Pierce.Reid

I use irfanview image viewer/editor, which is free, fast, allows basic editing, and allows you to control the jpeg compression. http://www.irfanview.com/ I think exhibits should be kept out of the TMG database, and should be manipulated by specific appropriate tools. For more complex editing, I use Photoshop Elements, but by default I use irfanview. Pierce

A number of TMG wish-list items have recently cropped up on the list and it would seem useful to have them grouped in a separate forum. I think there should be at least a forum for suggested improvements to the current version of TMG. This would allow others to comment (including adding their support, to give Wholly Genes a measure of how much it is desired). It would also be a place for developers (or others) to identify problems with implementing each suggestion, and possibly ask for direction on different implementation options. Suggestions that already have a solution should be answered on the Wish list forum, and then some time after I think they should be moved to the regular forum, since that is where solutions to users' problems are normally recorded. When items have been accepted for development, then we would know that Wholly Genes are trying to make it work. That would not mean that the idea would be reality on the next release, but at least we would know the developers are spending time trying to solve the problem. Suggestions could be removed some time after a new release implements the suggestion. If a suggestion is rejected, developers should say why so we would know why we would not expect it. Pierce

If we can change the sentence, can we change it to a single space? Or if not a space, just a period? If so, could someone give us simple instructions for making that change? Pierce

Another way to look at how to use sources is to define why you record source information. Basically you want anyone reading your information (including yourself some time in the future) to be able to locate the original information, if that is possible, or to evaluate the information, if the original is not available (like "stories my mother told me"). When referring to documents more or less in the public sector, certain conventions are used. They could include a formal structure, such as suggested by Mills and others, or they could be based on reference codes generally recognized by "persons in the field". For example, English census records have a simple code to identify each page of any census. These codes could be entered directly into Ancestry.uk to bring up an image of the actual page. For IGI references, you could use the FHL identification, which generally points to the film the original data is recorded on, and which can be viewed at any Family History Centre. How to locate this information is generally known to anyone working with these tools, so it is not really necessary to put in all the details suggested by Mills et al. In our case, we don't use source records for census or IGI references. If we get a census from Ancestry or another electronic source, we identify the on-line service and the unique code used by the archive to refer to the specific page. For US censuses, I just cut-and-paste the couple of lines of reference material from the Ancestry entry for the individual. For IGI entries I just give the FHL film number and an indication if this is an extracted record or a patron or church member submission. I put this information in a simple footnote, rather than a formal source record. If I derive certain information (e.g. date and place of birth) from a census, I use a simple footnote identifying the census(es) that provided age/birthplace. The person is linked to the census record, and in any journal report I would generally have the census detail transcribed. We do use formal source records, but generally for less common-place information, such as a book, specific letters/emails we have on file, unusual web sites, etc. In those cases, the formal structure of Mills et al provide a useful guide to what details we should include, both to help us locate the information again and to evaluate the probable quality of the information. Where we have countradictory information, we will identify the differences and justify our selection for our database. As someone who collects census almost faster than I can enter it into my database, I don't want to spend time creating detailed source records when a much simpler notation works just as well, both for me and for future researchers. Pierce

One place record with multiple names, each with a different date range, would not work for places that have different names at the same time. For example, religious events may use a religious place name, which may be different from that used by other religions or by the government (and maybe more than one government claims control over a particular place). It is also possible that different sources may be more or less specific about a place. A reasonable standard is to use the location name used by the document that the information came from, since that may help locate the document again. A better method may be to have links between place records that refer to the same place (this prbably needs a change in the program). That might be useful when a specific area just changes its name. It becomes more complicated when an area with no agreed upon name moves from one named area to another named area. There is probably no scheme that would work for all the different ways groups of people name and rename places in various parts of the world, or even in just one country. Pierce

It might also be useful to copy the backup file to another computer, maybe in a different part of town/country. If that computer has TMG, load it up to ensure the backup file is ok. You can use a USB drive, CD, email, home network or whatever you have. If you computer is only a couple of years old, it should have enough disk space to handle many backups. Give each one a name that allows them to be name sorted in date sequence. Then if you accidentally damage part of your data (e.g. deleting a person), you will likely be able to find a backup taken before the damage was done. Pierce

Unfortunately, irregular dates do not show up on display that can only handle a "structured date". That term comes from UFT, which had a third user-modifiable date that could have the form "ca 12 Jan 1900" and which is used when the "free-form" ("irregular") date cannot be used. The structured date can be different from the sort date, if you wish. UFT is quite good at decifering a free form date to create reasonable structured and sort date values, if you let it fill in those fields. It is just another way to let users produce various reports the way they want them to appear. Pierce

We've had a number of users describe how backing up on exit does not produce a useful backup. It would be nice to hear that WhollyGenes' staff have experienced the same problem, and hence are working on a solution. It would be a shame if there are users out there that have not read this thread or other messages on this problem and find their Backup-on-exit files don't work when they really need them. It goes to show that you really should test your backups to be sure they work. But for that you need access to TMG on two compatible machines, and many users are not so lucky. Or maybe there is a technique that allows users to safely restore a backup file on your one machine as a second project that is completely separate from your main one. (I've always explicitly backuped my database, and I have two machines on a network, so I would never have noticed this problem.) Pierce Pierce

Terry, Your Second Site idea looks quite workable, although I suspect some information will not be available through Second Site or not be searchable the way we would like. (But I don't have much experience with Second Site.) Many computers in public areas are locked down so a casual user cannot install a product like TMG. There are products for PDAs that will load up a GEDCOM, to give you access to much of your data. Maybe some day there will be a reasonably priced pocket (or pocketbook) sized computer with the full Windows XP (or whatever) operating system that you can actually install TMG on. Alternately, maybe WhollyGenes could create a variation of TMG that did not require installation on the computer, but simply worked from whatever disk the program and data was stored on. UFT was written for the ancient Win 3.1, so it can be run directly off a USB drive (no install or uninstall steps needed). It is certainly nice to be able to use search and display options that have become second nature. I have often wondered what benefits there are to developers to use the Windows registry, that get them locked into a formal install process. Pierce

I would guess that most places we refer to have changed their names over time. The only way we can avoid it is if we don't go back very far in time or if our ancestors did not stay in one place long enough to experience a change of name. The original British colonies developed over time, dividing when population or other factors caused a change, colonies became states, some states divided, Indian Territory got specific names which eventually became states, states were subdivided into counties, which often split into two or more, territories were acquired from other countries and then subdivided, some cities grew and took over their "suburbs", etc., etc. And that's just in the US. In some parts of Europe, it can be a real mess, with borders being moved around, countries being created and destroyed, and records, where they survive, possibly moving to outside the current country. In recording our place names, we should try to be as accurate as possible. In some cases the record may specify just the city, but we know which county that city was in at that time, so we can record it. If we just know the county, we may suspect that the event occurred in a city, but we can't record that because it was not in the record. If we are not sure of the time of an event in a particular town, we may find that during the period of uncertainty, the town mentioned change the county it was in, so we should just record the town and state/colony, without implying we know the county. So the quality of our original data may dictate that we have several versions of the name of one place. I tend to create a new place record for each variation of a place, as recorded in my source. If I know enough about the place, I may add additional place detail. If I get a more complete place name for an event, I may select the more complete name from my place table. But I don't think you should standardize your place names to the extent that you add place detail that may have been incorrect at the time of the event. Pierce

I use the UK edition of TMG because most of my data is for UK or Canadian events. However, I also have a significant number of American ancestors, going back to the 1600's. I have two problems when I import my UFT data into TMG: 1. My UFT events seem to obliterate many of the TMG tag types. 2. The TMG/UK edition does not have many of the US tag types with I would like to be able to specify. I have an additional problem that WhollyGenes has not been able to fix so far. When I try to import my database into TMG 6, the program abends part way through the import, with some sort of system error message about reaching an end of file (possibly when reading a source file). I am able to import my data into TMG 4a (but TMG 4d produces the same abend), which I then import into TMG 6.04. This may cause some of the problems I have with maintaining TMG 6 UK tag types, but I don't think it is related to the lack of US tag types. Pierce

Thanks, Siobhan, for your note. Yes, I had seen the discussion, but have not been able to experiment and absorb all the steps. When I first bought and installed TMG 6 UK, I expected I could easily create a hybrid version, but it is a bit more complicated than I thought it would be. I'm still new to TMG, and we are currently maintaining our data in UFT. As mentioned, we still cannot import our UFT directly into TMG 6. We have to first import into 4.0a (which is pre-UK edition) and then import it into TMG 6. It looks like I would have to merge the US and UK features every time I do a new import. However, I have not verified that impression. (We've been too busy collecting and organizing information from Ancestry censuses.) We are also hoping that Wholly Genes is able to fix our import problem so that I can see the effect of a proper import of our data into TMG 6. I have produced some useful charts from TMG/VisualChartform. But aside from some experiments in data entry, we are just using TMG as if it were Supertools. Pierce

