Dan Stone

Thanks for your take on this. I like your rationale. I wasn't thinking about it too closely at the time of posting, but wanted to apologize for posting the question in this forum, as it has dawned on me the subject is off topic and not truly a TMG usage related question. I've also discovered, since posting, that I will be attending a seminar in October at which Barbara Vines Little will be speaking. I'll be sure to ask for her recommendation on this question, and will post a follwup here of what she says.

I'm looking for suggestions as to how to record 'in or near' place names in TMG. I'm looking for a solution that will work with TMG report output, as well as with Second Site output that utilizes the "full then short" place style option. Here's some background info: I have come across some obituaries for my ancestors which list their place of birth as "in or near..." I have yet to uncover any sources which more specifically define their birthplace. I would like to utilize the option in Second Site to have the first reference of a place name be the full name, with further reference to that same place using the short place style. Unless I'm missing something, I have found that only one short place style can be defined in TMG. This limit of only one short place style is what is creating my challenge. I seem to have to choose between either getting a result of "in in or near...", or for all the rest of the place names I end up with output having no preposition at all in order to make the "in or near..." places appear correctly. I can use custom place styles to get the long form of the place name to work correctly in both cases, but it still leaves the short place style problem of being incorrect in one case or the other. If I only put "or near" in the place name, then the preposition problem is solved in all cases, but for "in or near..." places the place link in Second Site (and place index) is lacking "in", so the context comes across a bit differently than inteded. Perhaps there's no way to have it all in this situation (using custom place styles, and full place style only in Second Site, is one solution, just not my preference), but I'm hoping I might be missing something simple. Thanks in advance for any advice/pointers, Dan

Thanks John. I was hoping that it might be something simple that I overlooked. Dan

I think everyone is in agreement that it would be nice if the GEDCOM standard was updated to be more robust. What I don't often see mentioned is to consider the possibility that you may someday need to use a GEDCOM export to transition your data to a new program. While I am of the opinion that TMG is the best current genealogy program for my needs, I have no idea what genealogy programs may be released in the future, nor whether TMG may be discontinued at some point (I'm certainly hoping this doesn't happen, though). As history has shown, there is not a great track record for longevity of genealogy programs. Hopefully, TMG will continue to be an exception to this trend, but one never knows for sure concerning future events (no disrepect meant to all the efforts of Wholly Genes in developing and maintaining TMG). Should a change of program be necessary at some point, I would hope not to have to manually type everything into the new program. A GEDCOM transfer would not be perfect, but by carefully compromising my use of TMG I could transfer the majority of data, with some minor cleanup work needed to finish the job. I've read several posts on other boards from people, who didn't anticipate the loss of info being exported when making full use of witnesses, multi-principal census tags, etc., and then realizing the work needed to get that data into their new program, after the fact. Terry has some very good thoughts on this subject in his 'editorial' referenced above, but Jim Byram also points out some very reasonable compromises to provide maximum data portability in his chapter on exporting in GTMOOTMG. As is pointed out in the book, Jim's census compromise also has the benefit of conforming to the NARA recommendation for recording census information. Just something to consider, and hopefully it may be of help.

I did a search, but didn't find this as being requested before. Since our ancestry files can hold lots of personal information, I'd like to see an option to password protect (at a minimum) and/or encrypt (preferred) project files. I would hope that my computer and/or backup drives are never stolen/compromised, but should they be, I'd like to know that it would be difficult to access the personal information contained in my ancestry records. Yes, options exist to encrypt the whole drive, but it's nice to also have the extra option for added peace of mind to protect the specific files. I would hope that this might be something fairly easy to implement in TMG as well.

Good information. Thank you.

I'm curious as to whether there are any downsides to simply overriding the source output form with the actual text that I want, rather than trying to get everything exactly right using the source elements and structure? Being new to TMG, I want to make sure I'm not missing something that may cause me potential headaches later, when I'm too far in to go back and start over. Like lots of us, I'm trying to get as close as possible to the Mills format for source citations. As has been noted on plenty of TMG tutorial/tip websites, there are many small differences between the Mills examples, contained in Evidence, and what TMG outputs. Several of these can be corrected with tweaks to the elements/structure of the source output form and/or things such as split repository memos, such as the following for a cemetery marker: The Mills example in Evidence has the first footnote/endnote format as "Dan Stone tombstone, Cemetery name, City, State, transcribed/photographed by person date." and the bibliography entry as "State, County, City, Cemetery name, tombstone data." I'm disregarding the short footnote for this discussion. Since the source output structure in TMG utilizes [Repository Address], I have found no way of having the address be just city, state in the first footnote/endnote, and then be state, county, city in the bibliography, except by entering city||county||state in the repository memo, and referencing the correct sequence of the repository memo elements in the source output structure. I'm wondering why one would go to the trouble when you can simply put the formatted/sequenced text in the three output form fields and be done. Am I missing something here? If I just put the formatted/sequenced text in the three output form fields of all of my sources, rather than creating custom source elements, rearranging the output structure, splitting repository memos, what downsides will there be, if any, down the road when running reports, upgrading to a new version of TMG, etc.? Hopefully, I'm not asking something that's been covered before. I tried searching, but couldn't seem to find an answer to this. Thanks for any information, clarification or answers that can be provided. Dan

Terry, I appreciate you taking the time to reply, and for pointing out some considerations I had missed. You've shown me why it's worthwhile to stick with the source elements and structure. I also want to express my appreciation to you for your TMG tips site. It has been very helpful. Thanks much, Dan