Lee Irons

Thanks Beth! Missed this in the voluminous Help content. Trying it out, I notice that not all of the variables are in the right-click menu. Also, some variables have symbols in them that aren't explained in the Help content. FOr example, the Role variables show up with a % in them. Is this explained somewhere in the Help content?

Yes, during my experiementation, I have been adding the name variation as a parsed piece of data in the memo field. Regarding complexity, the way to solve that problem is to design tools that make sentence creation easier. The biggest problem is that the user has to either have the variables memorized or must look them up in the Help menu, with lots of luck finding the exact Help script that has the applicable information. So let's make these visible. For example, I would provide two drop down menus on the Roles and Sentences tab of the Tag Type Definition window, these two menus being titled "Variable Type" and "Variable." The Variable Type drop-down menu would allow the user to select the variables that appear in the Variable drop-down menu. Variable types in the Variable Type drop-down menu would be Principals, Parents, Witnesses, Date, Place, Age, Memo, Roles, Structure, and Format. The Variable drop-down menu would then show titles of the variables associated with the option selected in the Variable Type drop-down menu. The user would select the variable type and then select the title of the variable they need from the Variable drop-down menu. Highlighting the variable title makes it show in the Variable field, and then clicking on an "Insert" button inserts the actual variable where the cursor is positioned in the sentence field. The pronoun variables would be included in Variable drop-down menus for the Princpals, Witnesses, and Roles variable types. The Structure variable type would include variables for controlling spaces, non-breaking spaces, tabs, carriage returns, punctuation, capital letters, concatenation, indexes, embedded citations, and so on. The Format variable type would include variables for font type, font style, font size, colors, and so on. Also, since Name, Place, and external text file variables are allowed in Memo fields, I would provide drop-down menus for these in each window that has a Memo field.

You might want to send this question to the support email. Interesting. The latest version of Corel Word Perfect is now more expensive than the latest version of Micorsoft Word. What version of Word Perfect are you using?

I'm not using the surety marker functionality in TMG because it does not use the standard rating system of original vs. derivative, primary vs. secondary, and direct vs. indirect. Roots Magic 5 does and Family Tree Maker 2012 does, but TMG 8 and Legacy Family Tree 7.5 do not. In my humble opinion, none of the genealogy software developers have gotten the whole information evaluation stuff right. There are actually two different types of evaluations that need to be performed. Roots Magic 5 comes the closest to doing it right. They have a source citation quality rating of each source citation linked to a tag, which rates a source citation based on original vs. derivative, primary vs. secondary, and direct vs. indirect. They then have a "proof" rating of each tag, which rates whether the actual data that comes from the source citation is correct or applicable to the given person. However, they only have three levels of proof: Proven, Proven False, and DIsputed. They should allow users to define their own "proof" levels, since every genealogist I know does this last step a little differently. So, for TMG to get this correct, they would need to do what FTM did in its 2011 release, which is to keep the surety levels, but give the additional capability of the program calculating the surety level for you based on selecting whether a source citation is original vs. derivative, primary vs. secondary, and direct vs. indirect. As you can see, with three different quality ratings, this would enable a surety calculation of 0 to 3. The additional step TMG would have to make is to have a separate "proof" rating of a tag as it applies to a principal or witness person. My recommendation is that TMG allow users to define their own proof ratings (anywhere from 3 to 10 of them, with the default being 3 ratings of "accepted," "accepted with qualifiers," and "disputed"). There would have to be a proof rating field in the Tag Entry window next to each Pinrcipal's name and would have to put a rating field in each Edit Witness window. TMG could then go the extra step of creating a sentence variable for the proof rating to be used in narratives.

Thanks Michael, I analyze the source and the citation from the source in the source citation memo field and would also be using customized cource citations that inlcude the citation deatil and citation memo. But then I go an extra analysis step further to demonstrate why I think the person in the citation is the same person as the person in all of the other citations that I am linking to that person. In other words, how do I know that person 3 in Family A in the 1850 census is the same as person 4 in Family B in the 1860 census.

I created a book with a few reports and then clicked on Create Book. All this did was create a separate file for each book. It did not create a single book file with the reports actually concatenated on the pages. I read the help file and it does not provide any ideas on how to create an actual book. Though I did find the following incorrect note: "NOTE: To create a book with endnotes, the output must be directed to screen or printer." You can't direct the output for reports in a book to the screen. The system excludes all such reports when Create Book is clicked, which actually makes sense, since it does not actually create a book. And how would endnotes work if there is no actual book file? Next, I tried to sebd the book to the printer... nothing happened. I set the correct printer in Printer Setup, but the program seems to be trying to still output each report to a separate file. Finally, I tried openning the word documents for each report that was generated by Create Book. I can se the files in my folder. But when I try to open them, I get a "This file ould not be found." error in Microsoft Word. When I set the reports to be generated in Adobe Acrobat, I can open the files just fine. Buggy. All of these problems and deficiencies, unless corrected, would drive me back to FTM 2012, even with its less capable narrative sentence design capability.

Got it. Thanks Paul. Should be able to do this from within the Book Manager. The software is making me plan my book outside of the Book Manager before I can assemble it in the Book Manager. Thus, it is not really a complete Book Manager. And then the Book Manager does not even let me preview the book as I assemble it. Outdated human interface. Let's hope the developers move TMG into the 21st century for V9.

Okay, now I've figured out what you were trying to tell me. This is a really wierd way of doing things. I have to clutter up my report menu with a bunch of specific reports for different individuals and focus groups just to prepare to compile a book. It would make more sense to set persons and focus groups for reports in a given book in the Book Manager rather than in the report menu. At any rate, anyone who blunders into this like I did will lock up their computer trying to do it the way that seems to make more sense from a user-friendly perspective. In general, I am finding the human interface engineering aspects of the software to be outdated and lacking. It is too bad, because TMG * has the best narrative sentence design capabilities I have found.

When I open a inidvidual narrative report definition screen inside the book manager, the "Add" button is grayed out. Anyway, I'm Not sure how this would accomplish adding an individual narrative for a different person at a different sequence in the book. Am I correct in asuming that the book is generated with reports in the sequence in which they appear on the scren in the book manager?

Now it is locking up. Obviously a bug. If I am doing something I am not supposed to be doing, it should at least disallow it without locking up.

I openned up the individual narrative report separately, selected a different person, saved settings, and then openned the book manager and added a second individual narrative report to a book with an existing individual narrative of a different person. Now I don;t get the same problem I got before. However, both individual narrative reports are now for the person for whom I saved settings when I openned up the individual narrative report separately.

When I add a second instance of the same report, even if it is for a differentr person, it first tells me that the reporyt already exists and asks whether I am sure I want to add it. When I click "Yes" it adds it. However, when I try to open the report, it gives a message "The report definition is in use by another user." When I click on OK, it opens the report window, but it won't let me make changes to it or save it. WHen I try to open the other narative report (the first one I put in the book), it gives me the same problem.

I am now trying the Book Manager. I quickly discovered (unless this is a bug) that I can't put more than one of the same report into a given book. How can I design a book if, for example, I can't selectively place individual narrative reports for different persons in the same book? Am I missing something? Is there a way to string "books" together to make a "binder-clipped" book?

The quoted messages posted prior to this change are still all screwed up.

It would also be helpful if there was a diferent sentence variable for the name variation selected for each principal and witness linked to a tag. It would be nice to be able to call out both the primary name and the selected name variation in a sentence. Currently, [P] brings in the name that is selected in the tag.