retsof

Wouldn't putting this in the reference field solve his problem? The reference field is searchable on the picklist. I would keep a zero filled number of digits in the numeric field for sorting, as 001 (A) through 440 (Z). As for me, I use the reference field for a hierarchical unique person identifier.

I usually have a lot of overlap when combining projects and datasets. Merging is a big thing here and occupies the bulk of my time this year. Another problem is that many datasets on rootsweb will not give you a complete gedcom. Some allow 10 generations of ancestors or descendants of a particular person. Some only give you 6 or less. Some give you none and force you to enter everything manually, but those can be dealt with individually by cutting and pasting. Even with some degree of generational control, it is hard to copy another piece without ending up with duplicates somewhere. It is sometimes difficult to copy a piece of the Plantagenets without getting another copy of Charlemagne's family because of all of the intermarriages all over the place. I see different references in different datasets for several working on the same pieces of my family, so the overlap persists. There are too many people here to copy selected persons, or at least there are until the duplicate persons are combined.

You cannot combine duplicate data in two datasets until they are merged into one. I have found that if the datasets are large and need some cleanup first, they are best imported to separate projects. Response time will be faster than stuffing all datasets into one project. It's always best to make a backup both before a large merge and after optimization/validation/optimization. After merging the projects, merge the datasets. I have a lot of extra data in my primary project because I loaded too much there too early. Combining duplicate entries continues.... I do not wish to start over at this point because other data was entered separately.

Well, sure. Wheeling may have been in Pennsylvania and then Virginia but was West Virginia's state capitol at one time before the capital city was moved to Charleston. Martinsburg was south of the Potomac River, so part of Virginia until part of West Virginia. Areas north of the Potomac became Lord Calvert's Maryland in 1682. In 1785, Virginians got the right to fish in it. Sure it is, since we're entering stuff like this into it. I have been using VA/WV for compactness. The area of northwestern Virginia isn't that simple, since I have some family lines from that wide area. Even before June 20, 1863 when WV broke off from VA, part of Western Pennsylvania and Western Virginia was disputed. The 1767 Mason-Dixon line originally went west only as far as the western boundary of Maryland. The District of West Augusta covered a wide overlapping area of VA and PA. The name is preserved as the West Augusta Historical and Genealogical Society (at Parkersburg, Wood County, WV) In 1776, the northern area was split into Ohio, Monongalia and Yohogania (lost) counties with wandering boundaries even later. The disputes over which colony had authority over the area led to overlapping land grants to settlers and battles between Virginians and Pennsylvanians in the period 1774-1775. In 1774, a Virginia militia group even attacked and captured the Westmoreland County seat at Hannastown and arrested three Westmoreland County justices who refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of Virginia. The line was pushed west in 1781 when slavery was abolished in PA. I have seen the newer monument at the Ohio River marking that end of the Mason-Dixon line at the southern boundary of Marshall Co WV. If in the area, also take a 2 block short side trip at Moundsville to see the largest conical Adena Moundbuilders Indian mound in the US there. After climbing to the top, you get a view of the retired state penitentiary on the other side. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grave_Creek_Mound More county changes are in here. The western boundary of PA was established in 1786, establishing the northern VA/WV panhandle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yohogania_County The southern part of Monongalia Co. because Marion Co., along with part of Harrison Co. Another part of Harrison Co. and part of Wood Co. became Ritchie County. The fun never ends when NOT moving your house. The triangle on the eastern side was disputed by PA and DE until the top of the wedge and several compound curves were surveyed in 1892. It was "sort of" an arc of a circle, but actually the arcs of several circles nearly the same. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason-Dixon_Line You have to deal with difficult arcs of a 12 mile circle and tangents over there. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve-Mile_Circle http://www.udel.edu/dgs/Publications/pubsonline/info6.html

