Michael Hannah

I second the comments about the two opinions. I would also suggest that the software packages to display your TMG database might not be that important if you are willing to have your TMG data as read-only on your handheld. I prefer to use SecondSite to create web pages of my data, then download the webpages to the handheld using whatever program is appropriate to that OS (e.g. iSilo). I find the convenience of the hypertext links in the web pages to be very convenient, and with the options of SecondSite I can create a set of web pages on the fly before heading off to the library that focuses on the research of the day. I then just take notes from the research and use TMG back home to do the real data entry. Michael

Yep, like Terry just said, the option checked in preferences for where undated tags sort works ONLY for the Person View, and does NOT affect reports. This is why I always set that option to sort first, as that is the way they will show in reports. This helps to remind me that if I want them to apper in some other order I need to add a Sort Date to those tags. If you have lots of tags that have no Sort Dates and you want them to sort in a particular order, one way to force a sort date on tags to ensure that tag sort by the TYPE of tag would be using TMG Utility. See its feature of "set sort dates", but carefully read its help file that explains what it will and will not do. This utility does NOT have an option to force all undated tags to sort last. Michael

My wife the Librarian agrees with the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) principle. Especially with TMG as your tool for searching for documents, a system that simply numbers all the documents in a sequencial order, usually called the accession number, seems easy. I then use assign the Source to a Repository called "my files" or something similar, and use the Repository Reference field on the Source Attachments tag when I link that Repository to enter the accession number of that source. However, this does not help with a system to group like physical documents together in your file cabinet. You could choose some physical grouping system, maybe surname. or year of publication of the source, etc. then have sequential accession numbers within that grouping, e.g. SMITH-104. Hope this gives you ideas, Michael

I agree that there should be an option to completely eliminate this sentence. And echoing Donald Schulteis' comment about the two phases of a project, for the "gatherine facts" phase I feel a sentence like "no children separately entered in this database" would at least be more accurate.

I agree that there should be an option to completely eliminate this sentence. And echoing Donald Schulteis' comment about the two phases of a project, for the "gatherine facts" phase I feel a sentence like "no children separately entered in this database" would at least be more accurate. Oops! posted to the wrong thread. Please ignore.

I have been struggling in Version 6.08 with sentence constructions that contain the location variable plus optional variables following the location variable before a period, then more variables after theperiod. I believe there might be a small bug in the way the punctuation is automatically constructed. It appears that whenever a) there is not an explicit period immediately following the [L] variable in the sentence construction, and there is an optional variable following the [L] variable but that optional variable is empty, and c) there is an explicit period following this optional variable, and d) there is yet more to the sentence, such as another non-empty optional variable, then a comma following the Location variable but immediately preceding the explicit period which follows the empty variable is not stripped. The simplest test I have come up with is a tag with sentences: [P] was tested . [W] witnessed testing [P] . M1=xx, M2=yy, WM=zz, (all variables exist) is OKAY producing "P was tested location, xx. yy." "W witnessed testing P location, xx. zz." M1=xx, M2=, WM=zz, is also OKAY producing "P was tested location, xx." "W witnessed testing P location, xx. zz." BUT M1=, M2=yy, WM=zz, produces ending comma-period in both "P was tested location,. yy." "W witnessed testing P location,. zz." M1=, M2=, WM=zz, strips the comma in the Principal sentence but leaves the ending comma-period in Witness "P was tested location." "W witnessed testing P location,. zz." Since the sentences produce correct punctuation for all conditions of the presence or absence of the optional variables when the location field is empty, the extra comma is clearly coming from the location field. I understand that this is an intentionally convoluted case, but the even simpler case where you just want your memo as part of the end of the sentence like: [P] was tested [W] witnessed testing [P] . when the memo is empty produces an appropriate principal sentence, but the witness sentence has the comma-period. Note that the following strips the comma and produces the expected punctuation no matter what variables exist: [P] was tested . [W] witnessed testing [P] . In this case the program seems to detect that a period follows the Location variable and strips the comma correctly. Since there are cases where the trailing comma from the Location field are stripped, I presume the cases where the comma-period pair is produced are bugs? Or is this wierd case too hard to detect for stripping? Seems like the code should construct the sentence then ask something like "Is the next non-blank character following the location field a punctuation character? If so, strip the trailing comma from Location."

Happy to help. There are just so many great features in TMG that it is easy to forget how it tries to "help" by remembering your personal configurations. Glad your problem is solved.

