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Michael Hannah

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Posts posted by Michael Hannah


  1. I don't know of a way to "filter" for the repository, but I would simply set the Report Options to output the filtered List of Citations in "Columnar" format. I would then select as one of the columns the "Source Repository Name" and set that column as the primary sort. That will group them together, and I could then just ignore the other lines of output.


  2. If I understand your issue, the popup windows for "adding witnesses and sources have expanded". If this is correct, then those popup windows are normal MS Windows windows. You should be able to resize them like any other window by putting the cursor on one of the corners and dragging that corner into the popup window to make it smaller. Then you should be able to move that popup window to the center of the screen so you can now see the buttons on the bottom.

     

    Hope this gives you ideas,


  3. Barbara,

     

    I can't say for sure what has happened to your database, but spurious extra repositories was a symptom of a known bug in older versions of TMG. A cause was finally identified in testing Version 9.0 as a bug occurring when a repository was copied. That bug which produced these spurious extra repositories was fixed as of Version 9.01.

     

    You can delete any incorrect repositories by hand and they should not reappear. Unfortunately I don't know of a way to delete them other than by hand.

     

    You can identify potential sources with this problem using a List of Sources report with a filter of:

    Number of Repositories // > Is greater than // 1 // END

     

    Hope this helps,


  4. Mike,

     

    You said:

    I simply can not open any of the TMG report generators.

    What do you mean by this? The term "report generator" is not a term TMG uses for anything that I know of. Do you mean that you get this error sequence when you simply click on the "Report" option on the Main Menu? Or do get it when you click on any option in the Report menu, such as "Descendant Indented Narrative"? Or do you get it when you try to change to a different "Configuration name" when in the Report Definition Screen? Or do you get it when you try to "Create Report" within any Report Definition Screen? Or when?

     

    It sounds like we may be addressing the wrong issue. What exact action(s) (using TMG's terms) do you do in TMG which triggers this error sequence?


  5. There is a "trick" to entering them. Make the "Date" an irregular date with an appended 'BC' so that will output in reports. Then use a 9's complement for the Sort Date year. For details see the discussion of BC dates in the Data Entry chapter of my book here.

     

    Hope this gives you ideas,


  6. You are most welcome, Joe.

    Remaining question is why the problems in the footnotes?

    The comment about unique endnotes Terry mentioned is also in TMG's HELP under the topic "Report Options: Sources":

    "Unique ... endnotes never produce an “ibid”. This option does not recognize split CDs or CMs."


    In the Source Guide chapter of my book I also mention unique endnotes here. As that discussion explains, this limitation is one of the reasons I choose not to use that report option as I regularly use split CDs and CMs.


  7. No, you are not missing anything, Terry. I am mostly a lumper but sometimes a splitter. :D You are right, the above example is more of a "splitter" example in that it is a Source for a single article. But that seemed to me to fit best with what Joe put in his example bibliography, i.e. the specific page numbers of this one article.

     

    However, the "Article Title" is an optional element in that Source Type, as is "Pages", so one could use this Source Type to create a Source for a specific edition of a paper, or just the paper itself. But as I try to describe elsewhere in the book, that would require putting all the other information in the Citation data which could not appear in the Bibliography.

     

    Further, the very next Source Type in the book is a Source Type example of how one could “lump” multiple articles from the same newspaper into a single source record which only contained source element data about that newspaper on that date. It even discusses how multiple "split" sources can be "lumped" into a single Bibliography entry. And most of my other Source Types are even more "lumper" style, such as my "Birth Church Register" where I give an example of using this Source Type for a single Source of an entire Bishop’s transcript book with combined Baptism, Marriage, and Burial data from multiple churches. Talk about a giant "lump" of data. :D

     

    As we both have said, one has to decide what is desired in the Bibliography. The more one wants in the Bibliography, the more "split" the Source Definition will have to be. Everything else goes in the Citation data. And as my book points out, if you want less in the Bibliography but still want to "split" your Sources, with carefully constructed templates you can even get TMG to "lump" multiple "split" sources into a single Bibliography entry.