TMG creates index entries for individuals referenced in Tag sentences. There are a variety of formats for these index entries as they are passed to a word processor for building an index for your report. If you wish, you can combine several TMG reports into a single word processor file, and produced a single index for all of those reports. TMG allows you to create your own index entry within a memo. However, you must hard code the entry in the format that you want it to go to the word processor. To create an index entry, you type in something of the format: "[iNDEX:]name-of-index:level1:level2[:INDEX]". For a person, this could be: [iNDEX:]NAME:last-name:first-name[:INDEX]. This would result in an index would group all the entries with the same "last-name", sorting them by "first-name". You could also add a life-span after the name to help distinguish between individuals with the same names. When entering index entries in memos, you must use a format that exactly matches the format you will request TMG to produce for individuals referenced in the sentence template. Otherwise you will end up with two entries in the index for one person: one in the format produced by TMG and the other in the format you hard code. This difference could easily occur if you change the index format you ask TMG to produce, or if some information about the individual changes between when you hard code your index entry into a memo and when you produce the report. For example, you may have updated the person's name, or if you include a lifespan, you may now have a more accurate birth or death date. To correct this would require you to find every occurrence of the person in an index entry in any memo field. I propose a variation on the index entry syntax which would use the individual's number rather than hard coding the name and optional life span. The syntax could be something like "[iNDEX:]Name,#1234[:INDEX]", where "1234" is the individual number of the person being referenced. TMG would then create an index entry for your word processor in the same format it uses for individuals referenced in a tag sentence template. You would therefore always get the latest version of a person's name and life span and the format would be consistent. Note that this technique would probably fail if you used it in a dataset that you later merged with another dataset, since individual numbers would probably be changed for one of the datasets. However, I generally believe you should not someone elses data unless you are creating a temporary data base just to see how that data matches yours. I always use manual data entry for adding data from someone else to my database. (An exception to that rule might be a one-name or one-place study project where you are bringing in large amount of data.) Indexes are a valuable enhancement to any large hard-copy report. They can be a great aid to someone wanting to do further research on one of your families. I don't think this suggestion should be too hard to implement and it would help ensure the our indexes are as accurate and as useful as possible. Reference: http://www.whollygenes.com/forums201/index.php?showtopic=363

Here is another situation to consider. Suppose the person you are interested in has only a minor role, for example, as a lodger, or as one of a large number of staff and/or students in an institution or school. You have no real interest in the "Head of Household", although you might want that person to be included in the sentence for your relative. I could create a custom sentence for each of these special cases, but I have a number of relatives who were students at a boarding school, or servants in someones household, or inmates of a poor house. I've entered my information into Ultimate Family Tree, where the concept of Principal is a bit different. Any role can easily be made "principal" and the Family Journal report will be structured appropriately. In our database, our census entries generally list and link all of the family, if they are of any interest to us. In the case of the student/servant/inmate, I usually link only the Head of Household in addition to my relative, although I briefly describe the rest of the household, to give a feel for the environment they were living in. GenBridge generally does an adequate conversion of my UFT data. However, I have not tried to enter any of my census data directly into TMG yet, using Tag types defined within TMG. Pierce

Mike, You've pointed out a slight flaw in the keyword search: do we use "wishlist" or "wish list"? If we can't be consistent, then it will take at least two searches to get them all. And do we do just the Version 6 forum, or all forums, or version 5 plus version 6 plus UK, plus... And when version 7 comes out and gets its own forum... And keyword searches will pick up threads where the word or phrase is used casually, not as part of a specific wish list item. A separate forum would be able to handle postings slightly differently from the regular product forums. Entries are not specific to a particular release, so they would be carried over from one release to the next. When improvements address a wish list item, they can be posted under that wish list entry, and eventually would be removed (or archived) It would be nice to know when a wish list posting has made it over to the official Wholly Genes wish list, or to do list, or being worked on list. If design problems, or work load scheduling, or whatever causes a wish list item to be put on the back burner, it would be nice to know that. If other users see an item that they feel would be valuable, they could add their support. Some users might even be able to suggest how the feature could be implemented fairly easily. I see such a forum as a more a place for interactions between Wholly Genes and the users as to which direction the product should or can go. Pierce

Mike, The problem I see with the current system is that it is hard to identify all the suggestions that have been made, both by experienced users and new users, including those who are looking for features they had in other products. It would help if all suggestions were started with some key word, such as "Wishlist", but that would require training forum users who are interested in new features. By the way, I used the "My Assistant" feature to look for "Wishlist" - there were 7 out of 273 entries in this forum, 3 of which listed "wishlist" somewhere in the body of the message threads. I'm glad I stimulated some thoughts on the subject. Pierce

TMG 6.07 (UK): I want to edit the role sentences for tags converted from UFT events. On the Tag Type Definition screen, under the Roles and Sentences tab, I can see the list of roles I created in UFT. However, the Sentence structure boxes are blank for all roles. I believe the sentence structure is hiding in TMG, because the Family Journal reports for this tag come out the way I expect. However, I would like to make some changes to these sentences and I don't see how I can do that. On the Tag Type List window, which lists the available tags, I can see the sentences for the Principal and the Witness roles, but I want to change the sentences for specific roles. That does not seem possible using the Tag Type Definition window. The role sentence does not seem to appear in the Tag Type Definition window for any tag types. Note: I am not able to convert my UFT database directly into TMG 6. I first have to import it into TMG 4.0a and then convert it from 4.0a to 6.07. This may have caused my problem, although I don't know how to tell.

