John Cardinal

Rae Jean, I have not tried to install TMG v9 on a PC running WinXP, but I am curious what happens when you try it. Do you get an error message? Does TMG v9 not install, or not work at all, or work a little bit, or ?

I am not sure why you are appalled. You are not a member of the set of "TMG users who don't upgrade." You were late on the 8->9 upgrade, but that hardly qualifies. The issue for you was that (as Michael illustrated), you did not avail yourself of the various ways to receive TMG-related news. That's understandable, people have different priorities, but do you really expect WG to design the process around your specific idiosyncrasies? There are dozens if not hundreds of factors affecting this process, and I think WG has tried their best to make it as smooth as possible. It's not uncommon for products to disappear with no notice, and that certainly was not the case here. If you disagree with my assessment of why TMG was discontinued, why don't you offer yours?

Of the three encoding choices (ANSI, ANSEL, IBMPC), only ANSEL is part of the GEDCOM standard. ANSEL will represent many accented characters (see Wikipedia entry). Unfortunately, ANSEL is not supported by almost anything except GEDCOM related software and so viewing a GEDCOM file encoded in ANSEL is problematic. I do not know if TMG exports ANSEL correctly. ANSI is not a standard character set supported by GEDCOM, and it is also a problem because there are multiple versions of "ANSI". For example, a person using a Norwegian version of MS Windows will see different characters in ANSI than someone using a US English version of MS Windows. The definition of "IBMPC" is not precise. I believe it typically refers to code page 437 (see Wikipedia entry). It has some accented characters, but less than most versions of ANSI because it uses many of the 256 code points for line drawing characters and other graphics. Whichever encoding you choose, if you review the GEDCOM file in a text editor, you have to make sure you use a text editor that supports that character encoding. If I were you, I'd choose ANSEL and then do a test import into your chosen genealogy program. It should support ANSEL. Most do, although many seem to have trouble with a subset of the more challenging ANSEL characters, notably the "combining diacritic" characters.

Joan, My comments represent my own attitude. My guess is that you are responding to a post where I wrote, "I hope that there is no discount offered. TMG users who didn't upgrade are a leading cause of the demise of TMG, and it seems plain wrong to reward that behavior now that WG has decided to discontinue it." That was in response to a post by "kenwvt" who asked, "houldn't the upgrade prices be reduced since there is only six months of support left on a discontinued product ?" Subsequent responses focused on my opinion that "TMG users who didn't upgrade are a leading cause of the demise of TMG" and called me greedy, and naive, and accused me of not doing enough to keep TMG a viable product. I'll ignore those personal attacks here because I responded to them earlier. However, user efcharvet wrote, "Blame TMG's current and former users! -- If TMG were a superior product, or even truly competitive, it would be attracting new users by the carload, and upgrading wouldn't be a question for nearly anyone", and I'll respond to that. I don't understand how my comment could be interpreted as blaming TMG's current or former users. The current users upgraded, and I was talking about people who didn't upgrade. Also, the subject of my complaint was not "former users", it was "TMG users". If the intent of efcharvet's comment is to blame Wholly Genes, I disagree. Could Wholly Genes have done some things, maybe even many things, better? Yes, I am sure they could. However, there was little or nothing that was going to expand the market for TMG without turning TMG into something that would not meet the requirements and expectations of its current users. For example, TMG should have supported the Unicode character set. Let's wave a magic wand and make that happen. Do sales increase? Not enough. The barrier to making TMG attractive to a larger market is not the lack of Unicode support or any particular feature or shortcoming. The barrier is the general genealogy market does not place a high value on TMG's professional level features. So, focusing on TMG users who didn't upgrade... Clearly, customers are free to decide whether or not to upgrade. While it's up to the publisher to entice them to upgrade, each customer must understand that not upgrading has consequences. The narrow view of those consequences is the user doesn't get the benefit of the new features. If the user decides whether or not to upgrade by comparing the upgrade fee to the fixes and new features, that's short-sighted. That may be a viable approach when buying a product that is easily replaced by a competitive product, but that's not the case with a specialty product like TMG: each paid upgrade was a referendum on the continued existence of TMG, and buying the upgrade was a vote to keep TMG around. TMG was attractive to a relatively small subset of the genealogy market, researchers who wanted its professional-level features. In my opinion, there is no alternative product that has a competitive feature set. Some other programs do some things better than TMG, but TMG has reasonable alternatives that compete with the strong points of the competitors while the competitors all lack key features of TMG. If you don't agree with that, then you don't value TMG's unique features, and so you probably don't care that TMG is being discontinued. This situation is similar to the demise of small stores and restaurants in the USA. People complain that something vital is lost when a small downtown store closes, but they don't support the small store by making purchases there before it closes. Instead, they use the big-box chain store out by the highway. That's fine, people can decide where to spend their money, but don't wail when the small store closes and the only alternatives are the cold, impersonal, one-size-fits-all alternatives. I don't see my original comment as reflecting an "attitude" but rather the financial reality of TMG's small market. I am sure some TMG users who didn't upgrade will argue the point, but some new evidence will have to come to light to change my opinion. Other TMG users who didn't upgrade may say they weren't aware of the situation. Unfortunately, that doesn't change things; the corner store is still closed.

