Jump to content
Elderflower

Report Sentence Structure when Birth and Baptism Tags are entered

Recommended Posts

Using TMG v 8.08 and the Individual Narrative report when looking at a sentence preview. I have a problem when both Birth and Baptism Tags have been entered for an individual. When just one of those Tags is present the report reads as I want it but when both are present it is clunky with repeated information about the parents.

 

Here are examples with the sentence structure:

 

Report output when only a Birth tag has been entered.

 

[P] <[PAR]>was born <[D]> <[L]>[:CR:]

 

Clara Henrietta TROWBRIDGE, daughter of Samuel TROWBRIDGE and Susanah WEBB, was born in 1851 at Salisbury, Wiltshire, England

 

Report output when only a Baptism tag has been entered.

 

[P] was the son of <[FATH] and> <[MOTH]> and was baptized <[D]> <[L]>[:CR:]

 

John CORNELIUS was the son of Joseph CORNELIUS and Betty HALFYARD and was baptized on 10 February 1811 at Parish Church of Chard, Chard, Somerset, England

 

Report output when both Birth and Baptism tags have been entered.

 

Thomas Robey THOMAS, son of William Mundey THOMAS and Caroline ROBEY, was born in 1851 at Alderbury, Wiltshire, England.

He was the son of William Mundey THOMAS and Caroline ROBEY and was baptized on 23 July 1851 at Alderbury, Wiltshire, England.

 

I feel sure other TMG users have come across this problem and would welcome any advice as to how I can get the report to read:

 

Thomas Robey THOMAS, son of William Mundey THOMAS and Caroline ROBEY, was born in 1851 at Alderbury, Wiltshire, England.

He was baptized on 23 July 1851 at Alderbury, Wiltshire, England.

 

I am wondering if it is the sentence structure or the report definition that is the problem.

 

Thank you for any input.

 

Pat

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The sentence structures determine the output. The default U.S. sentences don't output the parents in either sentence. Report definitions do not modify the sentence structure output.

Terry or Michael might suggest alternatives for your issue.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Pat,

As Jim says, you are not using the default sentences for these tags, as they do not include references to the parents. Either you have created custom sentences, or these sentences were imported from another program. I think UFT is the only program from which TMG imported sentences - did you import from that program?

I any case, if you are satisfied with the mention of parents as you show for the Birth Tag, the solution is to create an alternate custom Tag Type for the Baptism for cases were both appear, or to create alternate Roles in the existing Baptism Tag Type, which do not repeat the redundant information. I'd suggest adding an alternate Role to the existing Baptism Tag Type. You could use this Sentence in the new Role:

[P]  was baptized <[D]> <[L]>[:CR:]

This would of course require that you locate the people this applies to and manually changing each to the new Role.

If you are not familiar with adding Roles my Roles Tutorial  may help.

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thank you Jim and Terry for your helpful replies. I use the UK version of TMG but suspect I did compile these custom sentences a few years back when experimenting with sentence output. I will look at Terry's suggestion but I have over 2500 people with a Baptism, even more with a Birth. Think I worked out a report earlier today that showed the people with both Tags. Still rather more than I would care to alter but will try it out with a few and take it from there, altering those that I really need to and keeping the instructions on how to do it!

 

Thank you both again for taking the time to help.

 

Pat

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi again Terry

 

Have just tried your suggestion of a Role within the existing Baptism Tag. This works a treat and I now have only to find all those people with both Tags and change the Role of Principle to my new Role. Have tested it with my sentence preview report and it is just what I need.

 

Thank you so much.

 

Pat

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Pat, 

I'd think a filter on the Project Explorer like:

Birth... # of Tags  is greater than  0  AND
Baptism...  # of Tags  is greater than  0   END

Should give you a all the people with both tags. Then you could go down the list in the PE and change the Roles in the Baptism Tag. May still be a lot of work but it would be an automatic way to get to the right people.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks again Terry.

I cut my TMG teeth on version 4 before moving to version 8, so have had no experience of using the Project Explorer. I usually find running a "List of" report and saving to a spreadsheet works for me. I can then amend it as necessary when completing some changes. I will have a go at the PEx to see if I can get on with it and if it is better than a spreadsheet. Like most things to do with computers, I suspect there are several ways of doing a task and many people stick to what they know.

