retsof

I also import things from GEDCOMs from rootsweb. If the marriage has no date, TMG puts them at the bottom of mine. At that point, I'm not worried too much about it. If I learn more about whether it is a first marriage or second marriage, I can sequence it myself after-the-fact by putting "before 'some date'" or "after 'some date'" in the date field to place it where it needs to go. Much can be implied by birthdates of children with one surname or the other. If I am dealing with multiple marriages in multiple places, I have been known to put "1st m of husb" or something like that in the memo field of the marriage.

How about more computer memory? How much have you got on what operating system? XP needs a minimum of 1 gigabyte and runs noticeably better with 2 gigabytes. More can't hurt. This computer has 3 gigabytes, the most addressible by Windows XP. Vista needs a minimum of 2 gigabytes, and more can't hurt that either. "Print spooling" means that TMG could be trying to construct a large temporary file to send to the printer. Another quick but slightly slower solution would be to make your Windows swap file (virtual memory) larger. Doing both can't hurt either. If you have a second hard drive with enough space, put the swap file on the other one from the Windows system.

That's a good tip, but this stone could have been either way. It was not obvious on the stone that it was supposed to be a 4. The fairly wide spaced font read more like 1 8 6 1. I think I remember that the top of the 1 had a curved serif, and was not angled as a 4 would be, looking at others of similar font. There are also closed and open 4s. I think most of these were closed. I'm not certain now, but that was my impression at the time. We didn't have a camera with us, but now can take more pic of tombstones as time permits. The chiseling for what was there was fairly deep, and I didn't see any evidence of a weak stroke. Other later stones are made of marble instead of slate or granite, and the acid rain in the midwest is doing a number on them and on the trees on the ridges in the general area. Some stones that were clear to me 40 years ago are nearly or completely illegible now. Another graveyard suffers from being too close to a high school. The vandals tip and break them now and then. One stone broken in half that we repaired with a stainless steel connector was broken off at the bottom the last time I noticed. Yet a third graveyard does not now suffer from this indignity but from another one. The stones were removed and placed in the basement of the church, where they remain. The graves were not removed to another cemetery, but paved over for a parking lot. An uncle lived 2 blocks from there, so that was his impression. One of my great-grandfather and some of his children are buried under there somewhere. Another tradition is that the father of the "1861" stone was buried on the farm. Stones were broken up and placed in low spots in the road as fill.

In situations like that, I tend to keep BOTH birth tags, with the best one as primary with *. Each will have its own citation references. Otherwise, that other one would keep popping up in the future, and I would have to reanalyze it and disprove it again. Memo fields are also great for short annotations. I also keep separate birth tags if one has places and one does not, or one has a year and one has an estimated year. (or whatever tag) Why? Somebody else might start with that ancestry.com generic estimate, and add their own info on other persons, instead of using the best year that YOU have. The different years are a clue for your own searches as to what else is out there. On the other hand, I have seen some WFT (World Family Tree) entries that were so rough that the estimated range was over 50 years. In that case, the estimated tag could probably go away if a better one appears.

When did the census taker actually visit the home? If late in the year, ages may seem like a year more than you might think. It's an estimate, but may be closer to the numbers you had in mind. The homeowner will likely answer the questions based on the day the enumerator is standing there. The fractional ages reported as months/12 for a child less than 1 year will also help to narrow down the census years. Here is an example: Your family birthdates will probably be the best, first level reference, but more references for the same person are also helpful. Do not depend on any one source. More is always better. If you can find some tombstones or birth/death records somewhere, that's also helpful. Don't depend on that, either. My great-great-great grandfather's tombstone states that he died in 1861. HOWEVER, he made a will in 1864. The chiseler left the horizontal stroke off of the 4.

What about some check/tick marks on the details window as are in the merge screen. Especially when merging the duplicate records that creep in to the SAME database, it is exhausting deleting items a line at a time. I suppose that I could merge them with a new fake record to get the check/tick marks, eh?

It couldn't hurt, but should still be a preference. For my largest database (until it gets merged down), that would be a 20 minute shutdown on a fairly fast computer. If I hadn't updated anything, it could get annoying.

