Michael Hannah

Sure you can. Either you could ignore the grouping capability and just put them both in the same group and set their sort dates. Or you could define a "Census1" tag type for whenever you wanted a census tag in group one and an "Occupation1" tag type for occupation tags you wanted in group one. Select all "something1" tag types in group 1 and all "standard" tag types to be in group 2. Thus "standard" tags would sort as normal by sort date after whatever tags you selected for that individual to output first. One person would have their census event first, another would have their occupation event first, whatever made their narrative better. And notice that if all selected tags are in only one single group then the output will be exactly as it is now, by sort date. So the proposal would be completely backwards compatible. Users would only use the feature if they wanted/needed to. That is a separate issue, I agree. It's not one I've heard mentioned before.But notice the title of this thread: "Grouping tags by type of event". To me type of event means type of tag. That is the issue I believe is being raised here, and that is the issue that was attempting to be addressed previously by the proposal I restated.

It wouldn't help my problem for two reasons. ... And your wish doesn't help my problem I think there are two different problems requiring two different solutions. But I believe each solution would add functionality that would also help the other problem. I totally agree. And since SS has a nearly identical "select tags" structure I would propose that SS also be enhanced with the group numbers. Again I agree with the need for aiding a best narrative, and believe this proposal promotes that. But I think you misunderstand the proposal. First, multiple different types of tags could all be assigned the same group. Then within that group they would all be output by sort date so would likely be interspersed just like they are now. Second, if you wanted some tags to be in multiple groups, that could also be accomplished. Creating a new tag type that is a copy of an existing tag type is a simple process. And once these similar types are created switching a specific tag from one type to the other is also simple. So, one type goes in one group, the other in the other. With this flexibility you could order every tag however you wanted for the best narrative. I agree that this is a problem, but I believe it is a completely separate problem. I support this proposal, but it does not address my problem. And, of course, if separate sort dates are implemented for TMG they would need to be implemented/recognized by SS as well? I wish that the definition of the report itself should contain a mechanism to group tags so that different reports can group tags differently. Using the Sort Date to group tags results in all reports grouping the tags the same way. That method does not help with my problem, regardless of whether each participant has their own sort date or not. The proposal I outlined addresses my problem, your addresses yours, I think we need both.

You are most welcome. Keep the questions coming!

This topic reappears regularly in various forms based on a variety of needs. While I find TMG definately the best genealogy package for my purposes, the report generator (in my not-so humble opinion ) is its weakest area. Yes, you can output to a Word Processor and post-process, so you can ultimately get what you want. However, many of us would like the report writer to get much closer to what we want so any post-processing is greately reduced. You would probably support a WishList enhancement that others have suggested and many of us support: In the Options for reports, on the Tags tab, you can currently select various tags. Instead of simply a check mark, it has been proposed that this check field allow either a "space" character implying "do not select" or a non-space character, say a number from 1 to 9. The desired result would be that all tags for a person marked with a '1' would output in sort date order first, then all tags marked with a '2' would output in their sort date order, then ... This proposal would allow output of "groups" or "sections" of tags based simply on the tag type. Would such a "wished-for" system fulfill your needs? By the way, there is no indication that Wholly Genes could or even would implement such a proposal. It is just a wish.

Hmmm... Interesting question. I haven't done that, but don't see why not. I like your idea of the separate Guest role, and agree with Terry that I would probably not print the members of that role in the Principal's output sentence. In fact, I would probably make the Guest role's Witness sentence completely non-printing, just letting the tag show that role in that person's Details window. If I wanted to output something about their attendance at events I would probably create a separate tag with text in the memo I constructed based on observing all their Guest roles. However, like Terry mentions, I would first consider what benefit this would give me (how would I output it, what would I do with it) before I expended the effort of all that data entry.

Companion products for TMG are usually developed by people other than the folks at Wholly Genes. You might review the forum about the PDA-type Companion products and contact those people directly about their future plans. I have not seen anything on the TMG forums suggesting anyone is considering such a companion product, but often such plans are kept hidden until a product can be announced.

Easy! Use a "List of Events" report with the "Subject(s) of the report a Filtered group. Create a filter like: Tag Type... Label = Equals Military Service END Then in the Options for the report, In the Output Columns include Column Types such as "Prin1 ID", "Prin 1 Last, Given", and any other fields you think might be useful. Hope this gives you ideas,

I wouldn't wait too long on the reports. I have found that the Individual Narrative report with a focus on the current person where I am editing data and output of all tags helps a great deal to keep my data entry clean.

Of course, TMG is not multiplatform, so the lack of a multiplatform implementation may not be such an issue. I think I agree that a separate standalone conversion utility would have the most flexibility. Using the .XSO and .XST files on the TMG side and some filetype on the other side that Zotero would both import and export might be more feasible and provide the 2-way import/export. TMG will automatically do the merge on import of .XSO/.XST file contents and my quick reading seems that Zotero will do merge of import on its side, so you may not need to focus on merge functions. I am sure a number of us users would welcome this utility. Hope you find the time to work on it!