Our calendar STARTED to begin in 1582 AD, you mean. I didn't mention it before because it is in the range of TMG valid dates. The Roman Catholics went ahead with it because Pope Gregory was one of their guys. I picked up a few more paragraphs from wikipedia. Spain, Portugal, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and most of Italy implemented the new calendar on Friday, 15 October 1582, following Julian Thursday, October 4, 1582. The Spanish and Portuguese colonies adopted the calendar later due to the slowness of communication in those days. France adopted the new calendar on Monday, 20 December 1582, following Sunday, December 9, 1582. The Protestant Dutch provinces of Holland and Zeeland also adopted it in December of that year. Britain considered the Gregorian calendar a papist plot and Catholic invention so didn't change until 1752. The Kingdom of Great Britain and thereby the rest of the British Empire (including the eastern part of what is now the United States) adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752 under the provisions of the Calendar Act 1750; by which time it was necessary to correct by eleven days (Wednesday, September 2, 1752 being followed by Thursday, September 14, 1752) Denmark, Norway and the Protestant states of Germany adopted the solar portion of the new calendar on Monday, 1 March 1700, following Sunday, 18 February 1700. Sweden's relationship with the Gregorian Calendar had a difficult birth. Sweden started to make the change from the OS calendar and towards the NS calendar in 1700, but it was decided to make the (then 11 day) adjustment gradually, by excluding the leap days (29 February) from each of 11 successive leap years, 1700 to 1740. In the meantime, not only would the Swedish calendar be out of step with both the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar for 40 years, but also the difference would not be static but would change every 4 years. This strange system clearly had great potential for endless confusion when working out the dates of Swedish events in this 40 year period. To make matters worse, the system was poorly administered and the leap days that should have been excluded from 1704 and 1708 were not excluded. The Swedish calendar should by now have been 8 days behind the Gregorian, but it was still in fact 10 days behind. King Charles XII wisely recognised that the gradual change to the new system was not working and he abandoned it. However, rather than now proceeding directly to the Gregorian calendar (as in hindsight seems to have been the sensible and obvious thing to do), it was decided to revert to the Julian calendar. This was achieved by introducing the unique date 30 February in the year 1712, adjusting the discrepancy in the calendars from 10 back to 11 days. Sweden finally adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1753, when Wednesday, 17 February was followed by Thursday, 1 March, Since Finland was under Swedish rule at that time, it did the same.[6] In Alaska, the change took place when Friday, October 6, 1867 was followed again by Friday, October 18 after the US purchase of Alaska from Russia, which was still on the Julian calendar. Instead of 12 days, only 11 were skipped, and the day of the week was repeated on successive days, because the International Date Line was shifted from Alaska's eastern to western boundary along with the change to the Gregorian calendar. In Russia the Gregorian calendar was accepted after the October Revolution (so named because it took place in October 1917 in the Julian calendar). On 24 January 1918 the Council of People's Commissars issued a Decree that Wednesday, 31 January 1918 was to be followed by Thursday, 14 February 1918. The last country of Eastern Orthodox Europe to adopt the Gregorian calendar was Greece on Thursday, 1 March 1923, following Wednesday, 15 February 1923. There are more dates to consider in Asia. I will not go there. Here's the link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar Russia and the Soviet Union converted to the Gregorian Calendar after the Revolution, in 1918. The Eastern Orthodox Churches continued observing the Julian Calendar until 1923, at which time some, but not all, skipped the first 13 days in October, and introduced a "Revised Julian Calendar" with a unique variation on the leap-year rule. This has caused a schism between New Calendarists and Old Calendarists. The problem remains unresolved. The range of time between those dates and between Jan 1 and Feb 28/29 is dealt with in the old style/new style notation of two adjacent years during that time. Recall that George Washington was born Feb 11, 1731 old style, but after the change, we celebrate his birthday as Feb 22, 1732. We had to muck it up by combining Washington and Lincoln to get "Presidents day". In the old days, Feb 29 was at the END of the year, before we started the year on Jan 1. The Russian Orthodox still uses the Julian calendar. To fit that 3000 year correction you mention, the Gregorianites could put in a correction of omitting a leap year every 4000 years, maybe. Was that 26 seconds in the same direction?

I wondered about that, but BC gets very fuzzy very fast. Astronomers have gone to the Julius Scaliger "julian days since Monday, January 1, 4713 BC in the proleptic Julian calendar. Their formulas DO take 1BC as 0 and 2BC as -1 and go from there, if they really need a year. 753 BC was the start of A.U.C. (Ab Urbe Condito, or the founding of the Roman Empire) The Calendar was juggled many times since then due to politics. The 12 month 354 day lunar calendar (+1 day because even days are unlucky) started around 715BC. The Islamic Calendar (A.H.) is still lunar based. In addition to no year zero, BC has more fun. 46 BC (708AUC) Annus Confusionus, "Year of Confusion." had 445 days, to align the equinoxes. Julius Caesar set 365.25 days for a year, but even that got lost for awhile. We are not still sure whether some of the leap years after J. C. died were every 4 or every 3, until the mistake was noticed around 9BC by Augustus Caesar. That also aligned the months to have the number of days that they have now. Our own calendar started after 531 (A.D.) and was predetermined to start at year 1 AD. Jesus was born somewhere between 4BC and 6BC, we think, but not on Dec. 25, the Saturnalia that was appropriated by Constantine the Great to bring the Pagans into Christianity by taking over a celebration day. The Holocene calendar, popular term for the Holocene Era count or Human Era count, uses a dating system similar to astronomical year numbering but adds 10,000, placing a zero at the start of the Human Era (HE, the beginning of human civilization) the approximation of the Holocene Epoch (HE, post Ice Age) for easier geological, archaeological, dendrochronological and historical dating. The current Gregorian year can be transformed by simply placing a 1 before it (ie: 12007). The Human Era proposal was first made by Cesare Emiliani in 11993 HE.