I have also found a couple of other situations indicating that the file needs validation. A name could be in the picklist, but not in the details window. An update to a tag in the details window will not "take", and the original line stubbornly remains.

It is also possible to recover the project from a .SQZ file, but this method may be a lifesaver if you have forgotten to do a backup for awhile, had to do that, and lost some new data . After the index rebuild --- do a backup ... otimize ... validate ... optimize ... backup. My project burp was in the middle of an optimize.

2015 looks like the drop dead year for Visual Fox 9. In the meantime, Mickeysoft is playing with Fox extensions called Sedna, probably forcing use of Sequel Server. There *IS* SP2 for VF9 which came out in September. Here's a list of the bugs fixed, but I don't see Unicode in there. http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/f..._BugFixList.htm The only problems I have had so far directly with Unicode is some gedcoms that have used UTF-8. I have to load them into wordpad and save them as ascii before an import. I know what you mean with foreign extended characters. I hope that something works one of these days. Fortunately, the few Teutonic characters I need are available in most standard fonts.

Fortunately this situation isn't in my own database, but you might be aware: I had a friend in college, and I even photographed his wedding. About 20 years later, he had some kind of existential crisis and decided to become a woman. He even went to Canada, had sexual reassignment surgery, and she returned to the U.S. She and her wife or ex-wife lived apart but nearby for a couple of years. With the economy, jobs for both went away. They moved to the midwest and bought a house where they are now living. We have received separate Christmas cards since the change and just got separate Christmas cards from both her (previously him) and her (previously his) wife or ex-wife this month from the same address. I haven't heard anything about her becoming him to make her, previously him, happy. What do you do with M->F or F->M, married gays or lesbians, group marriages, Fundamentalist Mormon polygamous marriages to sister wives, hermaphrodites (sexless persons with neither or both organs), hippie communes, Siamese twins, or whatever. M and F may be quite limiting. Another answer for Sex could be "yes", or perhaps the flag should be allowed to have other values, or TMG could come up with some.

a minor point for general use...Validate runs faster after the optimize, however Validate makes the file larger.Run File > Maintenance > Optimize again after the validate to shrink it back down and get your update speed back.

I can tell you about my NON-FAVORITE layout. Start with the default. Toggle off both the children window and sibling window. Then expand the details window to fill the whole width of the screen to the right by hitting the [ ] in the details windows toolbar. Here's the problem: Back up the file. When the details window returns and regenerates, the OTHER INFO BOX IS MISSING. The only way I have found to get it back is to exit TMG and restart it and select the project again. The default returns. I wondered whether it was a function of my main project, with a very large file. I tried it on a new project with a small file and saw the same problem. It is reproducible.

I would tend to agree. One it gets messed up, it simply resizes and doesn't regenerate. Here's another idea: I'll try this in another screen resolution or two to see what happens. All of these errors generated in 1024x768. Changed to 1280x1024. Full screen detail window full screen. Backup. INFO BOX IS CORRECT UPON REGENERATION, which is a lot slower at this resolution. However, the project had been running for awhile. I'll exit and restart for a fresh project and make the details window fill screen. backup. INFO BOX IS MISSING at 1024x768. Change to 1280x1024 before exit/restart Change details window to full screen. Backup. INFO BOX IS MISSING at 1280x1024. The number of manipulations on the screen or data entries or something may have an effect. I can get this error easily immediately after start of the project. I currently have 3 projects up, but it has happened with only 1 running. I'll try a small resolution this time. Change to 800x800. (640x480 is not available on this setup) (I could only see the tops of the control buttons because of some toolbars. It was in the middle of the process, so I couldn't get rid of them. I managed to make it go. I can just barely see the LEFT PART of the other info box as far as "Typ". It's there, but the font I was using will not fit into this resolution. It could be that the other info box may be getting pushed to the right too far to see. I don't know. Changing back to 1024x768. This one is too small for my selections for TMG.

I wondered about that, and have also recreated it in other projects with smaller files. It's consistent, anyway, here.

