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John Cardinal

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About John Cardinal

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    https://www.secondsite7.com
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    Narragansett, RI

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  1. web site

    Quish, I presume this was a system that I discussed mostly with "J.S." back in August. I said I was interested in the work, but that it would be expensive, probably several thousands of dollars. I did not spend the time to produce a detailed estimate because I was not confident that your group would spend that much for what you wanted. I proposed a couple ideas that would reduce the scope of work, and thus the price. J.S. replied, "We will consult with each other and get back to you." I did not receive any further messages on the topic. The system that J.S. described was essentially a web-based membership system that also would control access to pages generated by Second Site. The system required membership management (add users, assign passwords, restrict access to current members only for some content, etc.). There was also a requirement that members would have email accounts provided as part of the service. There were several other features for managing documents of interest to members that are not part of the SS pages, such as newsletters. Building all that would take time, even if the project leveraged existing software to provide the basic functionality. There may be an existing system you can use to manage members. There are free, open source solutions and low-cost solutions. At the time I reviewed the requirements written by J.S., I was not aware of any system that would provide all the requested features, and it was not clear where you/he was willing to compromise. it may be possible to integrate the static pages generated by SS with a membership system, but someone would have to review the available packages and select the one that has (A) the membership features that are required and (B) will accommodate static pages. After that, someone would have to install the package and customize it, then (possibly) provide some scripts or other tools to make it easy to update the SS pages.
  2. John, You can tell Windows to assign a drive letter to a folder. You can reserve drive "D:" to point to "c:\d-drive\". Search for the "subst" command using Google. Here's one result: IT World If you decide you want to update the file paths, there are several ways to do that. My TMG Utility will make "find and replace" changes to exhibit file paths, and that makes systematic changes (like moving a set of files from one location to another) pretty easy. TMG also has a way to find missing exhibits. I like TMGU's method better, but both have their uses. John
  3. 1950 Census Candidates Flag

    Just saw this topic. Sorry about the delayed response. For the 1940 census, I started with people who I had found in the 1930 census and eliminated people with an existing Census1940 tag or a Death tag before 1940. I ran a List of People (LoP) filter to people and used this criteria: ( Census1930 | # of Tags | > Is greater than | 0 | OR Witnessed Census1930 | # of Tags | > Is greater than | 0 | ) AND Census1940 | # of Tags | = Equals | 0 | AND Witnessed Census1940 | # of Tags | = Equals | 0 | AND ( Death Group | # of Tags | = Equals | 0 | OR Death Group | Year | >= Is not less than | 1940 | ) END You have to be careful with the parens and with the AND/OR terms. Oh, and update it for 1940 / 1950 instead of 1930 / 1940. It won't catch everyone, but it highlights a lot of good candidates. After adding Census1940 tags, I could rerun the filter to select people who still did not have a Census1940 tag. I didn't have to add a "Candidate" tag to keep track of my progress, I let the actual 1940 Census tag do that. You'd still have to search for people who immigrated to the US in the 1940s, or people you did not find in 1940. People who were born in the 1940s will often be in households that were found in 1940, but not all of them. Again, this is intended to catch the easier candidates.
  4. Cannot Open project in TMG 9

    JohnR, I am not Michael, but I will answer anyway. If you have an automated backup program that only runs at a designated time, and TMG is not running at that time, you should be fine. The problem with backup programs that run all the time is they can interfere with TMG trying to access one of its files while you are using TMG, and that can corrupt your TMG database. Popular cloud-based programs run all the time so they can distribute the network load, and that means they are running when you might be using TMG. That's bad, and must be avoided. However, a nightly backup process is fine as long as TMG is not running when that backup runs. I have an automated backup that runs at 3AM and copies all changed files to an external device. Once a week, I make an "image copy" of each drive on my PC so I have a recent "full copy of the disk" in case something goes wrong. I transport some of the backup files to offsite locations. All that is outside TMG, and I make sure that TMG is not running when those backups occur. Within TMG, I use the File > Backup command frequently. The resulting SQZ files are gobbled up by the backup processes described above. John
  5. Sources Slow to Load

    Pam, I've heard of slow access to the Master Source List when there are thousands of sources, but 3x or more than the 1600 you have. I am a lumper, and I have about 1015 sources. The MSL opens in about 2 seconds for me. I have no idea why the MSL is so slow for you, but I am confident there is a problem. I will contact you off-list.
  6. Sources Slow to Load

    Pam, How many sources do you have? John
  7. TMG Performance since last windows update

    Dave, I recommend that you NOT include external exhibits in your TMG backups. You should have a separate backup regimen for those digital assets, perhaps integrated with backups for other images that are not exhibits. Including exhibits in a TMG backup increases the size of the backup SQZ file and increases the amount of time that TMG takes to write the backup file. Meanwhile, the exhibits don't change very often. Lastly, if you have a lot of exhibits, the image data---which doesn't compress much--can cause the SQZ file to exceed the maximum size of a ZIP file. (SQZ files are ZIP files in disguise.) TMG always performs reasonably well for me. The only operations that are slow enough to annoy me are (A) opening the Master Place List, which is glacial, (B) importing GEDCOM files (which I do rarely as part of testing), and (C) exporting GEDCOM files (which I also do only rarely). The only other performance issue I have seen is when there was a "ghost" instance of TMG running that was using a lot of CPU. That was affecting all the other programs running on my PC, but had a particularly nasty impact on TMG, which was so sluggish it was almost unusable. I do not know what caused it. I only remember it happening once. I killed the ghost TMG process after I noticed it, and that solved the problem. Users who don't have the skills to check what processes are running and manipulate them can solve the problem by rebooting. John
  8. TMGU Find/Replace - Reposting