Joop, You asked what the real difference is between [W] and . That implies the primary goal or use of is to replace [W]. That's not the case. and the [sx] variants address some gaps in what is possible with [P], [W], and role variables [R:role], [RG:role], etc. I described the changes here, but if you have read Terry's explanations and you don't get it, my explanation probably won't help.

Cheryl and other users, You do not need the data_paths.txt file or special instructions to use TMG under Parallels if you are willing to configure Parallels and uncheck the "Shared Profile" option in the Sharing section of the VM configuration. When you do that, the Windows user folders are not mixed with Mac user folders, so TMG operates the same as on a real PC. I've been using Parallels this way for years. I can still share files between the two operating systems, if necessary, by using network paths that Parallels provides.

Peter, See: Make P1 Male Help Page Make P1 Male will not swap P1 and P2 if (1) any sentences reference P1 or P2 variables and (2) "Filter by sentence" is checked. However, if "Filter by sentence" is unchecked, then TMG Utilty does not check the sentences and the swap will be done. If you are confident that you always want P1 to be male and P2 to be female, uncheck "Filter by sentence".

Mikey, You are obviously very frustrated and I can understand why. Unfortunately, you did not provide any details in the message that would help solve the problem. I assume you have shared details with WG support, but that doesn't help us. Meanwhile, you think there is no possibility of help from forum members. I don't agree. You should start another thread. Pick one PC where you can't get TMG to work, and in that thread, describe what is happening. Members here will ask some questions and provide some advice. It's best to work with a single person rather than a group because the process has to be organized. Based on the evidence--the information you supply--the helper has to narrow down the possibilities until the solution is found. I was helping a person install one of my programs last week. She said that when she started the install program, nothing happened and the install program icon disappeared from her desktop. After determining that she had a valid copy of the installer, we discovered that her anti-virus program was the culprit: it was preventing the install from running and removing the install program. Evidently, it thought the installer had a virus--it doesn't--but worse than that, it did not communicate what it was doing. When the anti-virus program was turned off temporarily to run the install, everything went smoothly. I am not suggesting that the same solution will work for you, just giving an example of one of the many things that can interfere with installing and/or using a program. Given that thousands of people are using TMG v9 on a wide variety of PCs and operating systems, it's very likely that it will work for you. To achieve that, you need the help of someone who understands how to diagnose and solve the problem. There are a few people on the forum with those attributes. And, by the way, we won't be gone in December. WG Support will not continue, but user-to-user support will continue.

Mikey159, your TMG license includes permission to run TMG on multiple computers. I forget the details. The technical problems are solvable. Some users have reported problems using the upgrade process starting within TMG, and the solution is to start over and install using the full installer that one can download from the TMG site. If you have not done so already, start a separate thread that describes the issues on one PC. (It's best to focus on one PC at a time to reduce the chances of miscommunication.)