     

    I did say "I am a lumper" to point out that one can be a lumper and still use a Bibliography. But I should probably have more accurately said "While I am usually a "lumper" I use a Bibliography all the time".

     

    Regardless, as we are both trying to point out to Joe, the Bibliography automatically "lumps" to the level that is common among all the many citations to this source, so it cannot contain specific citation data.


  8. Hi Joe,

     

    As Terry says, you cannot use CDs in the Bibliography. In fact the Bibliography template cannot contain any of the variables for any data which is entered in the Citation window as part of a specific citation: CDs, CMs, CREF. As Terry points out, you should design source templates so that all data that is common and unchanged among that unlimited number of possible citations is put in the Source Definition and its linked Repository Definition. The variables for any of that data can be put in the Bibliography. Everything that is specific to that single citation (e.g. page number, a short quote, etc.) should be entered in the fields on the Citation screen, and the variables for those fields can only be put in the two footnote templates.

     

    While I am a "lumper" I use a Bibliography all the time, and thus have structured my source templates accordingly. For my examples, see the Source Templates chapter of my on-line book. To use the data from your post to construct an example, my custom source type for an Obituary/Newspaper Article as posted in that chapter is here. I choose to have as the Source Definition the entire obituary article, and then quote data from specific items within that article in citations to multiple tags.

     

    I would probably enter a Source Definition for your example source using my source type as:

    NEWSPAPER = Daily Union
    SHORT NEWSPAPER = Daily Union
    ARTICLE TITLE = Long Time Resident Mrs. Mary Jones Dies
    SHORT ARTICLE TITLE = Mrs. Mary Jones Obituary
    SECTION = Obituaries
    AUTHOR = Fred Byline
    DATE = Sunday, February 2, 1936
    DATE OBTAINED = November 13, 2013
    LOCATION = New York, Schenectady
    LOCATION DETAIL = Schenectady, New York
    EDITION = Home Edition

    PAGES = page 34, column 5 to page 35, column 1

    COMMENTS = This is a comment about the source.

     

    And this would be linked with the repository reference to "jim's" repository
    REPOSITORY REFERENCE = hjc8421-005-k001e001
    REPOSITORY = jim's hosting website
    REPOSITORY ADDRESS =http:??test.web.com/gh

    Then for the first of the many citations I might have a citation of time and cause of death to the Death tag:

    CD= p.34, col 5, second paragraph
    CM= "Mrs. Jones died of a heart attack at 3 a.m. yesterday morning at her sister Willa's home."

     

    And I might have a second citation to the Burial tag:
    CD= p.35, col 1, first paragraph
    CM= "Mrs. Jones will be buried at St. Mathew's Cemetery."

    This would produce:

    Full Footnote from the first citation:
    Fred Byline, "Long Time Resident Mrs. Mary Jones Dies," Daily Union, Schenectady, New York, Sunday, February 2, 1936, Home Edition, Obituaries, p.34, col 5, second paragraph. Cited as "Mrs. Mary Jones Obituary", Daily Union. "Mrs. Jones died of a heart attack at 3 a.m. yesterday morning at her sister Willa's home."

    Short Footnote from the second citation:
    "Mrs Mary Jones Obituary," Daily Union, Sunday, February 2, 1936, p.35, col 1, first paragraph. "Mrs. Jones will be buried at St. Mathew's Cemetery."

    Bibliography:
    New York, Schenectady, Daily Union, Sunday, February 2, 1936, Home Edition, Obituaries, Fred Byline, "Long Time Resident Mrs Mary Jones Dies", page 34, column 5 to page 35, column 1. hjc8421-005-k001e001. jim's hosting website, http:??test.web.com/gh. Obtained November 13, 2013. This is a comment about the source.

