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Exporting witnessed events to GEDCOM

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The problem is not TMG. The problem is that there is no way to express witnesses in the GEDCOM standard. It is not possible with GEDCOM.

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The problem is not TMG. The problem is that there is no way to express witnesses in the GEDCOM standard. It is not possible with GEDCOM.

 

But shouldn't there be a way to tag a census appearance as a shared event for export purposes? Perhaps as an option during the export process?

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Census is an allowable family event for GEDCOMs. However, would you really want to export census as family events?

 

You could export witnessed events as events subordinate to the GEDCOM individual records.

 

There are other issues that would need to be resolved. If, for example, the event has a memo and/or the witnesses have memos, what memo would you export for the witnesses? The event memo might or might not be appropriate for the witnesses. You might want to assume that if a witness had a memo, that memo would be the one to export for the witness.

 

Exporting a witnessed event that makes sense under GEDCOM is non-trivial.

Edited by Jim Byram

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The problem is not TMG. The problem is that there is no way to express witnesses in the GEDCOM standard. It is not possible with GEDCOM.

 

Would GEDCOM 5.5's tag: ASSO {ASSOCIATES} An indicator to link friends, neighbors, relatives, or associates of an individual, be a possible way of expressing it?

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Would GEDCOM 5.5's tag: ASSO {ASSOCIATES} An indicator to link friends, neighbors, relatives, or associates of an individual, be a possible way of expressing it?
Sorry, Sam, but the GEDCOM standard specifies that the ASSO tag defining an Association Structure is not legal as part of any other tag so cannot be used to describe witnesses. TMG does use the ASSO GEDCOM tag as the export output from the TMG Associatn tag. The GEDCOM definition of the GEDCOM ASSO tag is to link one person to one person. Hence the TMG Associatn tag exports as the GEDCOM ASSO tag by linking the person identified as Principal1 to the person identified as Principal2. That exactly reflects the purpose of the GEDCOM ASSO tag. You can have multiple GEDCOM ASSO tags for a person just like you can have multiple TMG Associatn tags. Again, it is the GEDCOM standard that prevents expressing witnesses, not TMG.

 

Would the following program help?TMG WITNESS TO NOTE
Again, sorry Sam. Note the last published date of that utility is 2002. That program was written for a much earlier version of TMG and never upgraded to the current version. It will not work with TMG Version 7. Further, that program did not preserve the Witness links, it just output a note that there was a link. While better than nothing, it did not solve the witness problem.

 

As an individual who worked on the GEDCOM standard those many years ago I can assure you that the concept of linking multiple witnesses to an event was not designed to be part of this old standard. Some people would wish that the GEDCOM standard be updated to reflect features in modern genealogy software programs. However, last I heard the LDS church, who owns the copyright on GEDCOM, has indicated that they have no plans to update the standard.

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TMG does use the ASSO GEDCOM tag as the export output from the TMG Associatn tag. The GEDCOM definition of the GEDCOM ASSO tag is to link one person to one person. Hence the TMG Associatn tag exports as the GEDCOM ASSO tag by linking the person identified as Principal1 to the person identified as Principal2.

 

Sorry Michael, but for me using TMGv7.03 that is not working.

Say: whatever I try TMG's Association tag is not included in a GEDCOM export as it should be. :huh:

(This issue has already been reported.)

 

May be I am missing something?!?

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My apologies, Vera and Sam, TMG 7.03 does not currently export the TMG Associatn tag. As I have such an aversion to GEDCOM export I had not tested export of that tag in quite some time. My explanation is how that TMG tag should export, and I believe used to at one time? However, I verified in a test this morning on my system that indeed this does not currently export. Glad to know it has already been reported. When fixed I expect it to work as described.

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