A couple of interface & gedcom questions.

[arreaux 0]

Hello,

I am evaluating whether to switch to TMG from a combination of home brew and several commercial programs. I am a data driven researcher and absolutely love TMG's data driven nature.

 

However, I have a couple of questions after using the demo for a couple of days. I would appreciate any clarification or help you can give.

 

1. When editing a tag in a person view, is there a way to close or step (saving if necessary) from the current tag to the next item in the event list, without returning to the event list and clicking on an item? This is a pretty common interface feature in most data driven software. For example when reading an email in Outlook, there is a next message and previous message button that allow you to step from message to message without returning to the list view.

 

2. Is there any easier way to preview a sentence than actually running a report? I currently use a couple of different pieces of software to manage my data and both of them have a button in the equivalent of the tag editing box which allows you to preview the sentence for that item without running an actual report. Does TMG have a way to do this? I find myself running a report after every custom sentence, scrolling through the report to find the item I need to check very time consuming for minor changes.

 

3. Gedcom export. After reading the manual and experimenting for a few hours I'm still not certain of a couple of things.

 

3A. I understand that there is no way to automatically export witnesses as part of the gedcom export. However, has anyone worked out a way to export all of the information for an individual (including witness events) and then turn that intermediate file into a gedcom which includes all of the events for that person? I don't want any kind of link back to the principal, and understand that gedcom wouldn't support that. I share data with a lot of other researchers and it's a shame to only be able to pass along only part of the data I have for a given person.

 

3B. Is there anyway to export the sentence to gedcom, rather than the raw memo field as a 2NOTE? I understand how sentences work, and how the pipe | character works to divide the memo into fields. That is very cool. However, many of the sentences I want to write will have multiple fields in the memo sentence that will generate unusable gedcom files. When the output has multiple pipes in the memo the gedcom output is not very usable when uploaded or shared since the data in the field is structured in multiple field that the recipient can't understand.

 

Thanks for your prompt replies!

Dan

[Jim Byram 0]

You asked:

1. When editing a tag in a person view, is there a way to close or step (saving if necessary) from the current tag...

Sorry, I'm afraid not. I guess I'd never thought of that as I very seldom move from one tag to the next. I suppose one might in cleaning up an import, though.

 

2. Is there any easier way to preview a sentence than actually running a report?

No, that's been suggested, but the official position is that the output of the sentence depends on a number of report settings as well as the context of the sentence in the report. There is a preview report button on the Reports toolbar, and you can add your own to the custom toolbar. These allow one-click reports, which help some.

 

3A. I understand that there is no way to automatically export witnesses as part of the gedcom export. However, has anyone worked out a way to export all of the information for an individual (including witness events) and then turn that intermediate file into a gedcom which includes all of the events for that person?

I don't know. This would better be posted to the TMG6 forum, or better yet to the RootsWeb TMG list, which has a wider readership.

 

3B. Is there anyway to export the sentence to gedcom, rather than the raw memo field as a 2NOTE?

I'm afraid not. GEDCOM specs don't recognize sentences, and Bob Velke is a stickler for following the specs.

 

Terry Reigel