John Cardinal

Most of the married women in my research adopted their husband's surname after marriage, and so I add married names automatically. It's not scary at all, and as Terry described, it's very, very useful to have the women in the picklist under their married names. I can't imagine not having that capability. Still, by adding the name records I am not asserting that the women used those names. I am simply adding names to my TMG picklist. I suppress the output of the NAME-MARR tag unless I find evidence to support the assertion that a particular woman used her husband's surname. Adding data automatically should not be the main concern; using any data inappropriately--automaticallly created or not--is the actual issue.

You can't edit the standard flags in the Flag Manager, so I don't think there is any way to change the default value. You can add the LIVING flag to the Add Person dialog and that reduces a lot of the work of setting it manually. TMG will set the flag to N if you enter a death-group tag or if you enter a birth-group tag with a long-ago date. The threshold date is set in preferences. You can also use my TMG Utility program (link below) which has a feature to search for people who have LIVING=? and change them to LIVING=N if: 1) They have tags dated long ago 2) One of their offspring has a tag from long ago 3) One of their parents has a tag from even longer ago etc.

I would like to see relative paths for TMG's external exhibits, but I am not sure that I would always use them. I have multiple uses for files that I use as exhibits. Some are related to TMG, and some not. As a result, some of those files are stored in far-flung locations relative to my TMG data. Relative paths to them would sometimes be quite confusing and would not offer any additional insulation from file movement. In general, relative paths help if all the files are in a hierarchy and you move the root folder of that hierarchy. If you reorganize within the heriarchy, the relative paths don't help. Regarding the analogy to URLs, URLs can be relative or absolute and both have their place. I know that relative URLs save a lot of time and effort--my web building tool Second Site uses relative URLs almost exclusively--but absolute URLs are useful too, and sometimes the only choice. I've taken a lot of words to say something fairly simple: I'd like to see relative paths added as an option, with the ability to use absolute paths retained.

That's what I'd do.

Please note that the E table is changed for both witnesses and principals. Replacing the E table using a previous version of the database is very dangerous and should be a last resort--and one followed by careful review of your data. Are you certain that the corruption in the most recent version of the DB can't be fixed?

Arman, I don't think it would be wise to change the Last Edited date of all the person records when a linked record changes. My main point was that the linked record has no Last Edited date and so fine-grain synchronization is impossible. I think it's a good idea for a variety of reasons but I don't think it's a requirement. I bet that replication support is low on the priority list for the great majority of users.

Arman, The specific problems you reported can be (and should be) fixed. In general, though, I don't think the Last Edited date field is designed to support a synchronization process and that may lead to trouble for you. One problem is that changes to shared structures are not echoed back to the items that reference them. So, for example, if you change location data via the Master Place List, the people whose event tags reference the place will not have their Last Edited date updated. Places do not have a Last Edited date field so you can't tell that they have changed and work back to the affected tags. There are other similar examples.

John, TMG Utility can set the last edited date, but you have to create a text file in a certain format. The format is explained on the help page. TMG Utility reads that file and changes the last edited date for each person that is included in the text file. It sounds like a lot of work, but once you do it you might think it's reasonable... especially because there isn't any other way without editing the database files directly! See the help for "Set Person Field".

Carol, Given what you described, I'd attach the exhibit to the source. You attaching it to each citation isn't wrong, but I think it's unnecessary. It's extra work for you now, it will increase the number of exhibits you have, and it won't improve the quality of the output in my opinion. In Second Site, which is the only program that includes TMG's citation and source exhibits in the output, a source exhibit is one click away from the data: you have to click the source number in the citation. Citation exhibits will show on the page (unless you choose the "link" option) and while that might be slightly closer, it adds clutter. If there are specific documents that are so interesting or fundamental to your research that you want to draw focus to them, you can attach them to citations or events. Personally, I attach those exhibits to events.

If you show us the sentence rules (it will have [P] etc. in it) they we can probably point out the error...

The TMG license allows you to use the software on two computers. I forget the exact wording but I know that is true. You can keep TMG data "in sync" across the two machines using the backup and restore facility: you do a backup on machine "A", transfer the backup file to machine "B" and then restore it. You can also manually transfer the files, but you have to know what you are doing and you have to be careful to get all the right files. Use the backup/restore method unless that presents some specific problem. If that is the case, let me know what that is...