I thought as much myself, but it has always turned out to be another task copy of TMG that I forgot about and is still sitting out there. I often have multiple TMG tasks accessing DIFFERENT projects. If I forget and try to access the same project with two different tasks, I see the message. Sometimes Windows has a way of hiding icons. Exiting the current TMG sometimes reveals the other one. Taking everything down you see and rebooting the computer always solves the problem. Perhaps the powers-that-be here might have another idea.

I don't really mind the leading zeros being there in the data, as it permits a better computer sort of 4 digit years, as in a picklist search of birthdate or deathdate. If they are stripped in reports, then that would save space on the line. We have to go through an extra step to fix century for years 1-99, with up to 3 leading zeros, as 0001. That is no problem for me. Now, about those BC dates... They are all invalid dates, so at least I try to be consistent ... and enter them as 4 digit years BC to allow the same type of consistent computer sorting. After all of that, I was curious about the other direction. 3000 seems to be the last valid year permitted. 3001 is an invalid date. I may not see it unless I find a suspended animation chamber in time.

I need to clarify. This thread has been about importing a large file to a blank project. The problem happens after a dataset merge of an import file with something that is already there, after I merge the data and delete the small import file. Upon exiting the dataset manager, the question comes up about recommending an optimize. YES: optimize runs with progress box and ends quietly. No beep. No messagebox. I have gone away and come back with no change. I have also looked at the Windows Task Manager, and TMG isn't doing anything but sitting there. NO: It goes back to the details entry screen. If I select a normal maintenance optimize here, it runs with the progress box, beeps at the end, and pops up another message box telling how much it saved.

At the end of an import, it always asks whether I want to do an optimize. If I say yes, it merely finishes without comment. If I say no and come back to optimize, it finishes with a box telling me how much was saved. I will try to watch an optimize (of something else) immediately after the import. I think I get a beep when the optimize finishes. I looked at it a bit (sluggishly) and DID come back to run an ordinary optimize on the data yesterday, which finished with the box. It ran less than an hour. I am validating it now, which is about 8 hours into it. (35% overall, 67% of checking principals who are not witnesses, which is always a very large step) The principal check ended at about 37% after almost 10 hours, but the remainder only took about 5 minutes. I have also seen that ratio with other files. The final optimize was then run. After a day's computation, the access to the file and update time is faster.

The first optimize never mentions how much got optimized. In other databases, skipping the first optimize, running VFI, and THEN optimize SEEMS to save a lot of time, and the data is clean. I have also noticed that after running John Cardinal's utility to combine a couple of sources (and coming back to delete the second source) the data definitely needs optimizing, and perhaps VFI. There must be some stubs out there that can go away. I misspoke slightly. Event-misc was assigned to event-misc. The others that were not caught were still event-misc, but the type was in the memo. I needed to move the places out anyway, but I might be able to do some of that in the master place list. Creating a custom would be cleaner, I see. How do TMG custom tags work when trying to EXPORT this to a standard gedcom, then? I hadn't worried much about sentence narrative, since I usually display in the pure data mode. I am? Only THEN can I merge it with another project, and start combining more duplicates. I won't be merging that one soon. I also notice that stobie has a UID in each record, which I don't care about either. I assume that they can go away. I have had good luck in another database by marking the reference code in a way that I knew I had been there and had checked the data, and which way I was going, assuming that this was a connected line in SOME WAY. The sequence seems to work well and tells me more than just setting a flag. I go to a (any) male line all the way to the top and come down with a child. When I see a wife that I had not checked, I will go there and go to her father's line all the way to the top. Only when I find a husband and wife of the same family both checked do I continue with a child. It's like leaving string on the way up, and leaving larger string on the way down. If I see any male ancestor, I immediately head up that way first. The way this method works, I can start ANYWHERE.

I've got the import from stobie in a new project! A grid computing project was still running in the background, and the import quit at 85%. Usually that isn't a problem, but this wanted all of the memory that I could give it. I stopped the grid computing for the next import, which was the only application running. Getting rid of these options probably had something to do with it. convert widowed SOURce tags <== don't do this, not required combine identical sources <== I wouldn't do that The import ran about 6 hours, including 1 hour to check the inferred names at 99%. That is the portion that ran a couple of days previously until I killed it and added to this message problem thread. All others were still there, including making a citation for stobie.ged. Thanks for the help. That shows that the gedcom was not corrupted, or at least not obviously. It is a good very large import test. x read NPFX/GIVN/SURN/NSFX names <== probably not required?, need to check I left that one in there. It may have something to do with reading name variations other than the primary one.

