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Allen C.

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  1. "BIO" Tag - Does it Exist?

    The use of witnesses and roles in tags forces the various other parties to the tag to accept the same sort date, thus the tags are pretty much forced to run in chronological or whatever order. Therefore if you wished to compose a paragraph summarizing census data, it could be interupted by another off topic tag in which the subject was a witness. In other words if I sort tags for one person it can affect the order that the tags are arranged for another, if one was a witness in the tags being sorted. I think TMG is awesome in its ability to cross reference all the different people associated with an event, and as such is an excellent research tool. I am not convinced yet for myself that it will write the book the way I want it to read, but the jury is still out on that. I am tempted to distribute all the cross-referencing so it appears on the person view through witness tags, but not have them print. Then I can have all the facts before me (wonderful job, TMG) and compose the prose as I see fit. I may yet give in though, it sounds like a lot of work. Being an "event-based" program, the tags are all associated with events. Other things that that might be more descriptive of a person which might have been learned from books, personal interview or family tradition don't fit the mold as well. However specialized tags such as the biography tag you propose should handle that. My $.02 worth. Allen C.
  2. I think it would be useful to be able to add a source to the bibliography without having to cite it as a footnote/endnote. I am thinking about situations where the source details are discussed in the text so that a citation is not necessary. I still would want to include the source in the bibliograpjhy. This is an attempt to reduce the number of citations. It is my understanding that other programs offer this feature. Allen C.
  3. Unique endnotes

    I'm afraid I totally disagree - unless you cite the source of the lineage conclusion it doesn't seem to me that you have a genealogy at all - all you have is a series of information about unlinked persons. To me, citations belong in the source notes, not in the narrative itself. AC-What I mean is if I have several sources that all point to my conclusion, say 4 obituaries from relatives that indicate a relationship to the father and 3 obituaries that indicate the relationship to the mother, and one census record that indicates a relationship to both parents and another census record that indicates just one parent and a Bible record that indicates my conclusion and correspondence also, I don't feel that I need to separate the obits that only indicate the mother from the ones that only indicate the father. You can go on and on about how obits lump step children, adopted children and natural children all as children, and I don't think that a laborious discussion adds to the conclusion. All of the above sources support my conclusion. For obits a citation detail discussing who was named as brothers and sisters, etc. could be placed. Seems to me that TMG does "properly" order the citations - in the order you specify by sorting them in the tag entry screen. This allows you to place the citations in a logical order, for example the primary citations first, followed by supporting citations, then contridictory citations, and perhaps by a summary note. To me, this is much more important that arbitarily placing them in the order they happen to occur in any given report. AC-If the significance of the order is difficult for me to figure out then I doubt my readers will be able to follow it either. That's not my experience. When working backward, as is the usual experience in genealogy, there are many sources of a person's name that give no hint of his or her parentage. I find marriage, death, census, and many other records that give information about the name a person actually used, but don't ususally mention the parents at all. AC-Without a relationship all those records are about unrelated people. Once a relationship has been defined then those records become evidence and are usually treated in different tags, not the name definition. I prefer to not belabor the point that the name is found spelled differently or used a middle name here and just a first name there, unless there is a significant discrepancy or an alias that warrants explanation. There is such a tag already - the parent/child relationship tag, which has provisions for citing sources. The problem in my view is that it doesn't currently provide output in a format that the reader can understand. That's why I have suggested that TMG offer an option to use the same feature that Second Site uses - a statement in the narrative of the parents with the citations from the Parent/child tag that already exists. I agree that adding the same information again in in order to get it into reports is not a good plan. AC-I am not trying to be obtuse, but you do agree that TMG needs to improve the way relationship proof is reported which is probably the single most important thing in the whole project. My query stems from the fact that I am getting close to the composition stage after years of research and I want to settle upon a style of writing that conveys as much well documented information as I can without going overboard and becoming burdonsome to the reader and wasting valuable space in a large book. This is a debate I contantly have with myself.
  4. Unique endnotes

    How does that help? Sounds to me like the citation is for the name rather than the relationship, or would you handle name citations some other way so the difference is clear? AC-I meant to reply to the name issue. I have avoided citing the source of names separately unless there are significant variations. I feel that a relationship by definition names two persons so a relationship source is the source for the name. If a number of variations occur (especially aliases!) I may make a note of it and cite it there, but not otherwise. This is part of my attempt to stramline the number of sources neccesary. I would like to cite the lineage either in a statement of the issue of the parents or in an introductory comment about the subject, that that person is the son of father (citation) and mother (citation) as you suggest. That sounds like the least ambiguous. It seems that a tag could be developed with the relationship and memos attached that could be used for further discussion with embedded citations if needed. What I'd like to see is TMG do this rather than me have to add custom tags to every subject in my project.
  5. Unique endnotes