Hello Hans-Juergen, This location field is typically used for LDS church events and refers to the LDS church/temple where the recording of the event took place. For example, LDS Church members will record a marriage between ancestors many years after the fact. The location fields will indicate the location of the actual marriage event plus the temple where that record was filed many years later.

I forgot to mention it, but did you check the "Export Data" feature in TMG Utility? It also has the ability to export source information to an HTML page. It's pretty comprehensive, and includes more than the Make Source List feature. And the format is very fixed. As for the .XSO and .XST file types used for exporting the sources and the source types respectively, they are standard files, in a way. I searched some old archives and found a mention that these files are actually standard ZIP files that are packed with the appropriate Visual FoxPro database files. If you simply open these zipped files with WinZip or a similar program (or rename the filetype to .zip to facilitate that) you will be able to work with the collection of files directly. As I understand it, they were zipped because it took multiple files to contain the information. Hope this gives you ideas on how to proceed,

I prefer a variation on Terry's Related-By Flag for my data. I choose to create a Flag similar to his for my direct line, but I set the value of the flag to how distant the person is from me. For example: N = no (default) people that are not on my main line 0 = me 1-9 = 1-9 generations back A-K = 10-20 X = >20 Then I can use an Accent that is: MAIN N Of course using the setting to Accent names by the FIRST matching condition you could get more complicated and have multiple accent conditions setting different colors depending upon how distant the person was. Hope this gives you ideas,

You will have to stand in line since most of us on this Forum have repeatedly expressed our love for Virginia We are all indebted to her many volunteer hours on this Forum, and her helpful hints.

Thanks, Greg, Most of us Moderators are just users of this software like yourself, but have volunteered to help with the Forum. You will also see "Senior Members" which simply reflects people who have been active enough in the forum to have made lots of posts. All of us users are happy to help each other. I am sure as you get to know this program you will become an active and helpful poster yourself. Not really. The main point to understanding the TMG program is to recognize it is a true relational database. It is not built on a single record key, so the person ID is not a "primary" key for everything else. Again, I think Terry's webpage on the Basic Concepts outlines this the best. Yes, a Person has a key, but there are many tables that do not link to or refer to the Person. Nope. Others who have worked with the internals of TMG (which I have not) can get into more details, but in simple terms there is a People table with relational links to entries in other tables. There is a Name table with each record having its unique key with multiple fields such as Given and Surname. A Person can link to multiple Name records. There is a Relationship table with its records each of which links to only two people, one a child one a parent. There are Event tables with their unique records. Most of these can link to two Principal people and to a virtually unlimited number of Witness people. The Event table also links to a specific Name record for each of these people. The table with Citation records links between an event record and a source record, and does not link to a Person. A source record can link to multiple citations and to multiple repositories, and does not link to a person. Repository records link to Source records. etc. etc. What I find wonderful is that this program can be used without really knowing anything about the underlying database structure. However, to a database programmer like yourself, I am sure knowing more about the program will only enhance your ability to use it effectively and customize it for your purposes. Some of the other users can probably tell you even more. Hope this gives you ideas, and keep up the questions,

Ahhh... He might consider doing something that is similar to what people do concerning married and maiden names for people. Many use one of the Name fields that they do not normally output to add information to distinguish similar names. Using your example, you might enter "-called John" in the Suffix field. Note the leading dash '-' to make this excluded data so it will not usually print. Alternatively you could make a custom Name Style that included the OtherName field only in the "Surname display template" and "Given display template" and put the identifying information in that field. If that field was not in the "Output template" then it would not print. Hope this gives you ideas,

I haven't used Zotero, but I browsed their web pages. For importing it seems that they like to start with web pages. Perhaps you might look at John Cardinal's TMG Utility program, and its "Make Source Page" feature. Perhaps you might consider developing a "translator" definition, as Zotero calls it, that would understand that web page format and import in to Zotero? Looks to me like it might be the simplest way to try first? Hope this gives you ideas,

Maybe we still don't understand you, Gene. Could you explain the steps you take to create the pdf file in the first place?

Hi Andy, Yes, those bold codes can be used to highlight specific text in an event tag sentence, either globally for that type of tag or locally for a specific tag. In fact they are now even easier to use. Simply select the text in the sentence that you want to make bold, right click, choose the menu option to Format that text, and select Bold. However, if you or Hans wants to change the looks of all names in reports there is now a separate Tab called "Fonts" on most report options to define the font to be used for various values in the report. There is a separate field to define the font for all Given names. Perhaps this will be of value. Hope this gives you ideas,

Hello Hans, I am unclear on what you mean by "highlight" a forename. Do you have multiple NameVar tags that specify these different forenames? If so, there are two ways to make a specific NameVar tag be used. First you could toggle that NameVar tag to the the Primary name tag, which would make it the default for most output. Second, in each event tag you can select which of the multiple NameVar tags should be used for the output of that particular event tag. Is this what you want? Hope this gives you ideas,

