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Judy M.

"There were no children of...."

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Is there any way to eliminate the "There were no children of..." sentence in a Journal Report when I want to refer to the children as the stepchildren of a non-bio parent, not the children of the bio-parent? I know this doesn't fit the definition of "GENEology," but for a number of reasons it's what I would like to try to do...somehow. There can be an explanation as, perhaps, an Anecdote, but the "There were no children of..." sentence remains.

 

Thanks in advance!

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Hi Judy,

 

The special NarrativeChildren tag type was introduced specifically to deal with this issue. For a given couple you can enter such a tag and override the default heading for their Family section.

 

Now, if you want to get REALLY fancy and complex, you CAN use it to also list step children in addition to Primary/Biological children. But that is a really advanced type of customization. If you are interested see the section on this tag type in my one-line book.

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Okay...so how/where do I enter the names of the children using the NarrativeChildren tag -- [:TAB:]The children of [P] <and [PO]> were as follows:[:NP:] ?? Should I just enter the names in the Sentence-structure section...or is there another way to do this?

 

Thanks!

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Okay, Judy, since you seem to be interested in this customization there are two stages.

 

First, I suggest you start with Terry's basic description of this custom tag:

Customizing the “Children of” Statement

 

If your only output is a TMG Journal report, Terry describes this tag type extremely well. Note that for TMG you must modify/use the sentence template itself. The tag sentence template can provide a different heading, and/or add a note concerning the parent(s) of Non-Primary children, or the list of such children itself. That is why Roles are handy to define different sentence templates. But TMG only uses the sentences of the Principals, ignores the main tag Memo, and will not produce output from the sentences or memos of any linked Witness to this tag.

 

I suggest you also read the first paragraph of my description of this tag type in my book as I referenced earlier (NarrativeChildren tag type) for limitations concerning this tag, the need for TMG to be generating a "children of" heading which can be modified, and which heading the tag will affect.

 

However, as I mentioned, if you want to customize and add lists to both TMG Journal reports and Second Site pages, that is much more complex, and only for the adventuresome. Fortunately Second Site will use the Memo field as well as the sentence template. With the special sentence codes to identify output to be hidden from TMG but output only by Second Site, you can include text which will produce an extra Family Section of these non-Primary children in Second Site. I describe this in great detail in my on-line book as My Custom Usage of this special tag type, including the custom Roles and their sentence templates I have added to this tag type. Scroll down from the link above and you will see sections where I describe how to use this tag to enter Second Site Family Sections for any Non-Primary children, with special sections describing when parents have Adopted Children, Step Children, or both. The codes needed for Second Site will depend upon what page format you use, so my descriptions should be taken only as example.

 

This Second Site description is probably more than you want. I would stick with Terry's examples first until you get comfortable with what this very special tag type does.

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I had checked out all those suggestions earlier, but I'm still not clear as to how to actually add the children's names. Also, are there examples of output anywhere?

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Sorry, Judy, but unfortunately this customization is a bit complicated.

 

It is not clear what you want to do, and it will depend upon the specific parent/child and marriage situations you have.

One example would be when one parent who has children remarries someone who has no children, and thus the new spouse would become the step-parent of any still-living children. While this new couple has a Marriage tag they have no Primary biological children together. This seems to be at least one case which you mentioned in your initial post. For the sake of the example below I will assume the Mother (Mary) remarries, and the new Father (John) is the stepfather of her three children but he has no children who will live with them.

To create a list specific to each case you can just avoid creating Roles at all and define separate local sentence templates for each Principal in every NarrativeChildren tag you add.

So assume you add a NarrativeChildren tag for John and Mary, where they are the Principals. You would locally change Mary's sentence template to something like:

[:TAB:]There were no known children of [P] and [PO]

Then you would locally change John's sentence template to something like:

[:NP:][:TAB:]Step children living with [P], children of [PO], were[:CR:][LIND:]Fred, born 1916[:CR:]Sam, born 1918[:CR:]Sally, born 1920[:LIND][:TAB:]There were no known children of [P] and [PO]

That's it for this one case. However, if both of the couple bring prior children to the new marriage you will need different sentence templates for both Principals. And if this couple also has biological children together then you will need yet different sentence templates for both Principals since TMG will automatically follow the output of their NarrativeChildren tag with the list of their biological children.

If you want to define default Roles to use for NarrarativeChildren tags throughout the Project, because of what might automatically output for a parent depending upon whether there are Marriage tags or Primary children there can be a need for many different roles. That's why the descriptions in my book get so complicated.

The example above makes lots of assumptions. If you have a specific case where you want to do this, I can suggest appropriate sentence templates.

Michael

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I just want to say that X and Y had three children: A, B, and C. I'm not particularly concerned about whether I'm doing it the "best" way, just that the output says what I want. So maybe I can just use the NarrativeChildren tag and tack on the names of the children in the "Sentence structure." I would prefer not to go into detail here, but it's a rather complicated situation. I don't know how to use "codes" to add their names.

I'm sorry that I made this so complicated for you. I appreciate your taking the time to explain so much.

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Note that in a journal report, the report generation adds the list of children following the sentence created by the NarrativeChildren tag. The tag is designed to allow modifying the default text before the children list.

 

You need to read the help topic. Select "Narrative Children Tag Type" in the help index. That takes you to the "Special Journal Report Tag Types" topic.

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I had searched for and read everything (help menu, your links, etc.) before posting my question using the Help menu in TMG and doing a Google search. What led me to asking whether I should simply edit the sentence structure was this:

"To be useful, the NarrativeChildren tag will require a custom sentence. In this context, the NarrativeChildren sentence recognizes a [:NoBirthPlaces:] code which will cause birth places to be suppressed from the subsequent list of children.

