John Cardinal

You can also set the place preposition on a case by case basis. For example, if the narrative report's default preposition is set to "at", but you want a particular place to use "in", you can override the sentence for that event. Change "" to "".

I'm not Jim, but I tested this and can't reproduce it because the menus are not visible for me when the Welcome screen is up... (see screenshot)

Are the same name styles used for both primary and non-primary names?

Siobhan, One thing you could do--not optimal if I understand you, but perhaps reasonable--is put "7d 5mo 1711" in the memo field, and then use that in the sentence. Put your interpretation of that date in the Date field. The person view and other places will show the formatted version, but the narrative will show the Quaker version or whatever you put in the memo. If you have some other memo content, you could use memo subfields.

Peggy, You can attach PDF files as exhibits, but not as image exhibits. PDFs aren't image files, although if the only content of a PDF is an image it might look like one. I think you have to extract the image from the PDF and save it as a JPG or one of the other supported image formats.

John, I can confirm what you see; if I use "D.C." as the last field in the place, and the A variable follows the place in the sentence, the full-stop after the C in "D.C." is omitted. So, with sentence: "[P] died ", TMG made this output: "She died on 28 Feb 1887 at Washington, D.C, at age 65." I don't think TMG discriminates against Washington, D.C.,

Just a note... Iona found her own error. See this thread.

Ken, Just looked and TITL is a valid tag, but not as a subtag of a NAME tag. I am glad to hear you've got it working.

This is off the top of my head and so it's probably wrong. My recollection is that the importing program is supposed to use the data from the NAME tag or the data from the subtags of the NAME tag, but not combine the two. The subtags were added to the spec at some point to help the importing program distinquish between name subfields. To make the GEDCOM file backwards-compatible, the exporting program can (should?) should write the NAME tag with the complete name, and optionally add a full set of the subtags as an alternative for importing programs that prefer it that way. So, the following is valid: 0 @I19@ INDI 1 NAME Rev. John/Smith/ 2 NPFX Rev. 2 GIVN John 2 SURN Smith The following is also valid, but given my recollection of the spec, it's illogical: 0 @I19@ INDI 1 NAME Rev. John/Smith/ 2 NPFX Rev. It's illogical because the set of subtags doesn't define the same name contents as the NAME tag. If the importing program followed the rules, the name would not have a given name or surname. Jim has forgotten more about GEDCOM than I know, so I yield to his opinion. Plus, I didn't have time to read the spec and confirm the above. I mention it because I think it's valid for TMG to interpret the NAME tag and ignore the subtags, or vice-versa. I don't know how an importing program that accepts either a NAME tag with data or a NAME tag with subtags would inteeligently merge the two. Some cases are easy, but the general case is difficult.

Another idea. Copy the source, then use TMG Utility to change the citations from Src=n to Src=m. Then delete source n.

I don't know if there is a way to "bulk delete" exhibits. In this case, though, perhaps deleting and recreating the source would be easier? If there aren't too many places where the source is cited, it might be less work. Just an idea...

Also, some output formats are not available in the "Silver" edition of TMG. I don't know if that affects Excel or not.

Lee, That was my intention... that you leave the ID numbers alone. All numbering systems have limitations and so I think it's best to let the TMG IDs fall as they may and use the reference field for a genealogically-relevant number. You could also use the memo field of an event to store a number.

Shaun, In SS, most formats explicitly include the primary parents. You can also use the "Add Parent Sentence" option to add a sentence that shows the primary parents. The Add Parent Sentence option has a sort date of one day after the birth tag's sort date, so the parent sentence prints right after the birth event. SS ignores non-primary relationship tags and so in SS, it's better to use witnesses for godparents, for example. In TMG's journal report, I think children are shown under the parent who is the primary subject of the current entry and is an ancestor or descendant of the overall subject of the journal report, but they are grouped by the current subject's spouse or partner who was the co-parent. As a result of the above, all I do with BIO tags and other relationship tags is add them when adding related people.

Shaun, I think you are a Second Site (SS) user, so maybe this suggestion will work for you. The grid-type Formats included with Second Site are a lot like an Ind. Detail report in TMG. Tags are shown in chronological sequence by the tag's Sort Date. SS has a "Detail Format" setting that has "Raw Data" and "Use Sentence" options. If you don't want a narrative, then choose "Raw Data". With "Raw Data", the SS format does include the witnesses.