Hello and welcome to the TMG Forum! As a new user, if you haven't learned about it yet, Terry Reigel, the author of the TMG primer, also has a number of web pages to help new users understand this powerful program. You might want to look at Terry's Tips webpages. They can help you understand the Basic Concepts of the program, such as what are records. He also has a page about filtering lists to focus on certain people as you work through your data. Hope this gives you ideas,

The issue of dealing with adoption and other non-biological parental-like relationships is often discussed. This really involves the issue of whether TMG should be a "genealogy" program (i.e. tracing genetic/biological links) or should be a "family history" program (i.e. recording and reporting all events of families regardless of biological linkage). Of course the answer is yes it should be both. Yet the program has to make some assumptions that are based on long-standing historical usage of genealogical programs and reports. In its current implementation TMG allows only one primary "father" and one primary "mother" per person, and those parents are the only ones used for ancestor and descendant linkages. In the case of the Family Group Sheet, that is a standardized report that only defines one father and one mother. I don't use that report very much so can't think of a way to include the adoptive parents. Maybe someone else will have an idea for that report. However, TMG is very good at being able to be customized to record and report almost anything about a person. It is just that some of the reports are restricted to standard output, like the Family Group Sheet. In the case of Adoptions many custom tags and sentences and methods have been proposed over the years by TMG users. For example, you might search this Forum using the keyword Adoption, and in particular look at my more complex suggestion in the Sentences Structures section of this Forum. Hope this gives you ideas,

Carol, Sorry, but I am unable to think of any way. You cannot even using John Cardinal's TMG Utility program feature to "Add Events' in a batch manner as that will only add events to existing people, not add new people or make relationships. Sorry, Carol, but this is all part of the Report generation side of TMG. I believe that TMG implemented a selection of "standard" reports, each of which may have some of options. However, anything beyond this is left to customization "after the fact" in your Word Processor. As I understand it, the "standard" report that TMG implemented is not to carry people to the next generation, since the purpose in "that" standard of being listed in a generation seems to be to provide a place to list the "next" generation. That is why the details of the people without issue are filled out with their only listing as children, and the people who have issue have their details postponed until the "next" generation when their issue is listed. You may not like this particular "standard", but it is the only one that TMG implemented. As Terry mentioned, an enhanced option has been requested. Sorry, but we can't think of any other way to do this. It seems your only choices to creating a "non-TMG-standard" descendants report are to modify either the database or report manually yourself, either by adding "fake" children or by cutting and pasting all these people into the subsequent generation in the report after the fact. In your case of over 400 children either approach will be very tedious. All we can offer is sympathy, sorry,

It is all about money, and P.T. Barnum's old phrase that there is a sucker born every minute. If they can send out thousands and thousands of these spam messages with a web link enclosed, "enough" people will click on that link, if only out of curiosity. One or both of the following will happen. 1) the site will automatically attempt to infect your computer. If successful it will monitor your keystrokes and capture your pin numbers and credit card numbers as you use your computer, and use those numbers to access those same accounts and steal your money or charge things to your credit card. 2) the site will attempt to entice you to buy something and have you submit your credit card number to do so. Not only will you not get what you supposedly ordered, but they will make lots of charges against your credit card. If they send out a million of these spam messages and only one-half of one-percent of the recipients get caught, that is still 5000 people. If they can charge $1000 against each person, they have stolen $5 million. Not bad for just sending out some spam messages. This is not just a nuisance. People have lost their entire bank accounts and had massive problems clearing their name and cleaning up the debt incurred. It is a huge problem that law enforcement agencies all over the world are trying to deal with. Just last week China caught one of these perpetrators and executed them, so police are trying, but the profit for these people is enormous.

This is a very serious problem affecting not only these WG forums but forums all over the Internet. I know that Wholly Genes, the site moderators, and the Senior Members are all very actively researching ways to block and/or minimize these messages. These messages are occurring because spam programs are managing to automatically register with some random user name, then post their spam messages. The site moderators are doing the best they can to remove these messages and unregister these spurious accounts as quickly as they possibly can. They are also trying to discover ways to modify the computer programs controlling the forum to help prevent this from happening. However, I feel sure that Wholly Genes does want to continue to make it easy for new users to subscribe to the forum. It is a difficult problem and balancing act. There is no need to unsubscribe. I don't know how quickly some changes to forum registration can be put in place. In the meantime, you could temporarily disable your forum personal preferences for having the forum automatically send you e-mail when a new posting occurs. Instead you could simply remember to login to the forum periodically and "View New Posts". At least that will prevent you receiving these messages via e-mail, and you can probably tell by the subject line on the list of new posts what messages you do not want to view. Just to reassure you that you are not alone in being disturbed by these messages.

To find these people without children you might try a List of People report with a Report Filter of: Is a Descendant of ID # ? AND # of Children =Equals 0 END