 

"In all other contexts and in all other ways (including all other reports), the NarrativeChildren tag acts like any other tag in the Other group."

If that means I edit the sentence structure manually, that's fine. What I don't know is whether there might be another way to handle this where I would be using "codes" through which I would enter the children's names, especially with the reference above to suppressing birth places from the list of children. That seems to imply that there's a way to generate the list of children.

 

I already have the three children listed as step-children of the step-father and bio-mother but would like to show them as children of the two bio-parents also (which is not conventional). I'm sorry that I didn't explain that well in my very first post. Is it therefore best to just edit the sentence structure?

Meanwhile, I have learned a lot in general and appreciate your taking the time to explain so thoroughly.

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Judy,

 

As Jim says, the NarrativeChildren tag changes only the introductory sentence for the list of children. The list of children is generated normally (except you can use a code in the tag to suppress the birth places in the listing).

 

There is no need to create the list of children with the tag as long as they are entered with these parents as primary parents. The only time you have to generate the children's names is if you are trying to add children for whom these are not primary parents. In that case you can add the children's names with the tag, but there is no code for generating the list. You have to construct it yourself in the Sentence.

 

You do not need to create the Sentence manually for each Tag. You can modify the Sentence in the Tag Type, and if you need multiple different Sentences for different situations by using Roles, as described in my article that Michael pointed you to.

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So it sounds like I will be doing this manually. I guess I've been inconsistent in how I've handled similar situations in the past. I generally just make sure I'm happy with the reports I generate.

 

What I don't quite understand from what you're saying is that currently the children are listed as primary as the step-children of my son and his new wife...and also as primary under the "original" parents (i.e., with asterisks in both cases).

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Judy mentioned:

I already have the three children listed as step-children of the step-father and bio-mother but would like to show them as children of the two bio-parents also (which is not conventional).

 

Now I think I understand better, Judy. You set the children as Primary to the step-father and bio-mother, right? (Always check whether the relationship is Primary from the child's Detail view,, i.e. who are the two parents in the top slots. Checking from the parents Detail view doesn't help. The asterisk in the parent's view means something else.) That explanation makes things clearer. Actually what you are doing is "backwards" to what TMG expects. Doesn't mean what you are doing is "wrong", only that you are now battling TMG's automatic assumptions. Setting the "children of the two bio-parents" as Primary to both their bio-parents is what TMG expects and what all its reports assume. TMG "assumes" that Primary parent/child relationships are by definition biological relationships. Using the tag name variation of step-parent/child is intended to be only a visual aid to you. Just because you chose the Primary relationship type as step-parent/child, TMG will still treat it as a biological/genetic relationship because it is Primary. Any TMG ancestor/descendant linkages assume that Primary relationships are biological relationships. TMG expects that the user will use the non-bio relationship types only for non-Primary relationships, so automatically assumes any non-Primary relationship is not biological even if the tag type name is bio.

 

If you keep TMG's assumptions in mind, this is why TMG reports automatically list the Primary relationship children for parents in their Journal narrative, and do not list non-Primary relationship children. The name of the relationship tag is ignored, it is the Primary setting (from the point of view of the child) that matters to TMG.

 

Therefore, when you made the step-father and bio-mother relationships to these children Primary, these children will be listed automatically as the (assumed biological) children of this couple. Because you did not make their relationships to the bio-father Primary, they will not be listed automatically as his (assumed biological) children, even though you set the name of his relationship tag as bio. Only the two parents who are set as Primary for a child are assumed to be the couple who begat the child.

 

The purpose of the "trick" of using the NarrativeChildren tag is to be able to list children who are not Primary to either of the couple of interest, since non-Primary children are never automatically listed. TMG assumes that normally you set both the bio-father and bio-mother as Primary for their children. In that case you need the "trick" of adding text to the narrative heading of the "family" of the (non-Primary) step-father and (Primary) bio-mother so that the step-father's narrative could list these non-biological step children, since they would not automatically be listed for him as they are not Primary to him. In the bio-mother's narrative TMG assumes they will be listed as the family of the bio-father/bio-mother couple, as both are Primary for these children.

 

In your case, with the step-father and bio-mother set as Primary for these children they will automatically be listed in both of those people's narratives as that couple's family "as if" they were their biological children. The children will not be listed in the bio-father's narrative as he isn't Primary. And they will not be listed in the bio-mother's narrative as children of the bio-father/bio-mother couple since he isn't Primary. So now you have to do the "trick" for the bio-father and bio-mother family heading to get this couple's "family" to list these children, since they will not automatically be listed as they are not Primary for both of this couple.

 

Does that help explain what you are seeing any better?

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Thanks for the lengthy explanation. This follows what I've done in other similar situations. In the example that I tried to explain originally (not very successfully, as it turned out!), I do want to keep the bio-mother and stepfather as primary, and the issue I ran into for Journal Reports is that the bio-parents showed no children. Since that was inaccurate, I needed the NarrativeChildren tag to remove that notation (and decided to manually fill in the children's names). Fortunately, in this case the children's surnames make it very clear to the reader who their parents are (they have hyphenated surnames), so I don't mind the fact that although they appear to be the bio-children of the step-father in both the Journal Report and Descendant Indented Chart.

 

When you refer to the "trick," do you mean what I am doing by manually adding the children's names to the NarrativeChildren tag via the Sentence Structure? The output is what I want.

I hope this indicates that I am understanding more and again apologize for any confusion.

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