The Census Bureau called it "POSSLQ" "Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters". After the 1980 Census, against all odds, the term gained currency in the wider culture for a time, with CBS commentator Charles Osgood memorably composing a verse which began There's nothing that I wouldn't do If you would be my POSSLQ You live with me and I with you, And you will be my POSSLQ. I'll be your friend and so much more; That's what a POSSLQ is for. Elliot Sperber, the writer of the Hartford Courant's weekly cryptogram, invented a cryptogram that (when solved) said: "Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Won't you be my POSSLQ?" I was following the Fundamentalist LDS doings in AZ, CO, UT and TX just wondering how genealogy handles polygamy. The women are known individually as "sister-wives" and to the children as "sister-mothers". Commune life also has the many-to-many group marriages.

Thanks, I wanted an opinion on those choices. I will check them. Yes, I do that, as the mix of tags in different imports can be completely different. I noticed a couple of things, especially things like military and christening, that don't seem to be in the list. My list has Milit-Beg and Milit-End. It asks me later whether I want to use these "standard" tags one by one for equivalence, and I say yes. "Military" was one of the after-the-fact tags. Some military-type things can be equated to Milit-Beg. Prop for property comes up a lot, and I assign it to residence. I also see a lot of different event types (like event-title and event-relationship) and I unassign them to fix later, since I want to preserve the types. Event-misc is the only one in the list. I keep the word in a memo, and have to move the rest into it, since it usually ends up as a place. The event-misc I leave alone as it equates 1:1. I could make some custom tags, I suppose, but I'm trying to keep with the standard ones as much as possible. Some seem to creep in from other early imports that I might have missed. Unfortunately, in a way, but I want to know where my data is coming from when I merge it.

continuation of fix: I also seem to be finding a lot of hereditary titles and events that end up as places from imports of GEDCOMs. The master place list is still a good place to go for global place fixes. I move them off into the memo field that is sitting there.

(I'm back for a couple of weeks.) I am seeing that some of you got this to work. After thinking about this a bit more, I wonder whether the specific GEDCOM options set in the advanced wizard might have something to do whether it "gazinta" TMG or not. I have been trying to import everything with this combination. I could always cut back if I had to: x create DIVorced flag x assume marriage of parents x convert widowed SOURce tags x combine identical sources x cite GEDCOM file for all data x read NPFX/GIVN/SURN/NSFX names page 2 x reserve REFERENCE field for reference (REFN) ------------------ files of this nature are so rare ------------------ With more info being published and more connections being established, they should not be as rare as you might think. Many, many families descended from early immigrants to the US have one or more royal links to Edward III and the Plantagenets. That sufficed for me and is about all it takes to get an ancestry with thousands of confusingly cross-linked names (included in this gedcom and my own database). I also see the Stuarts of Scotland (also in there and in my own database.) I looked at it in the original rootsweb but don't yet know where the bulk of the stobie info is coming from. It looks like it still serves well as a giant test gedcom, eh?

Not yet. I'm heading out tomorrow morning for a few days. The e-mail is on the computer that is still running the import. I'm on dialup. It took a long time to get it, and would take an equally long time to send it anywhere. If you still need me to do that, it would have to be next week. Thanks for the prompt response. It's actually larger than that, since he recently updated it. 468,716 people. I recall trying it on the older one with a similar problem. I haven't had any problems importing smaller gedcoms, except for the standard gedcom omissions like sources. stobie.zip 27,744,214 bytes stobie.ged 133,419,582 bytes (after unzipping) The stobie database on rootsweb is here. I think I have it set so that the download the full gedcom.zip link shows up on the page. (It does.) It should be available from looking at any name. http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=...e&id=I90310 My own master file is over 600,000, but 50% or more needs to be merged and combined, before merging it with anything else. It is very time consuming.

It is still running, after overnight. CPU time is over 22 hours. It is still at 99%, updating inferred names. Page faults are a little over 500 per second, up to 53 million now. Any ideas?

I have the current 6.12 gold and am importing a very large 300,000 name GEDCOM to a new project and this will be the only file in there. There may be better ways, but that's what ROOTSWEB.COM has, GEDCOMs. It brought in the file and did most of what it needed to do in 4 hours. It seems to be busy at 99% of Updating inferred names. That has gone on for 10 more hours now. I'll leave it to run overnight. Nothing else is going on on that computer. I tried once before and shut the import down after 2 days. This is a fairly fast AMD 2.4GHz computer. It had saved nothing at that point, and was still empty. Memory usage is 186,244K. 1,099,316K peak from early processing. It cycles 4K in and out now and then. The computer has lots of HD space and 3 Gb memory on WinXP. Anyhow, it writes a random something to disk every few seconds and does not appear to be looping. It may just be a VERRRY SLOW process. I saw a genealogy newsletter article about 6.0.2 having problems with inferred names from gedcoms. page faults are still going up, 35 million so far. Not much else is happening.