GENBOX-L Archives

Archiver > GENBOX > 2007-04 > 1175545772


From: "Cheri Casper" <>
Subject: Re: [GENBOX] unknown spouse
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 13:29:32 -0700
In-Reply-To: <461156FA.1000404@scs.uiuc.edu>


Doug - Why is is so hard to add the parents? You simply create either the
father or the mother, then you create a marriage for that event which will
let you create the second individual automatically when you type the name of
the other individual into the marriage event. Then you go to the "child's"
birth event and type the parents in there. Or you can enter their ID number
or you can access the Pick Dialog and select them off the list.

What you cannot do effectively is merely go to the child's summary page and
add the parents there. The reason is that a child can have multiple sets of
parents, but only one set of birth parents. The parents that are displayed
on the summary page are the "preferred" parents. In the absence of
additional set(s) of parents, these are automatically the birth parents.
But keying in parents on the summary page doesn't tell GB if these are the
birth parents, adoptive parents, step parents or what so it doesn't know
what event to connect them to. Therefore it is always best to add the
parents (of whatever complexion) to the appropriate event (birth, adoption,
etc.). Then on the parents tab make any selections necessary.

When I have an individual with an unidentified birth parent, I simply create
a Marriage-Not event for the identified parent and add something like Linda
does. After all, no child is born with only a single parent . . . they have
two. It is just that the second one is unidentified.

Legacy is okay but its sourcing is substandard compared to GenBox. That is
of paramount importance to me. I've only made 6 charts that I kept and
those were given as gifts. I normally don't send or share charts, but
prefer descendent narratives. But if you want a charting nightmare, try
TMG. You need a PhD in programming practically to use that crazy setup. I
guess I never realized Legacy didn't do boxed charts. Since it doesn't, I
can't understand why it would have any following at all. You certainly
can't get the "big picture" (even if you don't print it or share it) without
a descendent boxed chart option that all of are familiar with.

Just my 2 cents worth, but any GenBox issues with illegitimate children and
the "connector" lines on boxed charts pales in comparision with the lack of
a true boxed descendency chart that your proram of choice seems incapable of
creating. And I'd rather live with a misplaced line or two then have to
create a ged and export it to FTM just to make a decent chart. But if it
floats your boat . . . .

CheriC



-----Original Message-----
From: [mailto:]On
Behalf Of Doug McDonald
Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 12:18 PM
To:
Subject: Re: [GENBOX] unknown spouse


wrote:
> Good Day Doug,
>
> Having easily added a number of new individuals, children, spouses, even
new lines (parents and
> siblings) for spouses recently while working with census records I am
curious. Would you please
> explain what you mean by "bizarre entry methods" when you spoke of "how
the people are entered".
>


I find it hard to explain. It's just so unintuitive. It's especially bad
when you have already added a person with a single unknown parent
and then want to add the other parent and get the charts to look right.
It's the exact same problem the original poster described. It is
also a big problem importing from Legacy, which is my main program,
and one which works well with no problems whatsoever. Everything
is so easy in Legacy. But it does not do descendant charts. I have
written my own ancestor chart program, so that is no problem. I
go back to FTM through Gedcom just to use the descendant charts.

Doug McDonald

-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes
in the subject and the body of the message

This thread: