retsof

If somebody had a 64 bit OS, I suppose that it could be run in the 32 bit partition, in the meantime. Right?

I also noted that one in another thread. I think my memo file did not get converted. I am not going to use V7 for production use until some of these experiences are checked. Hint: Watch for 7.01. V7 was supposed to move some files to different locations. Perhaps one or more didn't get split out. The primary name count matches. Did the name variants get dropped, I wonder? Check some of your folks with known additional names to see whether those alternatives are there. What about married names?

That should be just a copy/paste of the very long serial number that you received in an e-mail. V7 needs the V7 serial number, not the V6 serial number, of course. Without the unlock, it should still function as a 30 day trial version. I don't think that there is any misleading from here. You are on the bleeding edge of V7 (first users). V6 is a great product. John Cardinal is also quickly working on getting his Second Site 2 working with V7, since it is a little different. We're all just going through a learning curve of getting past Microsoft bugs. I was installing a router this weekend, and think I have found the solution to three misleading Microsoft related messages by checking past experiences on forums. Isn't technology fun?

I didn't have any direct problems with installing V7 other than perhaps losing the memo file. That's another wrinkle that keeps me from using it so far. HOWEVER, I am using AVG free antivirus, which remained on during the entire process. I have XP, though, so am not dealing with Vista issues. Those of you who are forced to disable McAfee or Kapersky AV may be having conflict issues. A grid computing program application had problems with Vista installation in that after installation in the regular program path, it wouldn't run at all due to the Vista security hooks. Installing the program in a user defined path instead solved that problem. I am not recommending that just yet since V7 has a new Microsoft path compared to V6, but it might be worth asking the programmers to look into it.

When I installed V7, it asked for a reboot.

Trying to anticipate V7 by moving the V6 database over there just confused the issue, probably. I did have a problem with "project reuse" since I had started a new project. The solution was to get out and restart again. IMMEDIATELY RESTORE the project. I told it where my V6 backup was, and V7 did the conversion and put it where it wanted in Microsoft directory hell. Some of that can be changed in advanced preferences, but I'll leave it there for now. I have a problem with a missing memo file in another thread, so that's more important.

I backed up a V6 project with everything I could think of that was relevant. The custom windows colors I made went away, and the preference color box only has the standard color boxes in it. It's not the end of the world, because V6 still exists. I can look at each custom color with a color picker to tell me the hex code, and go from there. These are mostly pastels used as different backgrounds, to differentiate any projects that may be up at the same time. They are also useful to change the background now and then, just to keep sharp when I am getting tired. However, I did not select the color names in an .XLS file. Were they in there? Upon restore, some kind of memo field did not regenerate. I asked it to retry several times without effect, so had to abort that part. It continued without obvious problem. It then went into repair mode. Those are the only glitches that I have encountered so far on my first day of the new release. Upon restart in standard mode, the error is still there. DID I LOSE MY ENTIRE MEMO FILE??? I don't think that I will discard my V6 file just yet. I'm continuing regular work in V6 for now. Here's what the screen says. Since it is so many directory levels deep, it must be part of that "Microsoft solution" you were talking about for the project dataset. c:\Documents and Settings\USER\My Documents\The Master Genealogist v7\Projects\projectname_G.FPT is missing or is invalid. 66 FIX_52 (I changed the specific projectname to "projectname" to protect the innocent.)

I have done that with a focus group window. Ancestors or descendants of one person, optionally including spouses, is easy.