Hello Afina, Not sure if this is the problem, but.... It is possible to change the widths of a column in the MPL. In fact you can shrink the width so that it appears it does not exits. Try putting your cursor in the column headings at the left side of the Country column until it turns into a vertical bar with arrows. Then hold down your left mouse button and drag to the right and see if the State colum reappears. Now when you close the MPL it will "remember" the column sizes you wanted the next time it opens, which is possibly why you now see it and then it goes away.

Also the latest version (1.5.0.2) fixes a number of security problems since your version of 1.0.7 that I would highly suggest updating.

Me too!

On the TMG-L listserv there are reports that it makes a difference HOW you did your backup. Can you specify whether you made the backup while being prompted to do so as you exit? or explicitly while in TMG using the Backup option in the File menu. Some users have reported problems with backups produced using the first method, while the second seems to be reliable.

Wow! That would be quite a pair of programs. I use a Palm OS T3, so my first program is GedStar Pro, which I like, although TMG needs to update their GenBridge utility so that it can make use of some of the new Version 6 features. As for the second, I have SmartList ToGo. I have not tried it, but believe you could run some kind of TMG List of People report or Export of a Focus Group to produce a field separated file which could be imported into SLTG. That would allow easy records that were modifiable, but importing back into TMG would be a trick. If you figure this out. let us know.

Virginia B., one of the major users, reproduced my error, but then suggested that I reset the report configuration (using the Delete button under the configuration name). This does seem to clear up the generation of this error. However, while I can now proceed with my work, hopefully providing one easy method that can cause TMG to crash will help the developers fix TMG so that when it does have an error it does not actually crash.

I am aware of two ways that I use to "globally" search for various items in my database: the Project Explorer and its filter capability, and filters on various reports. For your searching of memos, I would do a List of Events report with a filter. I would probably limit my search to certain tag types and use something like: Tag Type Group is Birth AND Memo contains gobbledegook END Hope this helps

