Embedded Citations

[John K 0]

Am I correct that embedded citations will not be visible to someone who receives a GEDCOM export of a TMG file? (I do know that they cannot be seen in the test GEDCOM file I just created and viewed with Family Tree Maker, but I guess the problem could be on the Family Tree Maker end.)

I am thinking about converting the citations I currently show (awkwardly) as parenthetical expressions into elegant embedded footnotes. However, I will have to think twice about this move if it means that people to whom I send GEDCOM versions of my file will no longer see these citations at all.

[Jim Byram 0]

An embedded citation is just a text construct that is interpreted during report output to create a footnote or endnote. They would be meaningless to any other program and for that reason are stripped out during GEDCOM export.

[Terry Reigel 0]

John,

 

Two points:

 

1. Are you sure that the rest of your data is being exported? Do you have people entered as witnesses, say in census, will, or residence tags? Do you have two- person tags, especially for people who are not married to each other? Have you used Sentence or Roles to convey information? Do you use split memos or split citation details? If the answer to any of these is yes, the embedded citations may be the least of your worries, and perhaps you should explore other ways of sharing your data.

 

2. You can solve the issue of embedded citations by breaking the text into separate tags, ending each tag where you want the citation to appear. Then use conventional rather than embedded citations, and order the tags with sort dates.

[Michael Hannah 0]

I would echo Terry's concern. GEDCOM is a GEnealogical Data COMmunications standard that is very old and very minimal. It was developed years ago by the LDS church, last revised in 1996, and they have announced that it will not be updated. Most modern genealogy software packages today have many features that cannot be expressed using this data exchange standard. Since TMG is probably the package with the most flexibility and the most features, there are many features (such as embedded citations) that must be discarded on export since there is no way in GEDCOM to express them.

 

In other words, are you absolutely sure you must send your data to someone using GEDCOM? Maybe if you explained your actual goal we might be able to suggest alternatives which would retain more of your TMG data.

[GenerationGoneBy 0]

I agree. And you can't be sure their program reads it correctly either. I prefer to send printed reports. There is no doubt what I mean when I say "John was born with green eyes and blond hair on 23 Jan 1900 in Rutherford County, TN." We all understand it and the person who received it can change it to "John was born 23 Jan 1900 in Rutherford County, TN. He had green eyes and blond hair." And not change it's meaning at all. If I want to cite my grandmother for the green eyes part, his wife for the birth date and the census for the year, it is obvious to everyone what I meant. If the other person decides to drop the part about the green eyes and blond hair, they can also drop the citation from my grandmother.

 

I once sent a GEDCOM from TMG to a cousin who imported it into FTM. She then sent me a GEDCOM back which I imported into TMG. Somewhere along the process, my MIL became my spouse. Luckily I was smart enough to not make it part of my project. I had her send a printed report, and I manually entered the few family members she had that I needed. It took about an hour to do. Cleaning up the GEDCOM would have taken me weeks. I guess I am too much of a perfectionist, but I know I am not married to my MIL.

 

Now I realize that sometimes you have to use GEDCOM, like posting online. I just don't use those type of sites. When I post online, I prefer narratives. I say what I mean and cite what I say.

[John K 0]

Thank you everyone for the comments and insights. Michael was right that I should have explained my goal. While I do occasionally send GEDCOM files to others, what I am really struggling with is a way to pass on the database to the next generation. My son has a passing interest in genealogy, but I cannot see him or his wife ever taking the time needed to become familiar with TMG. On the other hand, anyone can use Family Tree Maker (which I was using until a year ago). My fear is that to the extent I start using embedded citations (or, as Terry points out, witnesses, two person tags, etc.) I will loose the ability to transfer the data back to FTM (or another easy to use program). As a practical matter, this means that while the printed books and reports I have created will live on, the actual electronic data base will effectively vanish when I do. Has anyone else worried about this?

Thank you.

P.S. Terry's idea of breaking up the text into separate tags is a good one - but probably not practical. Some of the notes I have would require almost 50 tags to do in this manner. While this could be done, it would really be a nightmare to edit the text if I wanted to add something or make changes in the future. (I am also not certain that sort tags transfer in GEDCOM.)

[Michael Hannah 0]

If this is your goal, I would highly recommend getting Second Site and making a set of web pages. You can store the set of pages on a CD and the only thing the person needs to have and know how to use is a browser. Many of us have "worried" about our electronic database vanishing, but I suggest that the more important worry is the data itself no longer being accessible. Having the output in a web page is electronic, and decades in the future when it needs to be imported into some program not yet even conceived a translation program could be written to import such data. In the meantime you data will be much more accessible to relatives than converting to some genealogy program that may not survive over the years. Web pages will survive.

 

Just one old man's opinion,