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TMG vs. Legacy

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Well, as a genealogy newbie, I am stressing over the selection of software to use. As a marketing professional, I work with databases all the time and understand the value of them being as complete and accurate as possible. As such, I want to choose something that will give me a good range of options overall.

 

I recognize the value in TMG in the amount of detail it can store but I'm not particularly fond of the interface (not afraid of it, I just don't like it much) and I have 'some' reservations about Visual FoxPro being the development format. I know it won't go away too soon but it will go away.

 

I'm really liking Legacy Family Tree at this point. I like the interface and it seems like it captures a lot of detail similar to TMG. I like the reporting and find it easy to use. I don't mind learning new software but I don't want to spend all my time figuring it out.

 

So, I'm looking for recommendations/insight from those of you who have been there done that. By virtue of this board I know that means you are probably biased towards TMG but I've seen some good comparisons on here between the two but they are over 2 years old now so I wanted to check back.

 

Would there be some sense in me starting out with Legacy to get my feet wet and eventually moving over to TMG? Would I lose anything in the process?

 

I'm anxious to get started and am really struggling over this decision.

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I know virtually nothing about Legacy, so I can't offer any comparison. Some features that I think are essential in TMG that I think are uncommon or not present in other programs include:

 

1. The ability to enter multiple people in an event, and cross-reference them in narrative output. This saves data entry time for events like census, family moves, wills, and the like because you only enter the event once for all the people involved. Then you can, if you wish, have them mentioned in each other's narratives - for example have the narrative for the parent mention all the other members of the household present in a census. If you create a website with Second Site these mentions can become links so the reader can instantly move to that person's narrative.

 

2. The ability create true narrative output for all events, not just the basic birth, marriage, death events. And with that the ability to "polish" the narrative into something quite better than "computer speak."

 

3. The ability to "Accent" people with any desired characteristic, especially by how they are related to me, with color coding on the various screens.

 

Of these, I'd think the first is the biggest issue if you start with a program that doesn't have them - you would have to go back and re-enter a lot of data to fix it if you moved to TMG later.

 

For more on TMG's key features, in my view, see my Why TMG? article.

 

I'd suggest deciding whether these features, or others you see, are important to you, and if so making sure the program you choose has them. Of course I'm biased. :)

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Well, as a genealogy newbie, I am stressing over the selection of software to use. ...

 

I recognize the value in TMG in the amount of detail it can store but I'm not particularly fond of the interface (not afraid of it, I just don't like it much) and I have 'some' reservations about Visual FoxPro being the development format. I know it won't go away too soon but it will go away.

 

I'm really liking Legacy Family Tree at this point. I like the interface and it seems like it captures a lot of detail similar to TMG. I like the reporting and find it easy to use. I don't mind learning new software but I don't want to spend all my time figuring it out.

 

So, I'm looking for recommendations/insight from those of you who have been there done that. By virtue of this board I know that means you are probably biased towards TMG but I've seen some good comparisons on here between the two but they are over 2 years old now so I wanted to check back.

 

Would there be some sense in me starting out with Legacy to get my feet wet and eventually moving over to TMG? Would I lose anything in the process?

 

I'm anxious to get started and am really struggling over this decision.

Hi,

In addition to Terry's comments, I can add that I thoroughly endorse in particular his first point about the cross referencing.

I am currently looking at the Free Legacy (and the free Roots Magic) for a course I'm running this week about choosing genie software but someone else is coming along to demo the full Legacy, so my overview knowledge of Legacy is pretty basic.

At the moment, what is driving me pottiest about the free version (which you would presumably NOT be using as the paid up version is very similar to TMG in event/sentence/sourcing customisation possiblities with the use of roles, customised sentences etc) is that I cannot seem to (currently) find how to see everything about a person at once.

In TMG I can work with the layout options to get screen views suited to what I am working with at the time - along with customised input templates.

in Legacy (free), I can see family with basic BDM OR pedigree view but to see the events/facts, I have to open another screen, which only shows me the individual, out of context.

Also the lack of quick entry using function keys for repeats, adding/updating (but then I'm a keyboarder).

 

Another point relates to publishing data.

Terry mentioned Second Site (SS) for web pages.

Legacy appears not to have anything like the flexibility that this combination of TMG and SS can give you, offering what looks like a very basic set of web output templates - but does at least offer that even from the free version, which is pretty good going for free. (This comment applies to the paid version of Legacy as well, from what the chap coming to do the demo for me has showed me so far).

 

Terry also mentioned accents.

I drive my accents from flags (along with all sorts of other things, eg is this individual to be output to the web, have I found his birth cert, etc etc)

Legacy does have a sort of equivalent in "tags". I don't know about the full version, but the free version only seems to have 3, admittedly with some flexibility about how they can be applied to your database, and as yet I haven't found a way to colour code from them, although I have been led to believe that you could control your outputs from them.

After experiencing what TMG can do with Flags, accents, etc, which gives me limitless options on what I can highlight, find again, keep track of, by using such things, I think I would very quickly realise that this is a limitation.

But if you've not seen the power of TMG, you wouldn't realise that of course.

 

After many years, I still find it can cope with whatever I want to throw at it - project manage my dna projects, no problem, being one of the more recent adventures.

 

The friendly people on the TMG lists and this forum, and of course Terry's TMG pages, can quickly help you get the best out of TMG.

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Terry's #1 is a huge advantage of TMG over other genealogy software. Until you actually use it, I'm not sure you can fully appreciate it's value. A typical marriage tag in other programs only allow the groom and bride to be attached to it. With TMG, you can also link the maid of honor, best man, bridesmaids, groomsmen, etc. This ability to cross reference not only allows you to add interesting narrative, but can be helpful in working around your brick walls because it allows you to easily see other paths you might be able to research.

 

Sheila Altenbernd

 

 

 

1. The ability to enter multiple people in an event, and cross-reference them in narrative output. This saves data entry time for events like census, family moves, wills, and the like because you only enter the event once for all the people involved. Then you can, if you wish, have them mentioned in each other's narratives - for example have the narrative for the parent mention all the other members of the household present in a census. If you create a website with Second Site these mentions can become links so the reader can instantly move to that person's narrative.

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I haven't used Legacy other than to have had a quick look through the free version.

 

I did use Family Tree Maker for a number of years before moving to TMG. The reason I decided to try TMG was that I found a site (7 years ago) on the net that rated most of the popular products of the time. When I saw that TMG had been rated about double FTM, I thought that I should check it out to see if I was missing out. The ratings on the website (then) were pretty accurate, TMG is(was) easily double the product that FTM was then. At that time Legacy was rated in the same ballpark as FTM.

 

The main point that I would like to add in addition to what Terry has said above and what you will find on his website is that once you "get the hang" of TMG you will discover how powerful the combination of Custom Flags, Filters, The Project Explorer and Focus Groups are. Truly a massive difference in capability between TMG and most of the other products on the market. Those combined tools are brilliant for checking your entire database against any source of data you choose. As an example most of the burials in my local city are listed online in the one database. I have a series of filters to check for people who may be buried there and for whom I don't have death details (i.e. have had a major event happen in this state, at least 75 years since birth or 50 years since marriage and have no death event and my custom flag not checked etc). You can save all the "possibles" in a focus group (if you wish) and work through them at your leisure or you can just rerun the filter because any that you have found or flagged as not present wont show up. For me this combination of capabilities is TMG's best feature.

 

You will note that many TMG users have many different views on which are TMG's best features.

 

Legacy does have an add on Charting Tool which devotees are quite fond of. However, a couple of years back at our local Genealogical Society the Computer Special Interest Group asked experienced users of Legacy, FTM, TMG and a couple of others to try and match a rather complicated Chart that the convenor had created in Reunion as a bit of a demonstration as to how to use the packages in a forum. I think he was a little surprised when TMG delivered. Legacy didn't.

Edited by nbradley

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As custodian of society's video projector I attend the Legacy user group, and for one thing it is far easier to create source citations that for the most part follow Elizabeth Shown Mills Evidence Explained model in Legacy. TMG's Mills source types are based on the now old :sad: Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian, creating new source types that follow Evidence Explained in TMG is no trivial matter. Maybe we'll see an update in source types in v8 :drool:. Legacy is FamilySearch certified there is no indication v8 will be.

 

Having used many of TMG's advanced features I find they are a double edged sword, excellent in TMG, but when the only way to get data into another program is GEDCOM loss of data is inevitable.

 

Second Site is an absolute plus for TMG :cool:

Edited by ggilbert1

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While you see the TMG interface as one of it's weaknesses, most people using TMG see the interface as one of it's strengths. The interface is highly customizable. A person's names, events and relationships are 'on top' and you don't need to drill down to see them.

 

TMG uses consistent models for how it handles name tags, event tags, and relationship tags. Put another way, for example, all events tags have exactly the same fields available for data entry.

 

Legacy supports Unicode and TMG (FoxPro 9) doesn't.

 

TMG doesn't support wordprocessing output under 64-bit operating systems. That will be corrected in v8 when v8 is completed.

