rniquette

You're right, I got Gene Stark mixed up with John Cardinal. Mea Stupidity. Thanks for pointing out the gaffe. I'm going to edit that post to give John proper credit.

Hello Everyone, I've just run into a bunch of Roman individuals and am in a bit of a fog when it comes data entry in TMG9. Here's an example of one of the names: Gaius Julius Caesar In Roman parlance, Gaius is the given name or praenomen. Julius is the gensnomen (family) name Caesar is the cognomen (physical trait, as in "Hairy" for Caesar. I can't make this up). The question is, how should a name like this be stored in TMG? It sounds like the name should be given: Gaius surname: Julius suffix: Caesar Putting "Caesar" in the name suffix would read well in the individual's page in TMG and reports, but it won't contribute much to any kind of sorting order. On the other hand, Gaius (given) Julius (surname) would be sorted by "Julius, Gaius". That's not exactly useful from a search perspective either. So I've though about using the "sort given" and "sort surname" fields this way: sortgiven: Gaius Julius sortsurname: Caesar Now this sort order would make searches a lot easier. The name would sort as "Caesar, Gaius Julius" Caesar as surname is not technically correct, however. But does this really matter? In a report with surname caps, the name would read: Gaius Julius CAESAR. That's not technically correct either. So I could turn off the surname caps, but then all the other surnames in the database would be reported in mixed case. I don't really want this. Whatever, those are the various things I've been considering when it comes to data entry of Roman names in TMG9. Anyone else run into a situation like this? How did you handle the name formats? Lastly: as it turns out, I picked a relatively easy example in Gaius Julius Caesar. What if there are more than three names, as is actually the case most of the time? Which name is which? Here's a example of a Roman who's actually in my database: Amnius Manius Caesonius Nicomachus Ancius Paulinis (Honorius?) How do these names get assigned to praenomen, gensnomen, cognomen? What goes where in the TMG9 in the given, surname, suffix, sort name fields? This guy's father and son don't give a clue - only their given names match, so where are the gensnomen (family) names? And what to do about the (Honorius?) suffix? Any ideas on how to store Roman names "like this" in TMG? Thanks for your time, Ron Niquette

Thank you Michael! Luckily I had already been storing the long Roman name combinations (as well as some of "The Lame" and "The Hairy" Frankish kings !!!) all in the given name field. So I used John Cardinal's TMG Utility to change all the blank and "?" surnames to the double exclusion chars, "--". This has had the effect of resolving all of the messy formatting problems I was having in some of the reports - to wit, by removing the glut of "?" wherever surnames were not known. In my long winded post I completely forgot to say that some of the formatting issues were occurring when I used John Cardinal's Second Site utility to generate my website. There were too many question marks in the name fields for the person web pages. Your advice to use the exclusion chars fixed that too. BTW Second Site also has an option to show/suppress excluded data. As you pointed out in your book, the single char exclusion flag "-" can be overridden by TMG and Second Site settings to turn the excluded data on or off. It's great to know that there are options for handling these things, but I think that for now, especially in the case of those Roman names, I'll be using the double exclusion char exclusively. Thanks again for the advice, and thanks for posting that how-to book. Since TMG development was ended, it's encouraging to see so many people like you and John Cardinal continuing to support the program. Keep up the good work! Have a good one, Alan Mintaka

Hi Bob, I just saw the depressing news that you are going to discontinue development of TMG. It's a great product. I'm sad to see it go after all these years. Releasing the database structure is a good way to provide some of us (but probably not me!) with the opportunity to take up the mantle and keep the program current with OS changes. BTW when you first started developing TMG, you used MS Foxpro in your SDE. Is that still the case? Regardless of what you use now, what about selling your technology to one of the competing products? I know nothing about the business behind any of this, but of course that won't keep me from speculating! e.g, an outfit like FTM might be interested in acquiring it so they can market a "researcher's tool". For them it would emphasize substance over form, which is the opposite of the emphasis in their existing product line. If nothing else, FTM could use the technology to develop a more robust import function than they currently have - not just for importing TGM databases, but also for expanding the capabilities of their GEDCOM importer. On a personal note, I hope you're managing those health problems OK. Quality time doing what you want to do with people you love is great medicine. I was just thinking that I've been with TMG as a customer since the first release version on 1/4 inch floppies. At that time you essentially saved both casual and serious researchers from the horrors of Roots III, and brought genealogy software out of the world of dual-floppy clunker PC/AT's. I participated a lot in the early discussions but have lurked in the background ever since. Despite the silence on my parnt, my interest in and use of TMG have never flagged. The online database I developed using TMG and Second Site has united distant cousins in my family, and even led to one marriage! (which has lasted !!!) TMG has been an amazing journey, thanks in toto to its developer, his support folks, and the third party add-on developers like Gene Stark (sorry to leave out more specific names. I'm sure it's a huge list). Take care my friends at TMG, Ron Niquette Rising Moon Genealogy Services

In the Windows world, there is a "compatibility" option in the properties of programs and shortcuts. The option can be set to run a program that's compatible with earlier versions of Windows. As long as it works, it's a lot easier than running virtual instances of older versions of Windows. I say "as long as it works" in order to hedge my bets with Windows, always a prudent idea. Together with virtual instances of older Windows versions, it's nice to have at least two methods in the event that either doesn't work out.

Virginia, The problem has reappeared with the latest version of AVG and a number of files in both the TMG v. 8 application and database folders. In addition to the slide show viewer, most of the ZIP archives of my databases on another drive are showing the same (false?) positive for Luhe.Fiha.A. Note that the link you referenced in your message last April points to a message thread in which you posted a message with a link referring the users right back to this thread! Also, there didn't seem to be any solutions in that thread, other than to report the problem to AVG tech support - which evidently has not worked, since the problem still exists. I'll give it a try anyway. If all else fails, I'll set up an exclusion for the TMG applicaton/database directories and "assumed" that it's a false positive. Happy Holidays! Ron Niquette