No, and yes. I don't know of any function in TMG to assign a generation number to people. When you generate various reports, the report writer will add generation numbers but they are calculated dynamically. If you can use one of those reports to produce the generation numbers, and you can modify the report output into a "id#, generation#" format, then TMG Utility will assign the generations to the people for you. See the Set Person Field function. Let me warn you, however, that making the transaction file won't be easy.

John, If you add the parent but make the tag non-primary then the parent won't show in pedigree charts. For reports with citations, you can add a citation to the tag that indicates the speculative nature of the relationship.

TMG Utility will change events of type "A" to type "B". You can use it to consolidate the events from a group of types into a single type. (If you use Roles, you need to be careful to make sure that the proper roles exist in the destination event type.) Also, TMG Utility does not delete tag types. When you are done consolidating, you delete the tag type in TMG.

Ken, The paths in the database are not relative, they are absolute. The exhibit paths preference isn't used as a base address. You can use my TMG Utility program (link below) to correct paths. It sounds like you already fixed the paths, but I figured I'd tell you for next time. TMG also has an ability to find exhibits that have moved but I've never used it and can't remember the details. Perhaps someone else will describe that. There is also another tool called PathWiz that provides a bunch of exhibit-related features. I don't know much about it.

Mike, You can use the formatting codes ([iTAL:], etc.) in memo text as well as other places but it usually doesn't work using the specific syntax of your example. You can control the font of the basic data types (names, places, dates, etc.) using the "Fonts" tab of the Report Options window. You get to Report Options by clicking the[Options...] button on the Report Definition Screen.

If you are in the Master Place List (MPL), you can select a place by clicking on one of the values in the row. Then click the [Events] button. That will open an event list that includes every event for that specific place. If you have 10 places that all have County="Washington", you can't use the [Events] button to show al the events for all 10 places unless you select each place in turn and then click [Events]. For that, you'd have to use a report with a suitable filter.

Kathy, If they aren't linked to anything, then they won't appear in the Second Site place index; Second Site only adds places that are referned by an event. If you view the place in the Master Place List, you should be able to see where the place is used via the Events button. Did you try that? Also, if you optimize your project (File > Maintenance > Optimize), TMG will remove duplicate places. They have to be exact duplicates.

Lorna, It appears I had the same problem as you. I had to keep logging back in, despite checking the "Remember Me" box. I deleted all the Wholly Genes cookies in Firefox, logged back in, and now the automatic login feature appears to be working properly.

Greg, It is indeed the case that the printed manual is for Version 5. A very large percentage of that content--perhaps 99% of the manual content--applies directly to TMG v6 and is still valid. It is true, however, that there are TMG v6 features which are not in the printed manual. You are entitlted to your opinion, of course, but I think using the word "fraudulent" is a somewhat extreme viewpoint. I don't think WG is trying to get £10 out of TMG buyers; I think they are trying to provide a printed manual for those customers who want one. Keeping a supply of them 100% up to date is expensive. I can't speak for WG, but I am certain that if you request a refund you'll get it. Did you ask for a refund for the manual?

Contact: Hal Stevens (hrs28@sbcglobal.net) Meeting Information: All are welcome, no dues, collection taken for the library or society where we meet. Meeting Dates: 1st Saturday of each month, September thru June, at 1:30 pm

You can make what's called a screenshot of the error message window. If you press ALT-PrtScn, MS Windows will put a copy of the current window on the clipboard. From there, you paste the image into a new JPG document using an image editor. Then attach the resulting file to a forum post. (See the "File Attachments" section of the post editor page)

In the past day, "View New Posts" has stopped working properly. Actually, the problem could be the "Mark All Posts as Read" function. Whatever. Here's what happens. I use "View New Posts" to see the new posts. I review the posts. I click "Mark all posts as read". I use "View New Posts" a few minutes later to see if there is any new posts and I get the same list I saw before. If I logoff and then logon again, View New Posts appears to work properly.

Do you have office hours?

I am positive I saw different behavior. My usual mode of operating has been to click the View New Posts link immediately after clicking Mark All Posts as Read. The View New Posts results would be empty, not the same results as before. The two-hour delay would be harder to implement than emptying the list immediately, which makes me suspicious of that explanation. Plus, the new posts results do get reset by a logoff/logon. Maybe I am going crazy.