Screen shot is in the Favorite View Thread and it's Windows XP, not Vista. VERSION 7 TINY CHANGE REQUEST. When ready for a merge of individuals, it asks whether I am sure and asks yes or no. It sends a beep and starts the merge. When the merge is done, could you send me another beep? Individuals with a lot of tags, like William the Conqueror, can take a few minutes to merge, enough time to go to another computer on the KVM switch and do something else, like surfing the internet or answering a message like this. I have noticed the same issue after a dataset merge and it asks whether it is OK to optimize the file. If OK, the optimization is done quietly.

The primary error screen shot for full screen details window without other info box is 5 messages up. Everything else looks to be normal.

I was assuming that each MRIN was globally unique, counting each marriage of anyone to anyone....sort of like counting family group sheets, with one sheet for each union. I could see multiple numbers in one field getting cumbersome. Besides Ottoman Empire Sultans and their harems, and kings and their concubines, here are the modern serial monogamous marriage records. Somebody couldn't resist arranging a marriage between the two record holders. If I were doing it, I would put a unique number for each marriage/union/concubine it in the memo field of the Marriage tag. It will show up as a unique number for each marriage, in the details window on the marriage line after the place name(s). You would still have to enter the same number for husband and wife. On the other hand, the advantage of having something in the reference field, though, is that it is sortable and viewable in the picklist. It is rapidly possible to find the last number assigned (if it is first in each group, somehow, like largest number in group followed by all group numbers, or better yet, largest MRIN number for an individual in the reference field and individual MRIN numbers in the marriage tags. Sam Jones was married 3 times, with MRIN 0034, 0045, 0068 for each marriage. 0068 would go in the reference field.).

It's over there in the favorite layout thread. The details window didn't change after backing it up in layout mode. The details window stayed at its original size in my layout, another clue. The children and sibling windows were replaced by flags and focus groups windows. I'm trying some more things. Details window expanded to 3/4 screen. (default size is about 5/8 screen width) Flags and Focus Groups windows reduced to 1/4 screen width. Backup database. Other info box is still there. Leave details window at 3/4 screen. Backup database. Other info box is still there. Expand details window to 7/8 screen width. Backup database. Other info box is still there. Expand details window to full screen width. Backup database. Other info box is still there. Do I have to sneak up on a full screen view??? I had a filter turned on. I'll turn off the filter. Details window is still full screen. Backup database. Other info box is still there. ??? The detail window had been moved around and layout items were previously there. ----------------------------------- Exit project. Start project with default standard layout. close children and siblings window. Make details window full screen. Backup database. When the backup complete button was visible, I could see the other info box. After hitting the OK, the details window was regenerated AND THE OTHER INFO BOX IS MISSING. This is a large project, and that full circle took most of the evening. ------------------------------------ late breaking news: (CNN says that all of the time.) When moving some boxes around between layouts and backing up, I saw a transient error of the other info box being there, but empty. Another time, I saw a flag box there, but empty. Closing the flag box and accessing it again from the window tab fixed it. Some of these things look like windows rendering errors, as they are random and cannot be duplicated.

I was also curious, and tried a backup from the new layout. It returned correctly. I only found the problem after backing up a full screen details window. This is Windows XP, on a fairly fast AMD64 4000+ 2.4GHz system, with a good 256Mb graphics card, 3Gb of memory and 1/2 Tb of hard drive space. Data is on a 200 Gb drive and the SQZ. files are on the second drive, 300 Gb. When backing up from one of the other layouts, I did get a transient error of the other info box being empty and another time, the flag box being empty. Closing the flag and restarting it fixed that. This was random and not repeatable, like the other error of the missing other info box. Let's try something else ... closing the details window (without the info box) to see whether it regenerates correctly. No, it does not. The details window returns without the other info box. I did it from the view/person, and also the window/details. Well, here's something interesting. I saved the detail screen without the other info box as a layout so I could refer to it again. If I start with that and swap to other layouts, EVERY detail screen, even those small or standard size ones, HAVE NO OTHER INFO BOX. The detail doesn't regenerate. It merely resizes what is there. Gotta close TMG again and restart. I'll swap some layouts, and then bring up the detail without info box layout, and swap some more again. Here's what happens: When bringing up the detail without info box layout, IT CONTAINS AN INFO BOX. Once a backup is done and the info box is gone, it stays that way until TMG is stopped and restarted.