TMG 6.07: I'm on the Tag Type Definition screen, which has 3 tabs: General, Roles and Sentences, and Other. I click on Help and seem to get the appropriate help window. There is a sentence saying: "This screen has three tabs: General, Roles and Sentences, and Other." If I click on the "General" hyperlink, I get a window titled: "Tag Type Definition: Roles and Sentences". If I click on the hperlink "Roles and Sentences", I get a help window titled "Tag Type Definition: Other". If I click on the "Other" hyperlink, I get a window titled "Roles". Each of these help screens seem to describe the feature listed in the title. It looks like a minor problem in where the hyperlinks are pointing to.

OK, if it is an indexing issue with my Help file, any suggestions short of uninstalling TMG and re-installing from scratch? Pierce

The use of any numeric date format other than this international standard should be banned from genealogy. I deal with both British and American sources, as well as some Canadian sources (which could use either British or American formats - I've even seen documents that are inconsistent within the one document) and I am never really sure what dates are that have a day number less than 13. And that is aside from the fact that the international date format can be sorted very simply. Pierce

I have used Roots IV/UFT for many years. In my Individual Text and Event Text fields, I include an Index entry whenever I mention someone else from my database. This allows me to generate an index of all references to an individual when I produce a word processing Family Journal report. Index entries in UFT just contain the individual's number and UFT gets the name from the database. (You therefore cannot create index entries with married or other names that an individual was known by, the way you can in TMG.) I need birth/death dates to be part of the index entries, since I have a number of names that are used repeatedly through the generations. In UFT, I can request that these dates be added to the names so that I can distinguish between these individuals. Instead of getting just one entry for "John Smith" (with the page locations of all the John Smiths mixed together), I will get separate entires in the index for each individual named John Smith (unless two had the same or no birth/death dates). When converting to TMG via Genbridge, I would like to be able to have the index entries in the tag Memos built with the birth/death dates added to the name entries. However, I have not been able to find a way to request this. As a result, instead of the (birth,death) dates added to the names, I just get "(@)". That suggests that I will have to edit the thousands of index entries once I get them converted to TMG. Is that the horrible reality of converting UFT index entries to TMG?

Vernard, I don't have a solution, but just a question that might help someone else solve your problem. Do other reports for the same person produce descendants? Make sure the starting individual is the one you expect. Depending on the options you select, it could be picking off someone other than the person you were looking at when you selected the Journal report. (That's happened to me a couple of times.) Pierce

The manual specifies that only one tag of a specific type may be designated as "primary", so that it will print out in a Journal type report. What do you do if you have several tags of the same type which you want printed out in the correct time sequence? For example, you may have several "occupation" and "residence" tags as the subject changed jobs and cities several times during their life. I want this information to be printed out in the correct time sequence, and no one tag is any more "important" than any other. It looks like I might have to create new tag types "occupation1", "occupation2", ... and "residence1", residence2",... in order to have unique tag types, but this looks like a lot of extra work because of what seems like an arbitrary limitation of TMG. Pierce Reid

There are, of course, examples of a couple marrying each other several times, either separated by other marriages, or going through the marriage ceremony in different traditions, at different times and places. I suppose for those rare cases, you could use a "marriage2" tag. I don't want to output all tags for an individual, since I have many containing a paragraph of memo text, with a number of "roles" held by related people. For example, a census tag (not a source) will have all individuals in the household linked to various roles. In a Journal report I want the census tag to be output only once, not for each child in the household who is listed later in the report. I also have a relative who was recorded twice in the 1880 census: once at home and once as a visitor in another state. I will never know if his wife misunderstood the census instructions or if he was on a business trip (he was a travelling salesman) who was in different places on the couple of days the census was held. Although the Journal report is the one I am most interested in, I do have a space problem with it. I have a set of journal reports for my ancestors and their siblings that takes up a large binder (printed double sided). It is almost too large to handle now, and I don't want it to grow any larger than it has to. As it is, I manually remove a certain amount of redundant information before I print it, but that is rather tedious. I suppose I could create a dummy second principal for my occupation and residency (and other) tags and put phony people in those roles to create different principal pairs (but ensure they are not reported in the principal role sentence), but that seems like a silly solution. It seems TMG is using the "principal" indicator for two separate functions: to indicate the "key" person (or two people) for the tag, and to control printing when there are several tags of the same type. In many cases those two functions are compatible, but when they are not, there does not seem to be a clean method of controlling them separately. Pierce Reid