Exporting to other formats

[kencaproni 0]

New to MG. For some reason I expected to be able to export to other genealogy program formats such as paf. This is obviously convenient if one wants to communicate with others without the drawbacks of gedcom. Am I missing something and is there a way to do it?

 

Ken

[Jim Byram 0]

For some reason I expected to be able to export to other genealogy program formats such as paf. This is obviously convenient if one wants to communicate with others without the drawbacks of gedcom. Am I missing something and is there a way to do it?

No. GEDCOM has always been the only means of exporting data for import into other genealogy programs.

 

You would probably run into legal issues real quick if you exported in another program's proprietary format.

[kencaproni 0]

If you can import from their formats which MG does, does this require an agreement. If so then why couldn't an agreement be reached to export to their format? If importing does not require an agreement, then why is there a concern on export?

 

Ken

[RobinL 0]

Copyright law seems to allow you read and interpret a file format, but it does not allow you (without agreement) to create a program that creates a file in the same proprietary format.

[kencaproni 0]

Read and interpret I understand, but to allow use and import into another program but deny export I find puzzling.

 

Actually there are very few to my knowledge that even import other program formats. I first saw this with TMG. Perhaps it is more the issue of risk to the other program. I also wonder how badly the Gen program owners want to see it easy to exchange data.

 

Ken

[Terry Reigel 0]

Read and interpret I understand, but to allow use and import into another program but deny export I find puzzling.

Importing is only reading and interpeting - nothing is done to the original file. On import, TMG reads the original file, then creates files in it's own format and copies the data there.

 

Export, by contrast, by nature requires writing a file in another program's format. It's the creating a file in another's format that is supposed to be an issue. To my understanding, the "rights" issue if not entirely settled legally, but is at least clouded enough to warrent caution by a small company.

Actually there are very few to my knowledge that even import other program formats. I first saw this with TMG. Perhaps it is more the issue of risk to the other program. I also wonder how badly the Gen program owners want to see it easy to exchange data.

In my view you have hit the issue directly. Wholly Genes' GenBridge technology, which is used by TMG to import data from other programs, has been offered for some time to developers of other programs. So far as I know, there is no other general purpose genealogy program using it, or any other method for data import other than GEDCOM. I am aware of a couple of specialty programs, such as those for PDAs, that do direct import, at least some using GenBridge.

[kencaproni 0]

I applaud TMG for the bridge.

 

As to the difference in reading or writing the file format of another program, I see little. In either case you must know there format.

 

However the one difference which may be germane is the active versus passive relationship the other program has to that file. It is conceivable that by erroneously writing the other file's format you could create a "not tested case" problem for the other company for which they do not want to take responsibility. However, I think that could be resolved with a super gedcom format eliminating the problems of the current gedcom. The fact that this has not yet been done is telling.