Of course, the entire concept of sort dates is kind of strange. Why not just give each tag a sort number (1, 2, 3, etc.). Or why not just enable the user to manually move a tag up or down the list in the Person View. This latter approach would completely eliminate the need for a sort date field and would resolve the difficulty I stated in the first paragraph.

Yes, during my experiementation, I have been adding the name variation as a parsed piece of data in the memo field. Regarding complexity, the way to solve that problem is to design tools that make sentence creation easier. The biggest problem is that the user has to either have the variables memorized or must look them up in the Help menu, with lots of luck finding the exact Help script that has the applicable information. So let's make these visible. For example, I would provide two drop down menus on the Roles and Sentences tab of the Tag Type Definition window, these two menus being titled "Variable Type" and "Variable." The Variable Type drop-down menu would allow the user to select the variables that appear in the Variable drop-down menu. Variable types in the Variable Type drop-down menu would be Principals, Parents, Witnesses, Date, Place, Age, Memo, Roles, Structure, and Format. The Variable drop-down menu would then show titles of the variables associated with the option selected in the Variable Type drop-down menu. The user would select the variable type and then select the title of the variable they need from the Variable drop-down menu. Highlighting the variable title makes it show in the Variable field, and then clicking on an "Insert" button inserts the actual variable where the cursor is positioned in the sentence field. The pronoun variables would be included in Variable drop-down menus for the Princpals, Witnesses, and Roles variable types. The Structure variable type would include variables for controlling spaces, non-breaking spaces, tabs, carriage returns, punctuation, capital letters, concatenation, indexes, embedded citations, and so on. The Format variable type would include variables for font type, font style, font size, colors, and so on. Also, since Name, Place, and external text file variables are allowed in Memo fields, I would provide drop-down menus for these in each window that has a Memo field.

You might want to send this question to the support email. Interesting. The latest version of Corel Word Perfect is now more expensive than the latest version of Micorsoft Word. What version of Word Perfect are you using?

I'm not using the surety marker functionality in TMG because it does not use the standard rating system of original vs. derivative, primary vs. secondary, and direct vs. indirect. Roots Magic 5 does and Family Tree Maker 2012 does, but TMG 8 and Legacy Family Tree 7.5 do not. In my humble opinion, none of the genealogy software developers have gotten the whole information evaluation stuff right. There are actually two different types of evaluations that need to be performed. Roots Magic 5 comes the closest to doing it right. They have a source citation quality rating of each source citation linked to a tag, which rates a source citation based on original vs. derivative, primary vs. secondary, and direct vs. indirect. They then have a "proof" rating of each tag, which rates whether the actual data that comes from the source citation is correct or applicable to the given person. However, they only have three levels of proof: Proven, Proven False, and DIsputed. They should allow users to define their own "proof" levels, since every genealogist I know does this last step a little differently. So, for TMG to get this correct, they would need to do what FTM did in its 2011 release, which is to keep the surety levels, but give the additional capability of the program calculating the surety level for you based on selecting whether a source citation is original vs. derivative, primary vs. secondary, and direct vs. indirect. As you can see, with three different quality ratings, this would enable a surety calculation of 0 to 3. The additional step TMG would have to make is to have a separate "proof" rating of a tag as it applies to a principal or witness person. My recommendation is that TMG allow users to define their own proof ratings (anywhere from 3 to 10 of them, with the default being 3 ratings of "accepted," "accepted with qualifiers," and "disputed"). There would have to be a proof rating field in the Tag Entry window next to each Pinrcipal's name and would have to put a rating field in each Edit Witness window. TMG could then go the extra step of creating a sentence variable for the proof rating to be used in narratives.

Thanks Michael, I analyze the source and the citation from the source in the source citation memo field and would also be using customized cource citations that inlcude the citation deatil and citation memo. But then I go an extra analysis step further to demonstrate why I think the person in the citation is the same person as the person in all of the other citations that I am linking to that person. In other words, how do I know that person 3 in Family A in the 1850 census is the same as person 4 in Family B in the 1860 census.

I am now trying the Book Manager. I quickly discovered (unless this is a bug) that I can't put more than one of the same report into a given book. How can I design a book if, for example, I can't selectively place individual narrative reports for different persons in the same book? Am I missing something? Is there a way to string "books" together to make a "binder-clipped" book?