 

TMG's strengths are narrative report output and Second Site for web output. Legacy doesn't compare in either regard. For the most part, TMG can create a narrative report like you would write it.

 

TMG handles multiple names much better than Legacy.

 

I'll note that if I were picking an alternative program to TMG, it would be RootsMagic, not Legacy. RootsMagic can produce a decent narrative report except for how it handles notes and Rootsmagic can have multiple individuals linked to events.

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Great feedback everyone! I would write more but at the moment I'm digesting it all. I did print off the TMG manual today and will start reading through it.

 

Thanks!

 

Terry - BTW, I did read your 'Why TMG' article this past weekend before posting. Good article. I wasn't sure how current it was though since the date at the top is 2005. I know it says version 7 of TMG but I wasn't entirely sure.

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Terry - BTW, I did read your 'Why TMG' article this past weekend before posting. Good article. I wasn't sure how current it was though since the date at the top is 2005. I know it says version 7 of TMG but I wasn't entirely sure.

That's an interesting reflection - thanks. As I look at that article, I name only eight of what I consider the key features. All of them, except only the advent of Second Site, were present in TMG 4 when I started using it over 10 years ago. As the key features in my view, I really don't think they have changed since 1999, let alone since 2005. 

 

The changes since then - advent of Roles in ver 4d, new interface and saving Accents in ver 5, sorting of Witnesses and Citations in ver 6, Reminders and Sentence Preview in ver 7 to mention my favorites - have enhanced the program certainly, but don't in my thinking compare to those fundamental features as a reason to choose TMG. Still, maybe I need to revisit the article and see if it needs updating.

 

The reason you see a 2005 date on an article rated for TMG 7 is that I don't re-date my articles when I review them for a new TMG version unless there is a substantive change in the text. I do that for the benefit of those who print them off - no need for them to look for changes that aren't there. :) But I see that policy has a downside too.

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When I was at the NGS Conference in Salt Lake City I picked up a full copy of Legacy. They were selling it for $20 and I had heard so much about it I thought I would find out if all the talk was true. I found two things I dislike about it in the first 30 minutes I was using it.

 

I enter all variations of an individual's name into the database. With TMG I pick the primary name and group the other names in displays and reports using what TMG calls the sort date. As an example the wife's grandfather has several names. He was born Samuel Francis Graham. I have found him also with the name Samuel F. Graham in a census and Samuel Frank Graham in a letter from a friend to another. He ran away from home because of his step mother and apparantly (this is conjecture) had a falling out with his grandfather after whom he was named. He switched to Francis Samuel Graham, Frank Samuel Graham, and finally Frank S. Graham. This latter name is the one he used for the last 70 years of his life. I have Frank S. Graham as the primary name and have all the others listed in approximate chronological order, not the actual dates but the sort date. I have several custom name tags to identify the type of name, i.e., census, abbreviated, nick, etc. I have not been able to replicate this in Legacy. Maybe it can be done but I never found out how.

 

The second one is even more discouraging. A 3rd great-grandfather, named Charles, married three women. With the first wife, named Elizabeth, he had four children including the 2nd great-grandmother. With the second wife, also named Elizabeth, he had three more children, and with the third wife, named Mary, he had four more children. In Legacy I could only view the data related to one of the three families at the same time. I could view either Elizabeth and the Mary which was no problem but if I chose to view Charles I had to select which wife. This really got frustrating with the first two wives who were both named Elizabeth. If I was not careful I could easily have confused them. In looking at a census record I would see all seven children from the first two wives but would only have the children of the selected Elizabeth displayed in Legacy.

 

This is an extreme example of how that could be unusable. A third great uncle marries a woman who has a daughter and they have three children. The mother dies and the uncle marries the step daughter who has been married twice in the interim and has two children. Then the uncle and the step daughter have five more children. It is difficult enough with TMG to keep everybody straight but impossible in Legacy.

 

As I said I have only used Legacy very sparingly so my concerns about it may be unwarranted. But I would think these are basic attributes to any genealogy program. TMG handles them, Legacy does not as far as I can tell.

 

Mike

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I own both programs. I've used both for about the same amount of time. I've only been doing genealogy for a few weeks but I am an expert computer user in general. So I'm basically a genealogy newbie. Here are my impressions of both programs and just as importantly, both user groups.

