TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2002-02 > 1012587787


From: Bob Velke <>
Subject: RE: Re: [TMG] Witness and Roles and V5.0
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 13:23:07 -0500
References: <5.1.0.14.2.20020201101637.074610b0@mail.hwrd1.md.home.com>
In-Reply-To: <NIEGKEACAPDMIDCJOGDEMEBBDGAA.gleemc@earthlink.net>


Glee said:

>If I want all of the family members in a census record to transfer in a
>GedCom file, it would be better not to use the witness function but create a
>census tag for them individually?

Yes and no - and it might depend on what is importing it.

If you link one person as principal to a Census event, then it will be
exported by TMG to a GEDCOM "individual" record and (since GEDCOM doesn't
have any capacity to link witnesses to such an event) any witnesses will be
lost.

If you link husband and wife as principals to a Census event, then it will
be exported by TMG to a GEDCOM "family" record. If that couple has
children then they will also be linked to the family. That is true
irrespective of whether one or more of the children are linked as witnesses
to the Census event.

On importing, some programs might infer by association that the children
were involved in the census event because they are part of the family to
which that event is linked. But that's a dangerous assumption because (1)
GEDCOM doesn't have any means to assert whether or not it is true (2) all
the children will be linked to the event after the transfer whether or not
they were linked before the transfer and (3) it would argue for making the
same assumption about marriage and other "family" events. In any case,
that strategy wouldn't preserve non-children who might have been linked to
the Census event.

When reading a GEDCOM file, TMG doesn't assume that children in the family
were witnesses to the "family" events.

If, as you suggest, you make a separate Census event for each person
referenced on the Census page, then (1) importing programs would never
aggregate them again (2) you'd be communicating that each person was the
subject of the event (which some might interpret as head of household) and
(3) a program that would assume the child's involvement in a "family"
record (as above) would no longer do so.

There's no easy answer - but again, that's because you're trying to use
GEDCOM for something that it was not designed to do.

-Bob

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