I created a book with a few reports and then clicked on Create Book. All this did was create a separate file for each book. It did not create a single book file with the reports actually concatenated on the pages. I read the help file and it does not provide any ideas on how to create an actual book. Though I did find the following incorrect note: "NOTE: To create a book with endnotes, the output must be directed to screen or printer." You can't direct the output for reports in a book to the screen. The system excludes all such reports when Create Book is clicked, which actually makes sense, since it does not actually create a book. And how would endnotes work if there is no actual book file? Next, I tried to sebd the book to the printer... nothing happened. I set the correct printer in Printer Setup, but the program seems to be trying to still output each report to a separate file. Finally, I tried openning the word documents for each report that was generated by Create Book. I can se the files in my folder. But when I try to open them, I get a "This file ould not be found." error in Microsoft Word. When I set the reports to be generated in Adobe Acrobat, I can open the files just fine. Buggy. All of these problems and deficiencies, unless corrected, would drive me back to FTM 2012, even with its less capable narrative sentence design capability.

Got it. Thanks Paul. Should be able to do this from within the Book Manager. The software is making me plan my book outside of the Book Manager before I can assemble it in the Book Manager. Thus, it is not really a complete Book Manager. And then the Book Manager does not even let me preview the book as I assemble it. Outdated human interface. Let's hope the developers move TMG into the 21st century for V9.

Okay, now I've figured out what you were trying to tell me. This is a really wierd way of doing things. I have to clutter up my report menu with a bunch of specific reports for different individuals and focus groups just to prepare to compile a book. It would make more sense to set persons and focus groups for reports in a given book in the Book Manager rather than in the report menu. At any rate, anyone who blunders into this like I did will lock up their computer trying to do it the way that seems to make more sense from a user-friendly perspective. In general, I am finding the human interface engineering aspects of the software to be outdated and lacking. It is too bad, because TMG * has the best narrative sentence design capabilities I have found.

When I open a inidvidual narrative report definition screen inside the book manager, the "Add" button is grayed out. Anyway, I'm Not sure how this would accomplish adding an individual narrative for a different person at a different sequence in the book. Am I correct in asuming that the book is generated with reports in the sequence in which they appear on the scren in the book manager?

Now it is locking up. Obviously a bug. If I am doing something I am not supposed to be doing, it should at least disallow it without locking up.

I openned up the individual narrative report separately, selected a different person, saved settings, and then openned the book manager and added a second individual narrative report to a book with an existing individual narrative of a different person. Now I don;t get the same problem I got before. However, both individual narrative reports are now for the person for whom I saved settings when I openned up the individual narrative report separately.

When I add a second instance of the same report, even if it is for a differentr person, it first tells me that the reporyt already exists and asks whether I am sure I want to add it. When I click "Yes" it adds it. However, when I try to open the report, it gives a message "The report definition is in use by another user." When I click on OK, it opens the report window, but it won't let me make changes to it or save it. WHen I try to open the other narative report (the first one I put in the book), it gives me the same problem.

The quoted messages posted prior to this change are still all screwed up.

It would also be helpful if there was a diferent sentence variable for the name variation selected for each principal and witness linked to a tag. It would be nice to be able to call out both the primary name and the selected name variation in a sentence. Currently, [P] brings in the name that is selected in the tag.

Thanks for the recommendations, Michael and Terry. I'll check them out. My challenge is that chronological sequencing does not support my method of analysis. I'm trying to produce a narrative that makes claims based on sources that provide evidence require supportive explanation. Basically, I am trying to generate narratives that are genealogical theses that are both logical and easy to be understood. TMG 8 is the best I have found because of tag sentence lengths that seem to be unlimited and an extensive list of tag variables.

I can't seem to get [RA:Witness] to give me a calculated age without both the birth tag of the witness and the event tag to which the witness is linked having complete dates (day, month, and year). Is it possible to get an estinated age calculated when the dates only have a year listed?