(1) If you close the child and sibling windows, the details window fills about 5/8 of the screen on the left side and the right 3/8 is empty. (2) If you back up the database now, the details window is correctly regenerated. (3) Make the details window full screen. (4) Back up the database. (5) When the details window is regenerated, the other info box is gone. (6) I then exited TMG and restarted. The default details window with other info box and child and sibling windows are there. I have not ever saved any layouts, but start with the default. Well, never mind. I saved one and found where to swap them. I have a Details/Flags/Focus Groups set running. Performance note: Large databases run a bit faster with the child and sibling windows gone. I was using the auto relationship today. It also runs faster without that turned on. I originally set the details window full screen to see some long names. That's when I found this other info box bug. I could use item tips to see long names after a rollover, but it sometimes inhibits the clickability on the name. It's faster for me without that. The name area expands to fill the space. I might as well post a name that needs genealogical help rather than a random screen.

I already have 6.12 and don't mind paying an update charge for new features. GO AHEAD AND GET 6.12 and run it on the XP computer. It will cover most or all of what you really need to know now. I'm still finding out things after messing with this for over a year. It might be worth holding off for V7 for any Vista computers. He'll give you v7 upgrade free if within 90 days of purchase, and v7 should be out within a month or two. There is a lot of learning involved, but I find the program to be industrial strength and very intuitive for what I want to do. The backup is in the form of a compressed .SQZ file. One would merely have to copy the file to the other computer and RESTORE the data from the file. CAUTION. Anything already there will be lost, of course. Keep one computer primary and one secondary, or you will have to do the same thing in the OTHER direction, restoring the primary TMG project from the file copied from the secondary computer. The backup and restore run fairly quickly, so they are not a bottleneck. It's worth doing a backup now and then, in case things lock up, which can happen rarely. Any data entered or changed since the backup are lost after a restore. A 1-800 number is merely a translate table at the phone company that forwards the in-state or US dialed number to their phone. If they are not around to answer it, it won't make any difference at all. Yes, they would pay for a 1-800 call, but they are trying to keep the cost down for your software. Support is answered free right here. I'd rather keep the questions in e-mail and let Bob V. keep working on version 7. (I found a bug myself posted in the favorite layout thread...and hope that it can be fixed.) I am very pleased with support here in e-mail. Somebody usually gets back the same day if the e-mail comes during work hours, if it's a workday and they're not out for a conference or cruise or something. (Did you try to call too late in the eve?) For many things, others of us would like to see the problem and solutions for future reference and many of us would be able to fix it by e-mail on a weekend. We may get other ideas ourselves as to what people are doing with the product.

I think I've found a bug in 6.12. Backing up a file will cause the other info box to go away. I posted it in the favorite layout thread as my NON-FAVORITE layout. This is on page 4. http://www.whollygenes.com/forums201/index...=6384&st=60

I later created some custom event-type tags when importing another file, and they worked well. It is a bit disappointing when doing the ACTUAL import. After unassigning the tag and hitting the property button, I saw only a little box to enter the custom tag. I suppose it uses one that I have previously assigned in the master tag list if it can, but otherwise would make a new one. I haven't forced an error to make it do that, but wonder about the gedcom equivalents, etc. that I see there if I make a custom tag in the master tag list. The tag was imported correctly. It would be very easy to make a typo on a tag like "relationship", and one would STILL have to clean up the tag later to put the data in the PROPER custom tag that I envisioned. It's too bad that there isn't a picklist there for the custom tags in the import, or a merged picklist to begin with, with standard and custom tags in the assignment box.

I could see a use for that. I have a situation where the father and mother are one of two families. I also have father-oth and mother-oth relationship tags for the alternate parents listed. The paternal grandfather is the same, and the line merges again. It would also be useful for questionable/unproven ancestors or marriages out at the fringes of the line.