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chasco

Adding names of parents & children to indiv. narrative

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Hello, everyone,

 

In fiddling around with TMG and bending it to do things the way I prefer, I want to make the individual narrative include the names of the parents as well as the names of the children. What I have figured out so far is to create a couple of new tags: A-Par (with sort date a year before birth or other earliest date if birth year is unknown; sentence= [PAR]) and A-Ch_of (with sort date years beyond last dates known, e.g, 1950 for 18th and 19th century people; sentence=They had the following children: [WO]). In order to get the children included in the A-Ch_of tag, I simply put them down as witnesses.

 

Here is an example of what happens so far: (including messy TMG punctuation which I can of course change with the word processor):

 

Elizabeth Smith. , daughter of John Smith and Mary Jones. She was born ... She married Thomas Johnson. She died ... She is buried at .... They had the following children: Samuel Johnson, Mary Ann Johnson, Rebecca Johnson...

 

By the way, I had to add a sort date to the marriage if I did not have one because otherwise I would get: Elizabeth Smith married Thomas Johnson. , daughter of John Smith and Mary Jones. So that means (I think!) I have to add a sort date to all undated information otherwise?

 

As for the children, am puzzled that whereas there is a handy PAR tag to add, there is no CHI tag to use?? I would also like, if possible, to have the “following children” sentence give just the given names. Ideally, it would run: “They had the following children (all surnamed Johnson): Samuel, Mary Ann, Rebecca,” but I can live with it as it now stands.

 

At any rate, my question to everyone is whether this information can be included automatically somehow by TMG itself? I don’t want to go to all this trouble if it can be done automatically. I’m surprised this information cannot be automatically generated by TMG itself, or at least the names of parents.

 

Oh, and is there a way to globally add a tag to every person in the database? That is, add the A-Par tag to everyone? (And I guess it should be <[PAR]> to cover those individuals whose parents are unknown?

 

Thanks in advance for any help provided.

 

Sam

 

P.S. I have added “A-“ to the tags I use most often rather than scroll down that darned list. This way they all are at the top of the tag list. Wonder what the "CHILD-BIO" tag does?

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In fiddling around with TMG and bending it to do things the way I prefer, I want to make the individual narrative include the names of the parents as well as the names of the children. What I have figured out so far is to create a couple of new tags: A-Par (with sort date a year before birth or other earliest date if birth year is unknown; sentence= [PAR]) and A-Ch_of (with sort date years beyond last dates known, e.g, 1950 for 18th and 19th century people; sentence=They had the following children: [WO]). In order to get the children included in the A-Ch_of tag, I simply put them down as witnesses.

 

Here is an example of what happens so far: (including messy TMG punctuation which I can of course change with the word processor):

 

Elizabeth Smith. , daughter of John Smith and Mary Jones. She was born ... She married Thomas Johnson. She died ... She is buried at .... They had the following children: Samuel Johnson, Mary Ann Johnson, Rebecca Johnson...

I think you can get rid of the name, period, comma issue by putting the name of the person in the sentence - [P] [PAR]

By the way, I had to add a sort date to the marriage if I did not have one because otherwise I would get: Elizabeth Smith married Thomas Johnson. , daughter of John Smith and Mary Jones. So that means (I think!) I have to add a sort date to all undated information otherwise?

Yes, all undated tags need a sort date to properly sequence them in the narrative.

As for the children, am puzzled that whereas there is a handy PAR tag to add, there is no CHI tag to use?? I would also like, if possible, to have the “following children” sentence give just the given names. Ideally, it would run: “They had the following children (all surnamed Johnson): Samuel, Mary Ann, Rebecca,” but I can live with it as it now stands.

 

At any rate, my question to everyone is whether this information can be included automatically somehow by TMG itself? I don’t want to go to all this trouble if it can be done automatically. I’m surprised this information cannot be automatically generated by TMG itself, or at least the names of parents.

I believe the [PARO] variable was added mainly for use in the marriage tag, where it is traditional to include the names of the spouse's parents. My guess is that [PAR] was just added for symmetry, but maybe there was some request for it too. The "children of" variable is not needed for ancestor or descendant narratives (nor is the [PAR] variable for that matter) because the parents and children are depicted by the reports themselves. So it's only in the Individual Narrative that you need to do something manually. Likewise, when you output to a website using Second Site (either to post on a website or distribute to relatives by CD) you don't need to add these terms, as they are supplied by the program. You might consider whether the Individual Narrative is really going to be a primary output vehicle for you before you undertake the effort to add all these tags.

 

There have been requests from time to time to add a parent statement to the Individual Narrative with a report option, but that option has not yet been added.

Oh, and is there a way to globally add a tag to every person in the database? That is, add the A-Par tag to everyone?

John Cardinal's TMG Utility can add a tag to a list of people. The challenge would be to create the necessary text file to get all the correct people added. I've not tried to work out how you might do that.

Wonder what the "CHILD-BIO" tag does?

Despite the long list of "-BIO" tags you see in the Tag Type list, there really is only a single type of "-BIO" relationship tag. The prefix "Father," "Mother," "Parent," "Son," "Daughter," or "Child" is applied depending on which view you are looking at it (that is, from the parent or child's view) and the sex of the person involved. Thus a Child-Bio tag is a relationship tag seen from the parent's view, when the child's sex flag is set to "?".

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Terry, A thousand thanks! That worked like a charm. I now get: Elizabeth Smith, daughter of John Smith and Mary Jones.

 

Yes, I know it will be labor intensive to do it this way, but well, over the years I've toyed with the idea of having a "biographical dictionary" approach to genealogy, not the married-begat family-centered kind. So, I think using the individual narrative approach exported to a word processor is the way to go. Have not yet downloaded TMG Utility to the computer (not connected to the internet) on which I have TMG, so that may make that part a bit easier.

 

Thanks again!

 

Sam

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