     

    Your source type will probably be different but I hope this gives you ideas,


  9. The log from running VFI should show the file it could not find. That log file will be named "Last VFI.log" and will be located in the same folder as your Project. It is a text file, so is readable with any text editor, such as Notepad.

     

    As for who has a missing exhibit, the quickest way I know of is to open the Exhibit log, change the Focus to "All Exhibits" and scroll through to find the icon (usually frowny face) showing a missing link.


  10. If you find this report's lack of expansion of the people variables in memos annoying, you might consider setting the options to not output any of the memo text. Since this report does not display the sentence template where information also may have been entered, I often choose to exclude the memo text. I just use this report to get a sense of what tags are assigned to a person. Note that there are two places in Report Options where you would need to exclude memos: obviously the "Memos" tab should select the option of "None", but also the "Miscellaneous" tab should not select "Embed sentence [M]emo".

     

    Hope this gives you ideas,


  11. Ruth,

     

    Maybe it will help to say it another way? As Virginia and Terry point out, a sibling of an ancestor is not your "direct line" ancestor in a genetic sense. You are not a direct product of their genes. While siblings are based on the genes of the same parents, each offspring of those parents can have a slightly different genetic code. The key point is that TMG is a GENEalogy program. While those siblings are part of an ancestral "family", they are not themselves a direct line genetic ancestor. TMG is giving you the correct genetic information.

     

    Or is there something else going on concerning these people which we do not understand?

     

    Hope this gives you ideas,


  12. ... I didn't really want to install Windows on a partition on my hard drive or run a virtual software program.

    All versions of TMG will only run on Windows operating systems. Partitioning your hard drive so you can reboot into either Windows or Mac, or running a program on the Mac that provides virtual partitions for hosting another OS such as Windows, are your only two options for running TMG on a Mac.

     

    Many TMG users successfully run TMG on a Mac using the virtual program Parallels. Search for posts with the term "Parallels" in this "Older Products and Versions" Forum, or start with the post of running the latest version of TMG under Parallels here.

     

    Hope this gives you ideas,


  13. Hi Nancy,

     

    I assume that you are referring to the automatic "Relation" tag in the Tag Details area of a person's display. The most common cause of problems with the display of that tag is that it has not been refreshed/updated. It is NOT automatically modified and updated as you add people and change relationships. That would slow the program down considerably. After doing some data entry, especially if the new data will change relationships, you need to update the 'Relation' tag display. There are three ways to do that:

    • Go to Preferences // Current Project Options // Other and click on the "Refresh relationships" button in that window.
    • RIGHT-click anywhere in the tag Details area and select the 'Automatic "Relation" tag' menu item to turn off the automatic relation tag. Now RIGHT-click again and select that menu item to recalculate the relationships and turn it back on.
    • Add to your custom toolbar (you do use one, right? :D) the "Related" button. Clicking that will first turn off the automatic relation tag, then clicking it again will recalculate the relationships and turn it back on

    Hope this give you ideas.


  14. Where does the GEDCOM file reside? If it is on an external device, like a thumb drive or cloud drive, first copy it to the main hard drive. Also ensure that it does not reside in a folder which is automatically being monitored by some background backup program, e.g. DropBox. If so, first copy it to some separate working folder.


  15. See the same Adoption topic in my book mentioned above. That discussion starts out by describing the two standard ways of dealing with Adoption: a one person approach with lots of explanatory tags, and a two person approach by creating two separate TMG people entries. In the case of a transgender person I would choose to use the two person approach, so that the SEX flag set one way for one "person", and set the other way for the other. You then have explanatory tags linking the two "people". All life event tags before change would be linked to one person, and all life event tags after change linked to the other. In some ways they are two separate identities, and it is easier to treat them that way in TMG. Scroll down in my Adoption description to the subtopic heading "Two Person Adoption Recording Approach". Hopefully that will give you some ideas on how to do something similar for your situation.

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