I first reported these in TMG 6.04 but since then there are THREE new updates to fix bugs (THANKS, Bob, we all appreciate the hard work to produce these fixes!). However, my bugs with problems with Citation Memos and Exhibit text (two different bugs?) in the Individual Narrative report are still manifest in Version 6.07. I am posting this to both the Forum and the TMGL mailing list. As a comment to a recent posting, I am very pleased with the stability and status of v6.07, and these bugs are very obscure. As an aid to finding and fixing such obscure bugs, I have identified small changes that can be made to the standard TMG SAMPLE project that will reproduce these bugs. Bug one. Under some cases two citations are printed as Ibid without printing the Citation Memos even though the Citation Memos are specified to print and (only) the Citation Memos differ between the two citations. In some cases when "Combine consecutive footnotes/endnotes" on the Source tab for the Report Options is selected, the entire Full Footnote with memo is duplicated inside the same combinded citation. Bug two. When an Exhibit of internal text exists for an event tag, and event exhibits are selected to print as endnotes, and "Combine consecutive footnotes/endnotes" on the Source tab for the Report Options is selected, either the rest of the Narrative from that point is printed as part of the footnote/endnote for the event Exhibit text, or construction of the entire Report file aborts. Even if the file is produced, Word will abort with mouseover the citation. In some cases the Exhibit (and the event citation) prints with the footnote for the event memo even though both are specified to be endnotes (this last may be by design, although I believe a Sources option should not change where the Exhibit has been specified to print). ============== To reproduce these bugs starting with the TMG SAMPLE project: Copy SAMPLE project to separate folder so you can safely make changes. Open project to the default person: Annie Eliza Alexander. Open the Master Source List and open source #1 "Alexander/Keebler Bible" and select the Output Form tag, noting that both Full and Short Footnote are overwritten already. Add "" (without the quotes) after [M1] in the Full and before the final period in the Short footnote. Double click on the primary Name tag and add a citation detail to source #1 of "Citation detail" and a citation memo of "Name memo". Double click on Father tag and add the same citation detail to source #1 of "Citation detail" but a citation memo of "Father memo". Double click on Mother tag and add the same citation detail to source #1 of "Citation detail" and a citation memo of "Mother memo". Double click on the primary Birth tag and add the same citation detail to source #1 of "Citation detail" and a citation memo of "Birth memo". Double click on the primary Marriage tag and add an internal text exhibit to this event tag with text of "Marriage exhibit text" Add a new default Associatn tag, but change the sentence for Principal to add "" (without the quotes) after "associated", give it a date of 1880. Add person #1 and person #2 as witnesses. Add a citation of source #6 with citation detail of "census detail" and citation memo of "census memo" and put surety of 2 for both 1&2. Add an internal text exhibit to this event tag with text of "Census exhibit text". Add a new default Anecdote tag, with memo "Anecdote memo", no citation, date of 1890, and add an internal text exhibit to this event tag with text of "Anecdote exhibit text" Select report for Individual Narrative. Leave Subject set to this one person. Set Print to: a File of type RTF, and choose a file name. For Options, leave all as default, except: Memos not included in the sentence are Footnotes selecting name, relationship or witnessed. Exhibits are endnotes selecting internal, external, copy, reference, center, with caption, and event, with primary image. Publication Tools Bibliography selected but not Table of Contents. For source options, always have the following options set for all the variations tried below: do not supress CD, do not show surety, do not show excluded citations, include Name source, include Relationship sources. Now try all the variations on the source options remaining: Bug-Endnotes, but not unique, do not disable ibid, do not combine: Citation memo for Name and Birth print, but Mother and Father are Ibid with citation detail but no memo (I believe the differing memos should either print or prevent Ibid) Exhibits are separate endnotes embedded with the citations Good-Endnotes, but not unique, disable ibid, do not combine: All memos print Exhibits are separate endnotes embedded with the citations Good-Endnotes, unique, disable ibid, do not combine: All memos print Exhibits are endnotes, separate and following the citations Good-Endnotes, unique, do not disable ibid, do not combine: All memos print, and Mother and Father are not ibid, (but?) are Full (I assume that unique recognizes the differing memos and prevents ibid, but it also prevents short footnote?) Exhibits are endnotes, separate and following the citations Bug-Endnotes, but not unique, combine: All memos print in the combined endnote citation and the Source Supplement M1 memo prints only once in this citation The Associatn exhibit text is combined with the census citation endnote but should? be printing as an endnote The rest of the Narration paragraph appears in this Endnote following the text "[:MEMO] with the subsequent endnotes embedded in this one endnote. The "mouseover" of the superscript in the Narrative text shows that the citation and all the remaining Narrative text is considered this endnote [when the file is output to "Word for Windows 2000 or later" this mouseover produces a fatal error in Word] [alternative test: remove the Associatn exhibit. The citation to the marriage is appended to the Marriage tag memo as part of its footnote as is its Exhibit text, where both should? be endnotes. This may be by design and my misunderstanding. Remaining exhibit is separate endnote embedded with the citations] Bug-Endnotes, unique, combine: Conversion error # 13: Source file discrepancy. A file is created but is Zero length [alternative test: remove the Associatn exhibit. Source #1 Supplement M1 memo prints three times!! in its combined citation. The citation to the marriage is appended to the Marriage tag memo as part of its footnote as is its Exhibit text, where both should? be endnotes. This may be by design and my misunderstanding. Remaining exhibit is separate endnote embedded with the citations] Bug-Footnotes, do not disable ibid, do not combine: Citation memo for Name and Birth print, but Mother and Father are Ibid with citation detail but no memo (I believe the differing memos should either print or prevent ibid) The exhibits print after the Bibliography, but have no separating Endnotes title heading, which I believe should exist Bug-Footnotes, disable ibid, do not combine: All memos print The exhibits print after the Bibliography,but have no separating Endnotes title heading, which I believe should exist Bug-Footnotes, combine: All memos print in the combined footnote citation and the Source Supplement M1 memo prints only once in this citation The Associatn exhibit text is combined with the census citation footnote but should? be printing as an endnote The rest of the Narration paragraph appears in the Endnote following the text "[:MEMO] with the subsequent endnotes embedded in this one endnote. The "mouseover" of the superscript in the Narrative text shows that the citation and all the remaining Narrative text is considered this endnote [when the file is output to "Word for Windows 2000 or later" this mouseover produces a fatal error in Word] [alternative test: remove the Associatn exhibit. The Exhibit text prints as part of the Marriage citation footnote, where it should? be an endnote. The remaining exhibit prints after the Bibliography, but has no separating Endnotes title heading, which I believe should exist]

For this thread I tried both RTF and Word output just to test more than one output to see if that was the cause of this small bug. However, I agree with you on your comments supporting using RTF. I choose to output my final reports in RTF as I then import them to FrameMaker for final formatting, which is the software I much prefer as a full-featured and robust document creation tool.

