GENERATIONS-USERS-L Archives

Archiver > GENERATIONS-USERS > 2006-08 > 1155133429


From: Tim Powys-Lybbe <>
Subject: Re: [GENS-USERS] Generations 8.5.1.0 freezes when I click"List-Relationships-Identify"
Date: Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:23:49 +0100
References: <7.0.1.0.0.20060808172838.01ba42e0@virgin.net><b49364534e.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk> <7.0.1.0.0.20060809113031.01c00148@virgin.net>
In-Reply-To: <7.0.1.0.0.20060809113031.01c00148@virgin.net>


Note that I am snipping bits that are no longer relevant: trust I get
this right!

In message of 9 Aug, Don Montague <> wrote:

> At 23:38 08/08/2006, you kindly wrote:
>
> >In message of 8 Aug, Don Montague <> wrote:
> >
>
> > > freezes when I click "List relationships"

>
> >Try one of these:
> >

>
> >(b) Save your file as a compact file, then create a new Generations
> >file, then load this compact file into it. (It could be that the
> >data has got corrupted and this does a partial clean-up.)
>
> V. sorry, do not understand, how do I save "file as a compact file"
> ? Data corruption does seem a likely reason, but how & where it may
> have happened remains an enigma.

From the top menu bar:

(a) Select File,
(b) From the File menu, select Save a Copy,
(c) In the Save a Copy window, go to the Type field and select "Compact
Copy (smaller)",
(d) Note the name you choose for the File name,
(e) Click on Save.

Then:

(a) Close your Generations file: File > Close
(b) Open a new Generations file: File > New
(c) Give the new file a name and click on Save
(d) In the Begin window, click on "Import Reunion 5 File"
(e) In the "Open Family File" window, find and click on the compact file
you saved above.
(f) Click on Open.
(g) At the Import Reunion 5 file window select Everybody and Import
Sources, then click on Import.
(h) Twiddle your thumbs while the file is analysed and then loaded and
indexed.

During step (h) your machine may give odd beeps, mine did. I don't know
what these mean but it may indicate some error condition.

> >(c) Save your Generations file to another disc (CDROM, whatever).
> > Uninstall Generations and then reinstall from your Generations
> > disc. Remember to re-apply any patches that you received.
>
> Did this when I migrated to the Windows XP machine. At first it
> worked perfectly, that's to say calculated relationships without
> freezing. However, after I had created my 999th source, and later
> tried to identify relationships, dull thud, Generations simply
> "stopped responding". This may be an "association", rather than a
> "cause", but Generations will, however, still "Identify" without
> freezing on smaller files

I think this tells me that your main file is corrupt in some way.

Do you have a set of name backups taken at say, weekly, intervals? Can
you go back to one of these backups and see if it is alright?

For your information I have a series of backups with file names that
include the date going back for the last six months. My data is so
important to me that I can easily afford to use disc space on this. I
also have a copy on another disc and a removable disc, with all these
files on it, in the shed at the bottom of the garden.

> >(d) Purchase a copy of 8.5a. Then save your Generations file to
> >another disc (CDROM, whatever). Install 8.5a and load in your saved
> >file. 8.5a has not been heard to have any killer bugs such as yours.
>
> Where can 8.5a be bought, please?

TWR Computing have cleverly organised a supply of these:

www.twrcomputing.co.uk

> Every now and then, for various (maddening) reasons my PC freezes with
> Generations open, or the power goes off, or whatever, and Generations
> doesn't close properly. And, completely unpredictably, somewhere
> among 23,000+ entries, cross-linking may - or may not - occur. And
> one has no idea if it has occurred, or if so, where. This kind of
> thing has been driving me slowly but gradually up the wall. For all I
> know there may be dozens of cross-links in my database now. Or none.

What do you mean by a cross-link?

I used to have a PC that crashed rather too regularly but for a year and
a half only once did this corrupt the Generations file. I was very
impressed with the ruggedness of Generations.

> Next, for some unknown reason and I don't know when or why, a
> free-form source is sometimes replaced by a Misc Note, destroying the
> original source details. Not funny.

I have not used Free-form Text in sources since Reunion 4.2. I wonder
if this is a cause of your problems?

> Next, when exporting a Generations file in GEDCOM format, with (as
> happens very frequently) multiple Misc Notes for one individual, each
> with their own individual source, the Misc Notes are run together and
> the Source refs are shoved to the end. This is a stinker. The only
> way round this I can see is to create multiple Notes fields, and put
> just one note + source in each. But see your note below.

This is because Reunion has better facilities than GEDCOM. GEDCOM is
not a universal standard. GEDCOM 6 (we are now on 5.5) was being
discussed but seems to have come to a dead end:

www.familysearch.org/GEDCOM/GEDXML60.pdf

> I tried shifting my file to Legacy 6, using GECOM as a transfer
> format, and spent the best part of a week reconstructing 700+
> Generations free-form source references. A good exercise, as it made
> me look again at some of them and tighten them up.

I have not tried free-form sources, as above. 700+ sounds rather a lot
of them. For a similar size database I have no more than 270 sources.
Much of my work is from books and it is completely impractical to type
them out into Generations. So I just use the Sources to give a quick
reference to the books - or to Birth, Marriage and Death Registers, etc.
To me the key thing about sources is that they should be publicly
available documents that anyone can access so all they need is, more or
less, the title, author, location and reference number. But YMMV - your
mileage may vary.

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          
             For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/

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