Simultaneous database access to an application introduces all kinds of record locking issues, multiple access update/insert/delete clashes to the same record, rollbacks, server/client operating systems, etc. etc. So far, I think that TMG is set up for only a single member access. I can have two projects open in two TMG tabs, but do not run optimize or validate simultaneously on two different projects. It causes freezeups because some of the data is global across all projects. If the other users want to restore their project from your .sqz file and only READ the data, that would be easy enough. If they updated ANYTHING, that means that YOU would have to restore their .sqz backup, and it also assumes that YOU have not updated anything in the meantime (back-and-forth-scenario) or your updates would be lost. Sure, why not? My own lends itself easily to transfers to subdirectories of a single domain name. It wouldn't make any difference, as long as you make it easy to get from one to the other. It could be overkill. I have a couple of domain family names used merely as pointers to the primary one. I can do it with more than one, but it's more work in the FTP (File Transfer Program) to point to the correct domain, rather than just flipping subdirectories. My web hoster also allows setup of several subdomains from your account, if that would help any. subdomain1/domainname.___ subdomain2/domainname.___ The cheapie webhosts only let you do things like domainname.___/~membername because they retain their own domain rights. I recommend a few things about domains, from my own experience. (1) If in the US, they are super cheap from http://godaddy.com One only has to transfer the nameservers to the nameservers of the web hoster. (2) My web hoster (http://ipowerweb.com) allows setup for dual usage of domainname.___ and www.domainname.___ Having both available is a help for those that insist on putting www before anything and then wonder why they can't find it. I have seen many websites out there that force you to enter either one or the other. (http://usps.com or http://www.usps.com or http://www.usps.gov) are allowed. http://usps.gov is illegal. (3) As your website becomes more popular, access traffic from all users will become an issue. My old host "extra traffic" charges were reaching more than the basic access cost. Moving the data to a web hoster instead of a local ISP allowed traffic at least 30 times more than the other one and solved the problem. They recently upgraded to 6 terabytes/month of traffic/transfer. My old one charged extra for anything more than a few gigabytes/month. If you went over, they took down access to your site until you paid up. Muy bad. (4) Make sure you have 10 times or even 100 times as much webspace for your family, including all exhibits as you think you might need now. Pictures, etc. chew up a lot of space. Second Site is economical enough. Pages generated from Microsoft webpage makers introduce a lot of extra code that make the pages larger than you might think. http://ipowerweb.com now has 600 gigabytes in their standard package, a crazy amount compared to the old days. After I used my full allocation of 5 gigabytes without breathing hard at my first webhoster, they asked why anyone would ever need more than that. (!). They went out of business shortly afterward, even though they said that they were a "premier" webhoster. Maybe not. Another one went bankrupt shortly after. My current website has over 3000 pages of other things without any family information at all there yet. (5) If you put any info about named living members in your website, the family details should probably reside in a password protected subdirectory.

That's right. That's where the binocular thingy on the parent sends you ... to the picklist.

Go to the son and search for the mother by the above method. If she's there, link to her with her ID number as above. If the mother is not yet in the system, there is another advantage of doing it this way, linking son to a newly entered mother (add mother), rather than linking mother to son. Once both new parents are established, mine is set to automatically prompt and ask whether I want to establish a marriage and a married name. If the father to son and mother to son links are generated independently, it is possible to continue without any marriage of the parents being listed at all.

I'd also do a backup before shutting down. It's over 600,000 members, but contains many duplicates that need merging. The member size is fairly small and there are no exhibits as yet. If there are more than 100 tags per member, it really bogs down due to all of the connections. Backup size is about 100 Mb. The website http://thepeerage.com has 130,000 members that are larger on the average, so his backup is about 2 Gb. If I do any exibits, I would probably go with externally linked exhibits instead of internal. I have plenty of space locally and also plenty of web space if it gets that far. The file needs to be knocked down a bit first. Another project file containing mainly ancestors and descendants of John of Gaunt Plantagenet is over 130,000 and also contains many duplicates, the result of downloading gedcoms in 6 to 10 generation pieces. Every now and then, due to all of the intermarriages, I get another unavoidable copy of Charlemagne's family. I have gotten better at controlling the number of generations in the download if I can't grab the whole gedcom from rootsweb (not allowed to). The source citations also multiply, so some sessions with the TMG utility will fix that. I made an early mistake and copied and merged too many datasets into the main project instead of starting new projects. It took a couple of months to get comfortable. It gets worse: A database validate is 8 hours on an AMD64 4000+ 2.4GHz computer (equivalent to Intel 3.0GHz+). It then takes another optimize and backup. The backup is only a few minutes, so that's not too bad. I have an AMD64 X2 6400+ Black Edition 3.2GHz chip here, but I don't have all of the components yet to finish building it. Project future feature HINT: Competitor "Legends" claims an automatic member merge if the two member sides are completely identical. The merge here in TMG frustratingly doesn't always show what's IN the lines, so I tend to go ahead with the merge. It takes awhile to delete things always line by line.