It might be easier to put a number in the reference field that shows the relationship to your maternal grandfather. You can do that by hand by editing the field for each person. For people who aren't directly related or for whom numbering isn't important, you can leave the reference field empty. If you like the idea of using the reference field, but you don't want to set the value by hand, there are ways to automate some of the process. My TMG Utility program has a facility to set the reference field for a set of people using an external file. Basically, TMG Utility processes the external file as follows: it reads an ID number and the reference field value, assigns the value to the person indicated by the ID, and then repeats that process until all the entries in the external file have been processed. You can create the external file by hand, but even better, you may be able to create it using a TMG report. Either way, it's usually faster and easier to create the extenal file than it is to edit the reference field manually via TMG. Read about the "Set Person Field" feature in TMG Utility here: http://www.johncardinal.com/tmgutil/setpersonfield.htm Set Person Field has multiple variations. The one you want is Set Field from File. Hope this helps.

Second Site (SS) is a useful tool for creating CDs to send to relatives. You can create charts, either using the native SS-facilities or by importing VCF charts. Either way, the charts are linked to narratives, so clicking on a chart item opens a page with the events of the person clicked. The SS output is HTML, like a web site, and so you don't need to include a program to view the data: every computer today has some browser on it, and most have a good browser, even in other parts of the Globe where the computers are steam-powered!

Ben, You said "SS shows up the following missing exhibit", but I think you meant TMG Utility. Event zero is unexpected; there is no event with that number. The event number should be non-zero. The zero may indicate that the exhibit is loose, i.e., the exhibit remains, but it's no longer linked to an event. You might try using the Exhibit log and setting the focus to All Exhibits. Then scroll through the exhibits and try to find the one that uses that TIF file. Good luck.

FYI, "" in the sentence will also work in Second Site as well as in output sent to a word processor from TMG. I think putting the [iTAL:] / [:ITAL] in the memo text is probably a better idea, because it will work everywhere, but changing the default sentence is obviously less work than changing all the memos.

Tom, For many of the reasons you mention, and for other reasons as well, I doubt Second Site (SS) will ever manipulate images as part of making a site. Rotation is almost certainly out of the question, partly because I don't want SS to manipulate images, but also because there isn't any place for the user to specify that they want the image rotated. I agree 100% with your comment that you'd "rather rotate the picture myself and use two different exhibits, that way I control what is seen and how it is seen." On-the-fly manipulation (scaling, rotating, etc.) of images can lead to unpredictable results and while I think automation of those tasks is a good thing, the user should review the results prior to processed images being placed on a web site. That's why I added some scaling features in TMG Utility, rather thean SS. If I had put that feature in SS, the image would have been resized every time the site was made rather than just once, and the user couldn't review the results until the whole site had been made. Any adjustment to the process would mean rebuilding the site, recreating narratives and reprocessing images that were correct in order to adjust one or more images that weren't. In my opinion, there should be little to no image manipulation in TMG. There are low-cost (and even free) programs that specialize in image manipulation and that job should be left to them.

1. I don't think there is a single right answer with regards to JPG vs. PDF. Personally, I prefer PNG for scanned documents. Generally speaking, PNG is a better choice than JPG for scanned documents, i.e., images that are mostly handwritten or typeset text. I don't see the value of using PDF for a single scanned page. PDF is good for documents that are a mix of scnned images of one kind or another mixed with text produced by another application. It's especially appropriate when you want to control how the resulting document prints. 2. I'd store your exhibits somewhere outside of the TMG application folder tree. 3. I recommend using external exhibits, i.e., the exhibits are left in files outside the TMG database. Adding images to the TMG database dramatically increases the size of the database, and that, in turn, means that your database backups take longer and produce larger files. In general, the smaller the backup file, the better. 4. It's possible to move external exhibits, buyt it isn't the easiest process. My "TMG Utility" program (see links below) has a Find and Replace feature that can help. In general, if you keep the same relative folder arrangement, and you move the whole tree, you can move the exhibits. Moving them willy-nilly to new locations is a recipe for frustration.

Not a bad suggestion. In case you didn't know, you can drag'n'drop files from Windows Explorer into the multi-media log and that might be a faster way to work given the way the software works now. Keep a Windows Explorer window open to the exhibits folder, and drag files from there.

As far as I know, there is no way to use relative paths. What I do is use the same path on both machines (c:\exhibits) with copies of the exhibits on both PCs. It sounds like you don't want a copy of the files on both PCs, but you might be able to make the paths the same via drive-mapping and/or folder sharing. So, for example, you share your exhibit folder and have both PCs map it as drive "x".

I put the middle name in the GivenName field. I don't recommend using the PreSurname field for middle names; that's intended for prefixes to surnames like "de" and "van". Those words are sometimes considered part of the surname, and sometimes not, and the PreSurname field can be used when they are not. If you want a separate field for middle names, you could use the OtherName field but then you would have to create a custom Name Style to make the name display properly.

The backup files can be used, albeit with intervention from Wholly Genes, so users should not be in danger of losing information.