I have run a report to get the people with both Birth and Baptism Tags and there are 1340 of them. I already had flags set for people with these tags so it was easy enough to generate it.

Do you think the Project Explorer is a more efficient way? Will look at your Terry's TMG Tips to find out more about it.

Thank you for your input and interest.

Pat

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I too started with TMG 4 and seldom use the Project Explorer. But in this case the advantage is you can use it to directly change the focus to each person in turn. If you use a report to find the people you have to manually navigate to each person. 

You can just double-click on a name in the PE and the focus will change to that person. You can then edit the baptism tag and repeat for the next person. My one concern with doing this is as you edit a person they no longer qualify for the filter, and there may be a delay while the filter - recalculates. I've not tested, so I'm not sure if this is an issue or not.

If that proves to be an issue, filter for the Flag you have set instead of using the filter I suggested. That way there is no new filter to compute so long as you don't change the flag.

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Update:

I experimented with the PE using the suggested filter and it is indeed quicker to access the required records in order to amend the Role in the Baptism Tag. I then added a further condition to the filter to only show those people whose baptism tag had the Role of Principal. When the PE recalculated, only the people I have not edited with the new Role were shown. So that is a way of seeing how many more there are to do at the start of a new session.

I did notice that the PE seemed to randomly recalculate but that was before I changed the window widths so that I could see the whole of the PE as well as the Details Window. It now just recalculates when I press the filter icon.

Thank you Terry for your inspiration. I think I could make more use of the PE now I have seen how easy it is to use.

Pat

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You can avoid any recalculation by using the Focus Group. Filter the PE to get the names, then add those names to an empty Focus Group. Save the Focus Group. Work down the list in the Focus Group and delete each name when that person is done. Save the Focus Group when you finish the work session. Open the Focus Group next work session and continue to work on the list. Keep this up until all names are cleared from the Focus Group.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Further update:

 

I tried Jim's suggestion of transferring the filtered names to a Focus Group and that did work. However, it meant double clicking on each name to open the record for that person and sometimes ( if there was a long piece of information next to the name e.g. a notation or a date that was different from the usual) I could only open that person's record by right clicking and choosing "Change focus to this person". This only happened when the Focus Group window was  not wide enough to display all the information next to the person's name.

 

I found that working from the PE was quicker as I could just click on the right arrow and the next person to be amended loaded much faster.

 

Another few things I have noticed is that the PE does not re-calculate as long as the PE window is not covered, or partly covered, so I am able to work in changing the Role in the Baptism Tag quickly. I discovered that if I then delete the filter from the PE and close it when I have finished that session I have no problems. I can just run the filter again the next time I need to do some editing. The new filtered PE only shows those people that I have not edited.

 

At first I just closed the PE without deleting the filter on it. This caused a big problem when I opened TMG the next day. All sorts of strange messages appeared. The PE was obviously trying to run the filter although it was not open. The filter did not run and I had several messages about Abort, Retry, etc. I also found I could not open any person's record - only the one on screen. I also found when trying to open TMG I was getting messages about loading MS Office. This was resolved by deleting the filter from the PE and only using it when I needed to.

 

Thank you to both Jim and Terry for your input, your suggestions have encouraged me to use the PE and Focus Group options more in future.

 

Pat

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hi Pat,

Yes, the PE will retain the fact that it is filtered when you exit and run that filter when you reopen even if its subwindow is not open.  That is why if I am using a filtered PE a lot I change to a saved Layout which includes the PE subwindow. While I try to remember to turn off the filter, if  I forget to turn it off when I exit, when I reopen TMG the PE subwindow will be there to remind me that it is still filtered.

10 hours ago, Elderflower said:

I found that working from the PE was quicker as I could just click on the right arrow and the next person to be amended loaded much faster.

But as you observed you can also right click on a person in the Focus group and select "Change focus to this person".  I find that pretty quick and is not bothered by the entry in the Focus Group being too long.

I prefer the Focus group method because often a cleanup needs to search for people in the PE as I am working, so I don't want the PE unavailable because of a filter.  Also since a filtered PE is often recalculating the filter, I find it a performance drain.

Just my way of working.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×