    I want to revisit a topic I ran here a couple of months ago that I now understand better. When trying to figure out how I wanted to list my sources I thought it made sense to have each unique source only cited one time and not use hundreds of ibids since many sources such as Bible records are repeatedly cited. I thought it made sense to have exponents in the text refer to the unique endnote whenever that source appeared. Apparently 3 of the top ranked genealogy softwares all agree and do the report citations that way by default. (Roots Magic, Legacy and Family Historian) I am again raising this issue because the programmers look here to get ideas about future changes. The problem I have with TMG is that although they provide a unique endnotes feature, it is very confusing and not attractive because the report may show the same exponent cited more than once for the same tag. It would be nice if the program would recognize that it has alreadycited the same source in the same tag (perhaps proof of lineage to mother and father from same source). Also it would be nice if it could arrange them in numerical order. Terry Riegel raised an interesting point in the previous discussion concerning the fact that the reports don't anywhere show proof of lineage citations in a way that is understood. I would like to find a way to solve this problem if it means creating a custom report. Generally when I correspond with family contacts I send a report showing how they connect to the tree one generation at a time. In each paragraph I mention the person, their vital dates and who they married, that persons parents and their vital dates, whatever background info I have and then a statement of their issue with the next paragraph beginning with someone of their issue as the subject of the next generation. It seems that a statement that "John Smith and Mary Doe had issue: James Smith(Citation), Frances Smith (Citation)" would be an appropriate way to achieve the proof of lineage problem. I have avoided using the name citations and prefer to discuss things like name variations in a general discussion. What I want to achieve is a clearly cited book where the reader knows what the citation refers to. I have a large project with a lot of citations and I think the way it is available to be presented is not clear and is not attractive. Three top competitors all seem to agree and do a better job. I am still not satisfied that the lineage proof citations are clear in any of the programs. Can TMG solve this? Does anyone else think this is important? I have a lot of time invested in TMG and don't want to switch to another program, but I think they are getting behind the competition.
  6. Terry, Earlier you said: "You can turn off the parent/child citations on the Sources tab of Options by unchecking "Include relationship sources." Trouble is, these are the most important citations of all - they are the ones that prove that a parent and child are linked. Without them, you don't actually have a genealogy. " Your point earlier about the problem with the journal report really is central to this whole endeavor. I was inspired to write a genealogy after reading one on my family that was written in 1923. It used the outline descendant narrative format and the author went into lengthy discussion of various pieces of evidence. I saw your web-site with the analogy of tags as being like "sticky pad notes" and it seems that there is a limitation inherent in that style of writing and citation. Another excellent book is "Adventurers of Purse and Person" which provides the proof of the early families of Virginia who had settlers who arrived before 1625. The relationship proof was of paramount importance. I want to be able to discuss the merit and fallacies of conflicting evidence and think that a more free flowing approach will be more suitable. Perhaps that will be better accomplished in the descendant outline narrative. My frustration has to do with the fact that when I print out all my tags it doesn't have the flow and feel that I want it to have. Perhaps I could take a long look at them and then use a separate tag to write my paragraphs using embedded citations and simultaneously deactivate the various fact tags. I have never written abook using TMG and know there may be features I have not yet discovered so maybe I need to study a while longer. I am not familiar enough with the other programs to say exactly what they are doing, but it appears that the both can recognize a redundancy in a group of exponents and are able to arrange them in order. I suppose I could run the macro to accomplish this. Allen C.
  7. They both seem to cite at the same place but they do not have multiple identical numbers shown in a group of exponents and they are arranged in order. My impression is TMG philosophically does not like this style of citation! I also looked at Descendant narrative outlines and the Legacy program lists the names of children in the paragraph with the parents and then lists them below. That is not where they cite the relationship, that appears to come after the name is introduced in a birth statement. For me to speak with any certainty about how these programs work I need to do more work with them. I just imported my files and cranked out some reports. I am unable to input more data into the Roots Magic free trial version. I want to make it very clear where I got information because my book will go up to the present date and include living persons. I feel that I must document where I got information about living persons because I was not able to interview each and every one. This opens a whole new topic which may not be suitable for a forum like this, and that is legal issues relating to publishing information about living persons. I do not plan to publish anything about living folks on the Internet. Allen C.
  8. Terry, Perhaps I need to reflect on this a little longer, but here are my first thoughts. The Roots Magic and Legacy programs do not have this problem with redundant citations for a single tag. I think TMG can improve on that. Yes, most of the redundancies occur on the first time the name appears. Would it make sense to cite the relationship sources in the section where they are all listed under the parents rather than at the beginning of a new section? When there is an unmarried child the ralationship citations are given there. When I correspond with a contact I usually send out a list of generations (composed on a word processor) in the tree down trom the first generation down to that persons family. Each generation is a new paragraph starting with the generation number. It will say something like: A was born, died, buried etc. He married B at place and date, the daughter of so and so. She was born on date and place, etc. Any other details. The had issue: Names of next generation. This would be a good place to cite the relationship, not the beginning of the next paragraph. I am trying to iron this problem out because I am near my endgame strategy for a long project and need to begin some serious composition work. This is crucial and I need to settle on it before I proceed. I do appreciate your help! Allen C. (also a Ter heel)
  9. Terry, I tried the settings with unique endnotes without anything else checked and it did make a report like what I was looking for. I am finding though that for a given tag I am getting the same exponent number several times in many cases which doesn't make sense. This is progress though. Thanks, Allen C.
  10. Unique endnotes is not the same thing. "Unique" combines all sources cited for a given tag and assigns then a single endnote. The sources cited in that endnote can appear over and over again if they were used to cite other tags. Allen C.
  11. I have a large database and the book will be hundreds of pages long. The endnotes report is monstrously long. The rigorously correct endnotes format is impractical for a long genealogy report since many sources such as Bible records may have been cited dozens of times creating many ibids. It was my thought that I would be happy to list each unique source only once and have the exponent numbers in the report use that number whenever that source appears in the report. I found on the TMG Tips forum that there is a macro available that does that. I am not 100% satisfied with the macro because it uses different size exponents for first time used sources and repeat sources. This needs to be built into the program. In my frustration to deal with this problem I evaluated several of the leading, most highly ranked softwares and found that two of the top softwares, Legacy and Roots Magic, both present endnotes in this style by default. I still like the other report features of TMG and don't want to have to transfer all my data over to another software. I would hope that an issue as central and important as endnotes would be addressed soon in a future version of TMG. The top competitors are doing it now. Surely a 700 page book with a 1400 page list of sources is a problem! Allen C.
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