I was snide because you used a disagreement about whether users should upgrade to support the business or not to state that (a) I had not contributed financially to WG and ( that I should donate income I received as a result of Second Site sales to WG. You were wrong about both: I have contributed to WG and there is no good reason for me to donate income from SS to WG. Regarding my activities at conferences, you assume I have ulterior motives and miss (or ignore) the important facts. WG requested my presence. Whether it was good advertising for SS is completely irrelevant. WG needed help, asked me for it, and got it. When discussing how I have supported WG, it's hard to believe you cast that as a selfish act. You were not there, but you assume I was hawking my products. Perhaps that is what you would do, but it is not what I did. I focused on what visitors requested, and that was usually information about TMG (from non-users), or advice about particular issues/challenges with TMG (from users). SS came up rarely except when existing SS customers asked me questions. Regarding TMG Utility, again you assume a less-than-honorable motivation, and again, you lack the facts. The first version of TMG Utility was released three years before Second Site and was already viewed as a valuable tool for TMG users. My other free program for TMG users is On This Day, and it was also released long before Second Site. With regards to Second Site income, you can ask all you want, and you can make estimates all you want, but I am not going to give you the sales info. It's none of your business. I notice that you focus on the income from SS but did not ask how many man-years of effort went into design, development, documentation, testing, beta tester recruiting/communication, sales support, and technical support. Nor did you ask about the other costs of doing business such as accounting, banking, credit card fees, etc. If you think I am getting rich off SS, I welcome you to create a competitive product and make a grab for the money. Lastly, you wrote that my actions were not sufficient to save WG. That is not my responsibility. It's an indicator of your flawed thought process that you would suggest that it is.

If you don't know what you are talking about, you shouldn't comment. You do not have any idea what I made from Second Site. More importantly, I have contributed to the financial health of Wholly Genes (WG), both directly and indirectly. I won't go into detail on the direct way because that is a private matter between me and WG. Indirectly, I supported WG by providing TMG Utility as free software to TMG users. (Please describe any free software you supplied that helps TMG users.) I was glad that many of those users chose to support a favorite charity of mine, but those donations were 100% voluntary. As part of that effort, I added features that Wholly Genes requested at no cost to WG. I spent a LOT of time helping TMG users solve various problems, including email advice but also directly fixing projects that were sent to me. I also created Second Site, and that has attracted many non-TMG users to buy TMG. The first two versions of Second Site were sold via the WG web store, and WG made a profit on each sale. I also traveled to several genealogy conferences, helped setup the WG booth, worked long hours in the WG booth helping users, and helped take the booth down at the end of the conference. I did not ask for any compensation; I was glad to help. The notion that some releases of TMG were not good enough for users to upgrade may be true for some users, especially those who see the small picture, not the big picture. However, my comment was made in response to someone who wants to upgrade-evidence the program is desirable to him--but he wants a larger discount than the loyal customers who have already paid upgrade fees. Many of those loyal users understand that providing support costs money, and developing new versions cost money. While the goal is for the one-time price of the software to support those activities even if customers don't purchase every upgrade, TMG's small market makes that very difficult. Many users who chose not to upgrade because they didn't think the upgrade fee was worth it still expected WG to provide support for those out-dated versions, and WG did it. People who chose not to upgrade because they didn't think the upgrade fee was worth it may regret that decision when the back-level version they have doesn't work in the next version of MS Windows. I do not claim that WG did exactly the right things and only discontinued TMG because unreasonable customers didn't upgrade. On the other hand, it's complete rubbish that someone who didn't upgrade now wants the price lowered.

Ken, I hope that there is no discount offered. TMG users who didn't upgrade are a leading cause of the demise of TMG, and it seems plain wrong to reward that behavior now that WG has decided to discontinue it.

Sandy, Yes, I think you should upgrade. Using TMG v9 provides the best platform for compatibility with modern versions of MS Windows.

Judi, I don't know if the specific problem you mentioned is fixed in TMG v9 or not. Your rationale for staying with TMG v8 is flawed; by not upgrading, you don't know if the problem is fixed or not, and by not upgrading, you deny Wholly Genes the income they need to keep supporting you, keep diagnosing and fixing problems, etc. Upgrade.

Second Site 5 version 5.1 was released on February 1, 2014.

TMG Utility v7.3 is now available and supports projects written by TMG v8.05+ having project structure version 10.