 

Legacy

 

Advantages

 

  • $20 - very cheap for a very good piece of software. Definately better than the free ones out there I tried.
  • User Interface - slick and nice. It is very, very easy to use for newcomers.
  • Features - It has a lot of features for $20. In fact, most of the editing features you would find in TMG. You can do sentence overrides, you can override the bibliography sentences and stuf flike that.
  • Citation/Source/Repo Support - Fairly high end. It has easy-to-use support for various citation formats. You pick a template and fill it in.
  • Support - There is a decent forum on genealogy.com.
  • Reports/Charts - Decent, much better than the free stuff. You can customize a lot of stuff. The charts are nice.
  • Navigation - Really nice, one-click lists that are useful. When on a person, I can click one button and get a clickable list of all citations for that person. It doesn't have to generate a report to do it. I can then edit from right there, either the source or citation. It has lots of coolness that way for other features as well.

Disadvantages

 

  • If Legacy was so good, why am I here at TMG? There are reasons related to TMG as well as some related just to Legacy.
  • E-Mail list. The Legacy email list was REALLY off-putting. So much so that I never posted there and never visited again after spending half a day reading it. It is, quite frankly, one of the worse user lists I've ever seen for abusing people who ask honest questions when comparing products. Your post, for example, would not be received kindly.
  • Citation/Source/Repo Support - While good, it didn't do what I wanted it to do. I made a mistake in setting up the source (an 1880 census that I setup as an 1870 census). Before I caught it, I made about 30 citations to it. I could not go back and change the source to 1880 and I could not change the citations once they were attached to a source. Now maybe there was a way, but it wasn't obvious to me.
  • Citation/Source/Repo Support - You can't edit the template portions of a source once you use a template. You cannot customize first and following citation formats.
  • The above reasons are why I switched initially (or at least started evaluating TMG).

 

TMG

 

Advantages

  • Tag Roles - This is stuff like Witness and defining other roles for an event. In Legacy, you can't associate multiple people to one event outside the principles (for the most part).
  • Citation/Source/Repo Support - Very, very powerful. I really like it. You can customize everything.
  • Professionalism - TMG is really designed for the pro I think. While Legacy has surety levels, TMG has it for both principles, the date, the place and the memo field as well. So where Legacy might have a feature, TMG will have that feature at a very advanced level.
  • User Interface - Pretty good. At first glance, it looks clunky and definately out-dated. On the other hand, it is designed for data entry and navigation. So you can see why it is done the way it is after using it for awhile.
  • Reports - Very customizable and high end. Definately more options and more professional.
  • Tag/Flag Support - More options and customizations. Stuff like sort dates so you can order your tags.
  • Accents - The ability to color code different things in the tree. Legacy has this as well, but not to the degree of customization.
  • I think you get the point by now, Legacy = Basic, easy-to-use with TMG = Advanced, more difficult to use correctly.
  • User Support and Forums - Just great. Everyone here is incredibly helpful. There are loads of online guides and "how-to" sites for TMG.

 

Disadvantages

  • While reports are great, I would like to see report templates like you have sentence templates.
  • Pricey at $80. Even more pricey when you realize you need to buy another piece to generate decent web reports.
  • Less modern. i.e., doesn't support Unicode or 64-bit. But I believe those will eventually be addressed.
  • Less stable. Quite frankly, I've had quite a few crashes with TMG as well as various fatal popups when generating reports. If you know what you are doing, you can get around those fatal popups, but I'm sure they would scare the bejesus out of someone less computer literate.
  • Less easy to do simple things. i.e., you can't replicate the clickable list of source and citations for a user as you can in Legacy. You can get reports by fiddling with the report options, but it isn't the same.

 

 

Summary and Overall Recommendation

 

I do think Legacy is a great deal at $20. For a lot of people, it is going to be all they need. I think as you get into this fun field though and your projects get larger and larger, you start to need something more sophisticated. So overall, TMG is the best option if you are going to be doing this for a long time. It supports almost everything Legacy does but with more advanced options.

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Dan:

I am assuming you are referring to the FoxPro crashing with a highly technical explanation of what the problem is and asking if Microsoft should be informed about it.

 

This was quite a topic of discussion over a year ago with the following consensus. And you might fit the profile to have this happening since you have a high degree of expertise with computers. The most frequent occurrance of the popup was when a person clicked something to open a different view such as another individual. Apparantly FoxPro can not handle a rapid change in the focus and so would bomb. The solution for me was to slow down a bit in my navigation of the program and since then I have had very few occurances, generally when I get a bit sloppy or am in a hurry.

 

This is just a suggestion.

 

As for the question of the relative worth of the two programs, I bought Legacy at the last NGS conference for $20. I had heard so much about it I thought I would get a first hand appraisal about it. So I skipped a fancy dinner for just a chocolate milk shake. In my opinion Legacy was not worth missing a nice meal.

 

Thank you for the good analysis of the programs.

Mike

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