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Oops, I hadn't even noticed about the emoticons. Thanks for the tip. Mike

Thanks for the experimentation, Michael. If I had been a betting man, I would have bet on (, but I actually like (A) better, in that I feel it will be more useful. And after thinking about it, I suppose that makes more sense too, because "original" TMG defaults would only apply to the canned TMG tags, not to all the custom ones that may have been built since. But just to make sure I understand this clearly: Your read on this is that when you click the button, TMG returns all of the roles in that one tag to the original sentence structures that they had when you opened the Tag Type Definition form, and it has no impact on any other roles in any other tags. Thanks again for both the experimentation and the clarification. Mike

Hi John, I could agree with you up to a point, because in the absence of Detail and City information, I can scarcely imagine a time when I would use anything other than "in" as the preposition. And I have a great many tags where I do know only the City and/or County and/or State. But I also have a large number of tags where I do have information in the Detail and/or City fields. And I fail to see how TMG could do any better job of handling them than it does now. I have a lot of tags that shows street number in the Detail field, but I probably have an equal number that show only the street without the number. In the first instance I would say "He lived at 1234 Main Street." But in the second instance I would say "He lived on Main Street." Many people place hospital or church (or whatever) names in the Detail field, and when that is the case, the correct preposition to use would be anybody's guess. So on the whole I have to agree with Teresa. I have taken over control of the preposition syntax myself because otherwise I finding that I am constantly having to create custom sentences within the tag. Mike

I got the list of placestyles that you sent me and have begun implementing them. Thanks again.

Hi Teresa Earlier this morning, I found myself reading your article published back in 2003 in our RUG newsletter with a great deal of interest. Even with the incredible power of the TMG sentence structure schema, I find myself constantly running afoul of prepositions that don't quite read right in a given sentence. If I set my output preposition to in, all of my locations that have numbered street addresses and most of my locations with a hospital, church, cemetery or whatever in the detail field don't read quite right. But if I set it to at, all of my locations that have just a street name with no number, and all locations with nothing in the detail field don't read quite right. And if I set it to blank, then I have to control every preposition in every sentence myself. So I was quite fascinated by your article on custom place styles, because it seems like a real solution to a small but nagging problem. But I would like to ask a couple of questions about this process before I start down the path, because there are places where it seems like a slippery slope. And I want to make sure I don't create a lot of problems for myself down the road. I didn't see it mentioned anywhere in your article (although I might have just missed it), but am I correct in my assumption that if I start using custom place styles, I will then have to go to the report options for each of my narrative reports and set the place preposition to blank, so that I don't end up with sentences like "Bob Jones was born in at 1234 Main Street, located in Frederick Co., Maryland"? But if that first assumption is correct, Then once I have created and used my first custom place style, perhaps in a birth tag for my grandmother (or wherever), will I then have to create and use custom place styles in all of my other tags for all of the people in my database because, having set my preposition control to blank in my report options? And if that is the case, should I create a custom place style that looks much like the default U.S. Standard Place Style, but includes in as it's preposition and use John Cardinal's TMG Utility to change the place style in all of my tags from the standard style to the custom one? This is so that I won't end up with thousands of preposition-less narrative sentences while I am in the process of creating and implementing the necessary custom styles. At the present moment, every tag in my database uses the U.S. Standard Place Style. My database is what I would call "fledgling", with only about 2,300 people in it. In the majority of cases, I currently know only a part of the location in each tag. I usually know the state, quite often the county, sometimes the city and once in a while the street address. I do frequently know the names of cemeteries, churches and hospitals. So right now, in works better for me than at. Any comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Mike

That's an interesting point, and one that I hadn't really thought about. What is really important to me is to be able to say something like "So and So gave birth to her (or fathered his) first child, Who Shall I Call It on such and such date at Somewhere or Other". And obviously, the more sentence structure flexibility, the better. But placing a Sentence button on the relationship tag would make it very powerful indeed, because it could be used for a great many things, and some of them probably unpredictable. Something like that sure would be nice to have, though... Mike

Hi Terry You confirmed my suspicions. Of those two options, I like option 2 the best. I had hoped that there was a mechanism built into TMG to allow the births of the children to appear on the report and that I just wasn't seeing it. It interests me that the Individual Detail report has been programmed to show the births of the children on the report, while the Individual Narrative report has not. To your knowledge, has the issue of being able to show the births of children on the narrative report ever been raised with WG? If it hasn't, I would sure like to put it on the wish-list. To me, the optimum would be a check box on the report options form for the narrative report that would allow the births of children to be added to the report (or left off as the case may be). For the present, I will create a custom tag as you suggested, and use the tag selection option in the individual reports to determine where it prints. Thanks for all of your help. Mike