From now until New Years Eve, users of Second Site 2 who have not upgraded to Second Site 3 or Second Site 4 can purchase a license for Second Site 4 at the upgrade price of $9.95. That's a savings of $20 over the price of the full license! If you have not been keeping Second Site up to date, this is your chance to get back on track. Second Site 4 has dozens of features and capabilities that are not in Second Site 2, and Second Site 2 does not take advantage of modern browser features. Bluntly, Second Site 2 was good in its day, but that day is now past. To take advantage of this offer, visit the Second Site home page and click the blue "upgrade" link in the "How to Buy Second Site" panel on the right-hand side of the page. When prompted for your Second Site 3 license number, enter your Second Site 2 license number instead. This offer ends at 12:00 midnight, US Eastern Standard Time, on 31 December 2012.

TPG, If you believe that time and/or difficulty was not the reason for the delay in supporting Word Perfect, what do you think it was?

TPG, Your comments about what it would take for WG to support WordPerfect output in TMG v8 are uninformed. The main component of the report writer for TMG v8 is completely new, and so almost everything in TMG that interacts with the report writer is new. While I would not state that WG had to re-implement WordPerfect support "from scratch", there is certainly a lot of work involved. I agree that WG does not have to worry about the mechanics of printing, but that's not the issue. The issue is that WG has to customize the input to the report writer component to produce the desired results in WordPerfect. I do not know any of the details, but I have worked on many similar projects, and they were time-consuming and frustrating projects. To summarize, you asked, "How hard can that be?" While you appear to misunderstand what "that" is, I will answer anyway: very hard.

The new version of the board includes classes in the HTML so that quoted sections can be formatted differently, but those classes are not included in the CSS. As a result, the quotes/replies look the same. I presume this is a setting that got disabled somehow or that hasn't been configured yet.

Bill, SS has controls that are specific to the exhibit type and where it is attached. So, for example, there are a set of options related to image exhibits based on where they are attached (Primary person, non-primary person, event, source, etc.). There is a separate set of options for text exhibits. If you have scanned documents and transcriptions of those documents, SS has the ability to associate a text (or html) document with an image exhibit. That allows you to use the best format for both of the mediums you have. I hope this helps, but I don't have a good understanding of what you are trying to accomplish, so it may not.

If you are cleaning up citations, you should investigate the Change Citation Parts feature in TMG Utility. You can specify filters to select which citations to change, and there is a "prompt before each change" option that lets you review (and edit) the change before you commit to it. Change Citation Parts can save a LOT of time for many citation edits because you can (1) avoid managing lists of citations that you want to change, (2) avoid clicking from place to place in TMG to open the tag where the citation appears, (3) automate finding the citations of interest, and (4) automate many of the edits.

I think you could use Dropbox to move copies of your TMG files to other computers, but there are a couple provisos: You may have trouble if you put the active copy of your TMG project files in a Dropbox folder. There are many files in a TMG project and multiple files may be changed based on one editing action by the user. That could lead to a situation where Dropbox published an invalid set of files, i.e., a set of files where updates had been applied to some files but not to others. My advice would be to edit the project, quit TMG, then copy the TMG files to a Dropbox folder. That is what you indicated above, but I wanted to confirm that was your intent. Note that all the participating PCs should be configured the same way, so when you update the Dropbox folder on one computer, you'd then on the other PCs have to copy the updated files from the Dropbox folder to the folder actually used by TMG on that PC. You have to keep track of where the most-recently-updated version of the project resides. If you make changes on PC 1, then make changes on PC 2, then move the PC 1 TMG project to the Dropbox folder, the Dropbox copy won't include the changes you made on PC 2 and if you use those files to replace the files you edit on PC 2 (as described above), then you'll lose the changes. To reduce the risk of corrupting the TMG project, you could make a backup in TMG and then move the resulting .SQZ file into a Dropbox folder. On the other PCs, you'd have to restore the project from the .SQZ to use it. That adds a backup and restore step to the process, but reduces some risk. There's a risk of corrupting your TMG project whenever you manipulate the files in the project outside of TMG. If you use care, then you can use Dropbox, but it mainly operates as a convenient file transfer mechanism, not as a full-featured method to edit the same project from multiple PCs.

Papamoa Brian, I am not sure what specific information you need; you asked about transfer issues, and that could mean a lot of things. Regarding using TMG under Parallels, I recommend a very simple approach that is very easy to setup and manage. See: http://www.whollygenes.com/forums201/index...amp;#entry53181.

As far as I know, only TMG v7 is compatible with Windows 7. If you have a 64-bit version of Windows 7, then your reporting options will be limited, even under TMG v7. You should upgrade to v7.