Rootsweb Worldconnect has been up all of this time. I have been downloading pieces-parts of some GEDCOMs, at least up to the 25/day or so that I am allowed. now back to the rootsweb listserv outage discussion...

That is so true. Flags are best for something more or less permanent. I am operating more in a temporary cleanup mode...using the accents as a pointer to only a FEW records as a percentage of the whole using different test criteria each task, so I am willing to use a filter to get me there. If I want to mark some records that I have found, to resume the cleanup task the next morning, I put something unique as a temporary marker in the reference field like "more ancestors" so I can search that way as a reference sort in the simple picklist. I don't have to turn on the accent again. Fast...and no filters or flags or accents at all. I could set a cleanup flag if I wanted to do something to the whole dataset and mark where I have been. I am currently comparing some data to a rootsweb database, so the internet "link visited" color over there serves to show me what I have touched in the last 30 days. That is sufficient for this particular purpose. Rootsweb also has a daily download limit, something like 25 downloads. That really hurts when the submitter will not let you have the whole gedcom and only allows you to download 3-6 generations at a time. All of those partial chains must then be merged and stitched together to restore the relationships. The current "privacy concerns" about living relatives also make it a bit difficult to find new contacts. Once they are gone, it is too late.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliterati...an_into_English I see several transliteration systems here...another wrinkle is letters before and after 1918...

The TMG utility will do that, but I have found that surnames are spelled different ways at different points in time. My 4th-great grandfather's will has it spelled three different ways IN THE SAME DOCUMENT: Forester, Forster and Foster. I am also dealing with one line of Rexroad, Rexrode, Rexroth, Von Rexroth, Recksrodt, which tells me quickly by inspection in which period it was used. For example, current German use for cousins is Rexroth only. Southern WV use is Rexrode. Northern WV use is Rexroad. It's all fathers and sons of the same ancestral line. In Europe and Pennsylvania, another line runs through M'Kie, Mackay and McKee. Changing to any one would trash the other sections and make them illogical. Another line starts out with some unpronouceable Galic, continues with Colclough, gets anglicized to Coakley, and then regionalized to Cokeley. The worst situation I have seen for name changes is the "Ditto" family. The word ditto was originally written out before ditto marks were used. "Ditto" meant whatever name preceded it in the passenger list, but some other enumerator read it as-is. I have another ancestor named "George Rex". It's Latin for "King George" but I don't think I will change George Rex's name to George King. It could have actually started from one of King George's illegitimate relationships, but I have not proved the connection. My vote is to leave the names as they are as they are found. TMG makes it easy to create multiple name variables if more than one style is located and you need more. I'd hate to look at a file in which any original spellings were removed. What "else" was changed?? Multiple spelling give clues to future searches. I have a lot with the presurname modifiers like von, de, d', ap. I will make another tag with that as part of the surname so I can find the person either way.