You are quite right, John. I can do it that way, except then I don't get the benefit of the narrative format, which for this purpose is as important as the actual information contained in the report. That is why I'd like to coax the individual narrative to give me the desired output. Mike

Hi Teresa Yes, and thanks! I was able to incorporate much of your structure into what I wanted to do. I was also especially interested in your description of the 3 different registration periods. One of the things that makes TMG such a pleasant software to use is the outstanding "hand-holding" support that experienced TMG users in this forum extend toward novices like me. Thanks for all of your help. Mike

Thanks, Dale I was able to fine exactly what I was lookiing for there. In the future, I'll be sure to search this forum and the Rootsweb TMG archives before I clutter up the forum with queries about something that some of you guys have dealt with years ago. Thanks again. Mike

I know exactly what you mean. I've really got to stop sitting up until about 3 AM every night.

Hi I'm kind of a newbie here myself, but I'm going to make an educated guess that you can't edit multiple tags at once within TMG itself. I don't believe the software currently has any mechanism for simultaneous record editing. Even though you might have made say, 6 copies of a tag and changed the ID numbers for the principals to assign them to other people, they are then 7 tags attached to 7 different individuals and don't have anything in common other than the fact that they were originally created from 1 tag. For that matter, they may no longer actually be identical, because you could have made modifications to any of the fields in any of them. I think they will have to be individually edited within TMG. I can't imagine how TMG would ever be able to know which "group" of tags you wanted to edit at the same time. If you have the need to make global modifications to data in TMG, you might want to check out John Cardinal's great TMG Utility program. Mike

Hi Half Pint I'm even newer here than you are, but that sounds like a job for the "Sort date" field on the Tag Entry form. That field works really well when you don't know some of the actual dates of events. For example, maybe you know the birth dates of some, but not all, of the children. Or you know when a child was born, but not when their mother died. The Sort date field is only visible to you if you are in "Advanced" data entry mode, rather than "Beginner". So if that field isn't visible in your Tag entry forms you will need to go to your File menu, then pick Preferences, then Data Entry. Once you have the Data Enry options form available to you, click the radio button for "Advanced" data entry mode, rather than the "Beginner" button. Then click "Apply" and "OK". That should give you access to the "Sort date" field in your Tag entry forms. Once you have the "Sort date" field available, you can use it to force (or coax) your tags into the appropriate sort order. The sort date is pretty much there for the fine tuning of the order of tags. My understanding is that it doesn't appear on any of your reports. So I use it in places like the examples that you gave in your post. For example, a lot of times I know the death date of one of my ancestors, and I also know where they are buried, but not the actual burial date. So, without a date in the date field in the burial tag, it shows up ahead of the death tag. So if I don't know the actual burial date, I leave the burial date field blank, but put a day that is one day later than the death date in the burial tag "Sort date" field. That forces it into the proper sequence. Mike

Hi Terry Sorry to be a pain again, but I've run into yet another issue in entering census information that I'm not sure how to handle using the structures that you defined on your TMG tips page. I have a large family who were orphaned before the 1900 census. Four of the children were sent to live in the household of a family who were totally unrelated to them. Here is what I have Kennedy, Alex Head 48 Margarette Dau 19 M. Agnes Dau 17 S. Catherine Dau 12 John Son 9 Barnes, Hattie Orphan 19 Herbert Orphan 16 Paul Orphan 7 Christine Orphan 11/12 Now, if I enter the Kennedy family into my database, I have no problem, because I can enter Alex Kennedy as a principal, his 4 children in the "with Father" role, and the 4 Barnes children in the "Witness" role. But if I would prefer not to enter the Kennedys into my database, how would I go about setting up the census tag for the Barnes children? Can I do that? Thanks Mike

Thanks so much for the helpful replies, Teresa and Terry. As always, you guys have been a great deal of help. Teresa, your point was well taken, because it does seem a little odd to have 4 orphans ending up in the household of an unrelated widower with 4 children of his own. But if I have any Kennedy connections, I haven't found them yet. I don't know enough about the extended families of my orphans yet. And since I have not yet uncovered the maiden name of Alexander Kennedy's wife, if she should turn out to be a sister of either parent, then there's my connection. So I will do some research from that angle. But in the meantime, I will set up my census tag without including the Kennedys in my database. I had thought of the possibility of using the oldest orphan child as the principal, but hadn't figured out how to rework the witness sentences. Your comment, Terry, gives me everything I need to make that work out. Then I can just rework it later if it turns out that the Kennedy family belong in the database too. Thanks again Mike

