How to link external exhibits to people

[cassb 0]

I am new to TMG. I have figured out how to load a new exhibit (image). I would now like to link it to several people. How do I do that?

 

Thanks!

Bryan

[Terry Reigel 0]

Bryan,

 

If you made the Exhibit external, you just create a new link to the same image for each person. A single external image file can be linked to any number of people, events, etc.

 

If you made the Exhibit internal, you cannot link it to multiple people. You can create new internal Exhibits from the same source image, but a new copy will be created for each one.

 

Alternatively, you can link an Exhibit to an event, and attach that event to any number of people. Depending on exactly what you are trying to accomplish, this may be a better approach.

[cassb 0]

Bryan,

 

If you made the Exhibit external, you just create a new link to the same image for each person. A single external image file can be linked to any number of people, events, etc.

 

If you made the Exhibit internal, you cannot link it to multiple people. You can create new internal Exhibits from the same source image, but a new copy will be created for each one.

 

Alternatively, you can link an Exhibit to an event, and attach that event to any number of people. Depending on exactly what you are trying to accomplish, this may be a better approach.

 

Thanks, Terry. Can you please give me a step-by-step for the "create a new link to the same image for each person"? That's the part I don't know how to do.

 

Thanks!

Bryan

[Terry Reigel 0]

Bryan,

 

You do exactly what you did the first time. As far as TMG is concerned, the second exhibit is totally unrelated to the first. It won't even notice they happen to use the same external image file.

 

So you go to each person person in turn, and for each one, click the camera icon to open the Exhibit Log, click the Add button, and select the same file you selected before.

[cassb 0]

Bryan,

 

You do exactly what you did the first time. As far as TMG is concerned, the second exhibit is totally unrelated to the first. It won't even notice they happen to use the same external image file.

 

So you go to each person person in turn, and for each one, click the camera icon to open the Exhibit Log, click the Add button, and select the same file you selected before.

 

OK... that's um... weird. So the "exhibit" I create really does not represent a single exhibit item then. It represents a link between a person or place and an 'exhibit item', which may be the same document/photo/file over and over again. So there is no database table that only holds the exhibit items (or a path to them if external)?

 

That means that if I have a group photo of 20 people and I want to link it to 20 individuals in the database, I have to create 20 exhibits and also duplicate the exhibit info (like caption, description, photo date/place, etc) 20 times? Not real efficient and I would not have programmed it that way myself, but OK. :-)

 

Thanks!

Bryan

[Terry Reigel 0]

Bryan,

 

You can attach the exhibit to a Tag, and then enter as many people as you like in the Tag. That way you only have to create the Exhibit once.

[cassb 0]

Bryan,

 

You can attach the exhibit to a Tag, and then enter as many people as you like in the Tag. That way you only have to create the Exhibit once.

 

OK, thank you Terry. I really appreciate your help. I have also bookmarked your web site -- I read through your TMG Tips page so far and I am sure to use some of your tips! :-)

[cassb 0]

Now that I understand a bit more about tags, I don't really like the idea of creating a new tag for every photo a person is in. What was the original idea in TMG when they introduced the ability to link exhibits to people? Was it just that you might want to store one portrait of a person as an afterthought? What I had done in Ultimate Family Tree was store a variety of pictures of my ancestors - like one as a youth, one in middle age, one in older age as a record of what they looked like at different stages of life. Most of the pictures include other people in them, which I linked to that photo as well. In UFT you store an exhibit as its own record, and then you can 'connect' whatever people you want to that exhibit record. Like, land deeds would usually connect to both a husband and wife; reunion photos would connect to everyone at the reunion event.

 

But there still is only one exhibit with one title, date, place and description. Being a programmer and database developer, I'm trying to figure out the database schema and what the rationale was for requiring multiple exhibit records for a single image file. It should be set up with a Person table, an Exhibit table, and then an intermediary index that links the person to the exhibit.

 

Bryan

Edited January 15, 2012 by cassb

[Terry Reigel 0]

Bryan,

 

I'm not going to attempt to address your programmer questions. But I'd observe that exhibits attached to people do not have sort dates. If you want to control where the various photos appear within a narrative you need that capability, which only exists in Tags.

[Jim Byram 0]

A record in the exhibit table contains a link (or internal exhibit) and connects to one focus (person, event, citation, source, repository or place). You can have as many exhibits linked to a single focus (say a person) as you wish. Multiple exhibits linked to any single focus can be ordered as you wish. The exhibits linked to a given focus show (by default) when the Exhibit Log is opened from that focus. The Exhibit Log opened from the Person View shows both the exhibits linked to that person and the images linked to events in which that person is a principal.

 

TMG does not use an intermediate table to connect an exhibit table to other data tables. There are downsides to the UFT library arrangement as well but that's water under the bridge. The typical way of linking multiple people to a single exhibit is to link the image to an event tag or to a history tag. Exhibits linked to event tags appear in the person Exhibit Log view (when the person is a principal in the event) but images linked to History tags don't (because all persons are linked as witnesses).