I made a mistake and merged too many datasets into the main database at the beginning. That leaves me with a bunch of duplicates to combine...which takes a while. It's much better to start a new project for each one and do your cleanup. One project at a time can then be merged with the main one. Don't forget to do a backup, optimize, validation, another optimize, and then another backup after each major merge. I have occasionally had the first optimize fail, and then it's "restore time". Don't try to make one do-all accent to cover all possibilities. The slow response time will be a killer. Customize them for specific purposes, since the "all" is set for only two different accents. More accent levels can give confusing results for "all" unless you take care to post them in the best order. It is? I have over 600,000 with many duplicates, and the next project to merge has over 150,000, with more duplicates. The combination will make, guess what, more duplicates. Experience gave more more control over gedcom imports from rootsweb. Earlier downloads created too much overlap. Many there only let you have 3-6 generations and don't let you have the whole gedcom at all. Eventually, I want as much as possible combined so that auto relationship will work. When working with large datasets, as much fancy stuff as possible should be turned off to improve response time unless you need it at some point in time: sibling window, child window, accents (especially many levels), extended picklist, timeline tags, auto relationship, etc. Even on a fairly fast AMD 2.4GHz computer (equivalent to a 3.0+ Intel) with 3Gb of memory I notice every change, with the largest dataset. One advisor here asked me how it was possible to measure response time since he was dealing with less than 15,000 persons. I said that it was easy with a wristwatch. The expanded picklist takes at least 45 seconds to return a name on the large database. I don't use it much. Focus groups are a lot faster. I have a 3.2GHz AMD X2 chip waiting in the wings as soon as I buy some more hardware. One or two level accents work very well with a focus group, which is designed for ancestors of "n" or descendants of "n" to save using an accent level for ancestors or descendants themselves. I make extensive use of no father, no mother and no children types of accents to point me to the tops or bottoms of the chains quickly. I then turn off the accent to get better response when merging or flagging members in that area I have located.

a brief reply... Check out John Cardinal's free "TMG Utility" for many global functions. There's no need to force a transfer through GEDCOM, which can cause many other problems. The "genbridge" function in TMG will import directly from a FTW dataset. You may lose less. Others may have more experience with suggested parameter settings since I have not done that myself.

The file has a default style, but I seem to be able to change the style on individuals, a member at a time, if I want another one for that person. The U.S. standard style doesn't make any use of PreSurname. I have a custom style to allow it. Most records I see have the modifiers like ap, verch, von, de, di as a suffix of the given name just to put them somewhere. By my own convention, if it is lower case, it should be there. Proper case like Ap, Verch, Von, De, Di I put as part of the surname. I will add a "Name-Var" tag, so I can have one of each in the same record. The custom style will work for both versions of the name and improves the given name sort field, which becomes the same in both cases.

The place style has something to do with the IMPORTED data, it says. My master file likes to keep the U.S. style and it refuses to change the standard to a custom style. In another new project, I had set up a custom style to add surname prefix (more for names, but the same idea is there). The new project standard is the custom style, and it refuses to change to a U.S. style. Yes, I know that the default style is set in the dataset manager, but it is a bit non-intuitive, and only works over the short term with new records that are merged with the master, leaving the original records alone. Perhaps I would need to set up a dummy dataset, set the default style, and merge the entire original with that....delete the old master, and then rename the new dataset to the master name I had before. Voila! the default style is now changed. (Is that how it should work???) The TMG Utility method may be a lot easier since I have used it successfully (and quickly) with a couple of other things. Does it blast the style change into all records, or somehow preserve individual record styles that I have set manually?

No, I wasn't kidding, but "ahnentafel break" is a better terminology for thinking about the solution to the problem. "Generation breaks" are messy, especially when chasing the Plantagenets. It looks more like a "spider web break" over here.

I think that's a typo. Oh if it only were a .doc file. <G> --------------------------- Word files are a LOT larger than text files, due to the extra internal codes, text formatting, etc. How much space do you have, after adding thousands of external memo Word files? ... staying with text here, but the external link exercise is always a helpful option.

just an aside... My 4th or 5th great-grandfather (depending) married his niece. Where's the generation break? Now back to your regularly scheduled thread...

That's the same idea without collapsing the sources to only one source... You can't delete a source though, until every single tag that uses it has previously deleted the source citation number. Try to delete a new source with only one citation so you can find the citation again.

John Cardinal's TMG utility may be able to help. (I'm thinking on the fly, here). Perhaps bad sources could be merged into one bad dummy source (when TMG is closed) using this utility. The source itself cannot be deleted if it is used anywhere.