Hi Is there any way that a tag can be created that will calculate and show the relationship between 2 principals, or even more ideally, between a principal and a witness? I haven't seen such a thing yet, but it would be really helpful. I have a great many people in my database who were married to each other and who were rather closely related to each other, mostly 2nd or even 1st cousins. It would be really nice to be able to use variables to show this in my narratives. I know that I can hardwire the text into my sentence structure, but since the relationships between people are a wee bit dynamic and evolutionary as I discover more and more about my family, it would be really nice not to have to go back later and change the wording when I find that a relationship was either closer or more distant than I had at first thought. I have encountered many occasions where it would also be nice to be able to specify the relationship between a principal and a witness through a variable. If such a mechanism does not currently exist in TMG, I would love to see it added to the wish list. Mike

Hi Mike I'm not too surprised to hear about the lukewarm response, but I still think it would be a really neat feature to have. The custom tag has been built and implemented and is working out just fine, so at least I have a work-around. My Turner and Wise families are my two earliest Maryland families. They were both in Southern MD by about 1655. The others were considerably later, not arriving here until the early 1700s. Most of my people were agricultural, primarily tobacco, and had really close ties to Virginia. When the war broke out in 1861, lots of my ancestors sneaked across the river to Virginia and joined the army there. My great-grandmother, who was born a Turner, died when I was 6 and she was 98. She was a little girl living on a farm in St. Mary's during the war. She was the next to the youngest of nine children. Her two oldest brothers joined the 2nd Maryland CSA in 1862. Both of them fought at Gettysburg. One survived the war, but the other died of wounds received at Weldon Railroad and then again at Peebles Farm just a few months before the end of the war. What I would give to have her around to talk to now! Mike

Hi Mike Thanks for the reply. I'll give your tag a tryout. Your approach is perfectly straightforward and will accomplish my task, but it sure would be nice if TMG could add this functionality to the software. When you asked about it a year or so ago, was there any sort of enthusisatic response, or was it a cry in the wilderness? I have lived in Maryland all of my life. I'm an 11th generation Marylander, having grown up in St. Mary's County about 20 miles from where my earliest Maryland Turner and Wise ancestors started out. I also have a lot of family connections in Charles and Prince George's counties. We have been living in Frederick County for about 5 years now, and I am beginning to look into a few of my Turner ancestors who relocated here in the 19th Century. My 2 Prince George's County families were Sasscer and Gibbons, and they intermarried like crazy during both the 18th and 19th Centuries. I have at least 20 marital connections between those 2 families. I'm a real newcomer to the subject of genealogy, but I'm having a great time with it. Mike

Wow, I hadn't thought of that, Lori, but that is a feature I would use all the time. So I guess I'll have to drop my name in the wish-list bucket too! Mike

Hi Phil I don't see any particular difference between the two. And thumb drives have the advantage of being small, light, cheap, and easy to carry around. Their biggest downside to me is their (current) relatively small storage capacity and their vulnerability when sticking out of most USB ports. Personally, I'm a wee bit prejudiced against thumb drives for the heavy duty use that mine would get as a main location for my TMG data because my thumb drives have had a fairly high failure rate. Mike

I really like that idea, Barbara. That's a no muss, no fuss approach. I have a 150 gig USB that is hooked to my desktop PC that would do the job quite nicely, so I'm going to give that a try. Are there any "issues" that I need to be aware of in moving my data to the external drive? Exhibits aren't an issue yet, because my project is pretty new, and I haven't begun attching them yet. I will be using external exhibits when I do. Mike

Hi This is not precisely my area of expertise, but based upon what experience I do have in the database world, I can't conceive that there is any generic software out there that will do what you want. I believe that it would have to be a truly custom piece of software that had been written specifically to handle the job of keeping the same TMG project on multiple computers in sync. This is partly because such a piece of software wouldn't be able to compare the same data files between the 2 PCs to see what has changed, but rather would have to compare each individual record in each data file. This would not be a trivial undertaking. Consider the complexities of the task: 1. A TMG project consists of a great many files that are working in conjunction with each other. A change to a piece of data in one file can affect a great many other files. 2. A new record can have been added on computer A that does not yet exist on computer B or vice versa. 3. An existing record can have been deleted on computer A but not on computer B or vice versa. 4. An existing record can have been modified on both computer A and computer B with totally different modifications. 5. An existing record can have been modified on computer A and deleted on computer B or vice versa. 6. Every time a record in TMG is changed, all of the tags, exhibits, sources and repositories that are tied to it are potentially impacted also. And this is just a few of the considerations that would have to be taken into account. I suspect that it would take a pretty spiffy piece of custom code to accomplish what you have in mind without running great risk of demolishing your data. Just my opinion, for what it's worth. Mike

Please add me to that want list.

You are quite welcome, Jim. Glad I could be of help.

Can you click the "Primary" button to mark him as primary?