    Doris, Do you still need help with this? I don't check the Forum every day, and without that habit, I sometimes skip multiple weeks. Yes, you can remove a trailing "*" from a name part such as the given name. You use Change Name Parts to do it. Changing a "*" is a little more difficult than changing other characters because "*" has a special meaning in the pattern-based replace operation, and that's what you need to use. You have to "escape" the "*" character so that it does not have its special meaning. I changed one person in a TMG project to have a trailing "*" in the given name of her primary name. She had a couple non-primary names that were using the same given name, for a total of three names that needed fixing. Here is the TMG Utility log that shows the Change Name Part rules and the resulting changes: TMG Utility v7.3.7 Copyright (C) 1999-2016 by John Cardinal. All Rights Reserved. Do not redistribute. Function=Change Name Parts Project=test09 Started at 16:57:29 Options: Match case: False Show All Name Fields: False Flag Filter: <No Filter> Rules: If GivenName ends with "*" Change GivenName replace pattern "\*$" with "" ID, Old Name, New Name #3, 'Mary* Millet', 'Mary Millet' #3, 'Mrs. Mary* Bezanson (Millet)', 'Mrs. Mary Bezanson (Millet)' #3, 'Mrs. Mary* Vaughan (Millet)', 'Mrs. Mary Vaughan (Millet)' Finished at 16:57:32 Elapsed Time=3 seconds People=24,849 Names read=33,072 If GivenName ends with "*" = 3 Names changed=3 If you have any questions, contact me. It's probably best to contact me via email...
  9. Using a Table format for estate inventories

    Leslie, For SS output, don't use a JPG. Use an HTML table. That will leave the text as text, which has several advantages. If you have a scan of an original document, then include that, but add the transcription as an HTML table. John
  10. Gedcom Publisher

    Gedcom Publisher is a ground-breaking application that creates an electronic book in EPUB format by combining text and images you enter with information taken from your GEDCOM file or TMG project. Gedcom Publisher knows the ins and outs of constructing a book in EPUB format, and it knows how to read your genealogy data. That means you can focus on the content of your family history book. Digital publishing is very popular, and it's likely that when our grandchildren mature, most if not all their reading will be e-books, not paper books. It's unlikely that paper books will disappear, but the trend is clear. Electronic books in EPUB format use HTML and CSS, which are also used in web sites. Unlike web sites, however, the result is a single file that is easy to share. Using Gedcom Publisher is like using Second Site, but the result is an EPUB file rather than a web site. Second Site users will be familiar with some of the basic building blocks, like the Person Entry section. There are many differences, however, owing to the capabilities, rules, and limitations of reading devices and the EPUB format. For more information, please visit the home page for Gedcom Publisher here: https://www.gedcompublisher.com You may also be interested to review an example book: https://www.gedcompublisher.com/en/example.htm The example book link above uses a browser-based e-book reader. That reader is not very robust and has a few rendering issues. For the best results, you can download the example book to your tablet or PC. Download the "AZK" version for sideloading to a Kindle app on your iOS device (iPad, iPhone). John Cardinal Author of Gedcom Publisher, GedSite, Second Site, and TMG Utility
  11. Bert, This is an unusual issue. If it was pure data corruption, the dates would not change in a regular way, i.e., they might all change to the first of the month, or all change to invalid date values. Changing by one day indicates the program is inspecting the initial value and then adding one to it. Many programs store dates as an integer value based on a starting point. So, for example, if the starting point is 1 Jan 1970, and the integer date value is 17725, the date is 13 July 2018. However, TMG does not do that. TMG supports partial and approximate dates, and it uses a character format to store dates. So, 13 July 2018 is stored as "20180713" whereas "July 2018" is stored as "20180700". The "00" indicates no day number was entered. (The format is actually more complicated than what I have shown here. In order for the day to change, TMG would have to change "20180712" to "20180713", for example. That's not random, and that's why I don't think the issue is random data corruption. I am not aware of any processes or features in TMG where dates are modified automatically and so I don't think the issue is a mis-configuration of some TMG feature. I presume you have used the VFI command in TMG. If not, you should do that. If you can provide any more details, that would help. For example, are the changes always in specific tag types? Does it happen for all date types, (before, after, circa, exact, between, etc.)? John
  12. List of People Query

    Doris, TMG's report writer has a couple DNA-related filters. Check there to see if you can select father of father (etc.) ancestors. I think you can. If so, then you can use an LoP report and that filter to update a flag. John UPDATE: Use the "Is a Patrilineal Ancestor" filter
  13. Cannot Restore a Project

    rhude, Is your restore path using a network path, i.e., starts with "//"? John
  14. Off-Topic - MyHeritage

    Never give your credit card number to someone who calls you. For all you know, a rogue MyHeritage employee is calling you when they are off-the-clock and they are going to rip you off. I would never do business with MyHeritage because they have used some questionable sales tactics, such as making it hard to quit a free trial before automatic conversion to a paid subscription. The Legacy mailing list had a post this week about someone getting charged for something they didn't want, and it wasn't clear if My Heritage was part of the issue, or if the charge was legit or part of a scam. Careful!
  15. Report Screen Preview not working

    Campbell Stanford posted this on TMG-L: I am not sure why .doc and .docx settings would matter because TMG uses .rtf for its screen preview feature. Also, it seems odd to me that a default application would need to be set. However, it's worth a review of the settings. How are .doc, .docx, and .rtf set on your system?
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