John, Thanks for looking in to this obscure situation. As Jim has noted, there is a small and obscure bug, but I can choose options that work around it. Yes, I do see superscripted footnote numbers in Word. I have not experimented with whether having italics makes a difference. Do you mean using the [iTAL:][:ITAL] code in TMG in the citation or source data might make a difference? I will have to experiment with this when I am off for the holidays. Michael

Jim, Thaks very much for checking this. I had forgotton about that ibid selection being part of the source itself. I had fallen into the trap that the report defined all of the aspects of ibid. Obviously being able to make that selection per source is valuable. I will need to put that reminder in big bold text in my personal document on constructing reports. As for the actual bug found, thanks for verifying that it is not something wrong with just me and my dataset. It is such an obscure bug that (as my tests showed) I can choose some settings as a workaround that will give me close to the report I want. And I agree that the design issue is just that, a design choice. Again, as long as I know that it is there by design, I can easily cut and paste the Word report and get what I prefer. And, once more, you have been extremely helpful to the TMG users. Thanks. Michael

Possible this is two different bugs, one concerning internal text exhibits, and one concerning the Mother relationship source. Can anyone else reproduce these errors? They are reliably reproducible for me. I did not find anything in the Forum or on this list that seemed to be a similar bug report. Summary Individual Narrative report options gives different results for a source cited for the Mother relationship. Citation Memo for Father always prints, but Citation Memo for Mother sometimes does not print even though the source (and source template) is the same for Mother and Father. Some source options produce other errors associated with an internal text exhibit, including inability to produce the report. Details I am using Version 6.04 Gold on W2K, and have run VFI, reindex, optimize, and even restarted multiple times just to be sure. I have a source which I have cited while in the child Person View for both the primary Father and Mother relationship. The source and citation details are identical for Mother and Father, but the citation memos are different. The source template output format has "." at the end of both the Full Footnote and Short Footnote, although the rest of the formats differ. I now print an Individual Narrative with various options for the sources. The following options are fixed for all cases. The IN subject is the Current Focus Person, and prints to File (similar results shown below whether using RTF or Word for Windows 2000 or later). General option is no threshold, include blank surety. Memos not included in the sentence are Footnotes not selecting name, relationship or witnessed. Exhibits are endnotes selecting internal, external, copy, reference, center, with caption, and event, with primary image. Publication Tools Bibliography selected but not Table of Contents. Selected tags, but including all possible name tags. Do not show either excluded or sensitive data. For source options, I always have the following options set for all the variations tried below: do not supress CD, do not show surety, do not show excluded citations, include Name source, include Relationship sources. Tried the following variations on the remaining source options with the following mixed results. No changes of any kind to the database or other options between printing each of these variations. First with output to RTF: Endnotes, but not unique, disable ibid, do not combine: Mother CM prints Endnotes, unique, disable ibid, do not combine: Mother CM prints Endnotes, but not unique, do not disable ibid, do not combine: Mother CM not print Endnotes, unique, do not disable ibid, do not combine: Mother CM prints Endnotes, but not unique, combine: Mother CM prints, but second half of the paragraph prints as part of an exhibit in the endnote following the text "[:MEMO]" which must be produced by the report writer since it is neither in the exhibit nor in my sentences. Endnotes, unique, combine: Conversion error # 13: Source file discrepancy. Zero length file created Footnotes, disable ibid, do not combine: Mother CM prints Footnotes, do not disable ibid, do not combine: Mother CM not print Footnotes, combine: Mother CM prints, but second half of the paragraph prints as part of an exhibit in a footnote (NOT an endnote) following the text "[:MEMO]" which must be produced by the report writer since it is neither in the exhibit nor in my sentences. Now with output to Word for Windows 2000 or later: Endnotes, but not unique, disable ibid, do not combine: Mother CM prints Endnotes, unique, disable ibid, do not combine: Mother CM prints Endnotes, but not unique, do not disable ibid, do not combine: Mother CM not print Endnotes, unique, do not disable ibid, do not combine: Mother CM prints Endnotes, but not unique, combine: Mother CM exists in the balloon of the the combined Father/Mother footnote, but second half of the paragraph does not print following the footnote superscript for which is similar to the above combining with the exhibit. When mouse over the superscript for the last displayed footnote to see the baloon, WinWord produces a fatal error and exits. Endnotes, unique, combine: Conversion error # 13: Source file discrepancy. Zero length file created. Footnotes, disable ibid, do not combine: Mother CM prints Footnotes, do not disable ibid, do not combine: Mother CM not print Footnotes, combine: Mother CM exists in the balloon of the the combined Father/Mother footnote, but second half of the paragraph does not print following the footnote superscript for which is similar to the above combining with the exhibit. When mouse over the superscript for the last displayed footnote to see the baloon, WinWord produces a fatal error and exits.