First, let me define the environment. There are two basic types of genealogy software programs. Those with master source citations, such as Family Tree Maker 2012 and Legacy Family Tree 7.5 (quasi-master source citations) allow source citation records to be linked to multiple "tags" (using the TMG vernacular). Then thre are TMG 8 and Roots Magic 5, which use master events to which multiple witnesses with roles can be linked. Now the challenge. A user who wants to import their large data files with years of research into TMG 8 runs into the problem that the TMG 8 import function does not recognize master source citations linked to mulitple persons and turn them into master events with with mulitple witnesses. This is a big barrier to people moving from Family Tree Maker or Legacy Family Tree to TMG. Now the question: Does anyone know of any database routines that have been written by any users of TMG that will convert data that has been imported from FTM or LFT in this way?

It took a couple of hours, but the FTM 2008/2009 file finally finished importing. It did not combine the shared source citations into single event tags with witnesses. However, it did create custom tags for all of my events that were custom, which is helpful. It also did a clean import with no errors. So, I will still have to go through manually and boil down the duplicate event tags with single principals into unique event tags with parents as principals and children as witnesses with son and daughter roles. Is there a quick way to do this?

True, but you can export from FTM 2012 as a new, separate project in 2008/2009 format. TMG 8 does have the ability to import that database. I'll try that. Wow. This is taking a really long time to import a FTM 2008/2009 file.

True, but you can export from FTM 2012 as a new, separate project in 2008/2009 format. TMG 8 does have the ability to import that database. I'll try that.

This seems to imply that you did the import by first exporting to GEDCOM then importing that GEDCOM?? If so, that is the whole problem. GEDCOM is a very ancient format and has very few features, such as no ability to identify multiple people linked to a tag. It can only identify at most two people linked to a tag, and then only if those two people are married. There are lots of other modern genealogy software features which simply cannot be expressed in GEDCOM. As is often said, much is lost in translation. But, the actual raw database files of both FTM 2008/2009 and LTF can be directly imported into TMG without first exporting to GEDCOM. TMG wrote those database routines precisely to deal with issues which cannot be expressed in GEDCOM like multiple people linked to a common event. Are you having problems with that direct import? What do you think about how TMG performs this direct conversion? I think all your multiple people links will remain with that import. At least that is what other users report who have done such imports. As for your suggestion, maybe I don't understand it, but it seems it would be fraught with potential errors. For example, my citation might be from a book of biographies. I could have the citation be "Biographies book, page 214". Multiple very different events in a database could all have that identical citation, and would all look the same in GEDCOM. I think collapsing them into a single tag in TMG would be a real mess. GEDCOM is very useful for expressing basic genealogy information, which was its sole purpose when it was developed decades ago. But in my opinion GEDCOM is very awful for transferring more complex data and constructs between genealogy programs. That is why TMG provides direct import. I'm working in FTM 2012. TMG 8 does not have the ability to import from FTM 2012. I just did an import directly from LFT 7.5. I get the same results as I got with an import from a GEDCOM 5.5 file exported from LFT. Funny thing is that FTM 2012 does a better GEDCOM import from LFT than it does an LFT import using an LFT file. FTM 2012 is able to compare source citations in a GEDCOM file and merge all source citations that are exactly the same. The assumption the import into TMG 8 would have to make is that all source citations that look exactly the same (regarding both citation detail and citation memo) are for the same event tag. This is probably a safe assumption, considering that TMG 8 does not have master sourece citations. But, to be safe, the tags that have exactly duplicate source citations should also have exactly duplicate dates and places. The additional thing that would need to be done is that the memo of the tag associated with the witness would have to become the role memo for that person as a witness to the tag with the two principals. I know it sounds complicated and I am doing a poor job of explaining it. However, a database programmer and user of Roots Magic 5 managed to program a database query that was able to accomplish this in Roots Magic 5, and Roots Magic 5 uses the same data organization approach as TMG 8 (i.e., master events with prinicpals and witnesses). If this were to be programmed into TMG 8, it would have to b specifically selected as an import interpretation option, and should not be done automatically for all imports from LFT or FTM.

Yes, that would be the basic approach. TMG 8 is importing marriage events from LFT 7.5 (GEDCOM 5.5) and shared events from FTM 2012 (GEDCOM 5.5) just fine, making the husband and wife the two principals of the resulting event tag in TMG 8. The conversion program should then look for every occurence of a person who is the only principal of a tag that has a source citation that is exactly the same as the source citation that is linked to the tag that has the two principals. It would connect the person with the second tag as a witness to the first tag that has the two principals, and then delete the tag that just had the one person as a principal in it.