 

TMG has the ability to add an image highlight to (for example) make one person stand out in a group photo.

 

Play with it and use help and you'll see how things work. btw... TMG can link to exhibits stored in any legitimate user space. If you use exhibits stored in a tree, TMG can back up the tree but will not restore it (as a tree). If you store exhibits in one or more trees, it's best to manage those outside of TMG.

[cassb 0]

A record in the exhibit table contains a link (or internal exhibit) and connects to one focus (person, event, citation, source, repository or place). You can have as many exhibits linked to a single focus (say a person) as you wish. Multiple exhibits linked to any single focus can be ordered as you wish. The exhibits linked to a given focus show (by default) when the Exhibit Log is opened from that focus. The Exhibit Log opened from the Person View shows both the exhibits linked to that person and the images linked to events in which that person is a principal.

 

TMG does not use an intermediate table to connect an exhibit table to other data tables. There are downsides to the UFT library arrangement as well but that's water under the bridge. The typical way of linking multiple people to a single exhibit is to link the image to an event tag or to a history tag. Exhibits linked to event tags appear in the person Exhibit Log view (when the person is a principal in the event) but images linked to History tags don't (because all persons are linked as witnesses).

 

TMG has the ability to add an image highlight to (for example) make one person stand out in a group photo.

 

Play with it and use help and you'll see how things work. btw... TMG can link to exhibits stored in any legitimate user space. If you use exhibits stored in a tree, TMG can back up the tree but will not restore it (as a tree). If you store exhibits in one or more trees, it's best to manage those outside of TMG.

 

Hi Jim - thanks for your explanation. So it seems the Exhibit table has a one-to-many relationship, but you cannot set up a many-to-many with it. That's OK, but requires that I change how I use exhibits in my data. I was using them as sort of a 'photo album' in UFT, where a certain photo could be included in many albums (person records), or many albums (person records) could contain the same photo.

 

The TMG design is to use the event or history tag as sort of the intermediate table then? So for example, if your photo is of a family reunion, with say 30 people in it, then you would create one history tag of "Reunion" that's not associated with any individual, then add that tag to all of the person records that are in the picture? I like the image highlight idea though! So you can have a different highlight for each person tagged in the photo somehow? I'd appreciate specific instructions on how to set all this up for my group photos and documents.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "exhibits stored in a tree" though.

 

Sorry for all the techie questions... I think like a programmer, so I want to understand the underlying structure of the database before I start commiting data to it. :-)

 

Bryan

[Jim Byram 0]

The TMG design is to use the event or history tag as sort of the intermediate table then?

I guess that you could think of it that way.

 

So for example, if your photo is of a family reunion, with say 30 people in it, then you would create one history tag of "Reunion" that's not associated with any individual, then add that tag to all of the person records that are in the picture?

That's one solution. You actually add the people to the tag, not the tag to the people.

 

I like the image highlight idea though! So you can have a different highlight for each person tagged in the photo somehow?

In this case, you'd have 30 images files, each with a different highlight,,, one image linked to each person.

 

I'd appreciate specific instructions on how to set all this up for my group photos and documents.

Select an image in the Exhibit log, click [View/Edit] and play with the highlight options.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "exhibits stored in a tree" though.

Some people store all exhibits store all external exhibit files in one folder. Some people store the exhibit files in a folder tree with different files in different folders in the tree.

[cassb 0]

Ah, OK -- so basically the highlighting thing actually edits the image file itself. I thought it might be a coordinates stored that puts the highlight on the image at runtime. Now that would be a cool feature! :-)

 

OK, I get what you mean by tree now... a folder tree. I do have a separate folder set up for photos, one for videos, one for documents, etc. So if the db is restored, then all of the exhibits would get put back into only one folder? And the link to them gets changed to point to the one folder that was restored and not the separate folders I have them in? Hmmm... that's not good either.

[Terry Reigel 0]

Ah, OK -- so basically the highlighting thing actually edits the image file itself. I thought it might be a coordinates stored that puts the highlight on the image at runtime. Now that would be a cool feature! :-)

I think it's actually stored in a separate file so the original isn't disturbed, but they are in linked pairs (with the file with the highlight data not apparent to the user) so one pair is required for each different highlight.

OK, I get what you mean by tree now... a folder tree. I do have a separate folder set up for photos, one for videos, one for documents, etc. So if the db is restored, then all of the exhibits would get put back into only one folder? And the link to them gets changed to point to the one folder that was restored and not the separate folders I have them in? Hmmm... that's not good either.

They all get put back in one folder, which is an issue if there are duplicate file names. The links can be fixed, provided no files were lost due to duplicate names.

 

The solution if you want to store your exhibit files in more than one folder is to back them up externally, rather than as part of the TMG backup process. That's not a bad idea anyway, because including image files in your backup makes the backup file bigger and process slower, not a good thing if you want to encourage frequent backups of the data itself. Generally exhibits don't change all that often, so are fine if included in your regular data backup system.