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Archiver > TMG > 2002-07 > 1026837391


From: "Gene Stuff" <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Exporting Witness Tags
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 16:36:31 +0000


>From: Wade Oram <>
>
>WIT2NOTE on the other hand, I have seen - I contributed to the discussion
>on its development - and I believe that it does pretty near the best that
>it can do given GEDCOMs limitations and the limitations of the way in which
>it works. It is also interesting to note, though, that there were
>differences in opinion expressed even at the time as to how best to do it -
>i.e. the semi structured approach or the 'every thing as a note approach'.
>Because, GEDCOM can not fully support witnesses, different people had
>different ideas as to what should be done according to their intended use
>for the program.

Not everyone wants exactly the same printed report style either. That's why
TMG allows many report output options. I see no reason why there couldn't
similarly be several options for GEDCOM output. If WIT2NOTE can do it, TMG
can do it. For some reason they don't want to.


>However, I do *not* think that it is a suitable solution to build into a
>product because the information is incomplete and could, under some
>circumstances, be misleading.

In the current situation I have VERY incomplete export of my data. All I'm
asking is that I be allowed to get more of my data exported to GEDCOM. Yes,
it would still be incomplete, but not as incomplete as it is now.

>
>The information presented by WIT2NOTE has two serious flaws:
>
>1: It loses the unambiguous association of the witness to the witnessed
>event since it effectively duplicates the event for each witness.

Yes, I understand that. This is exactly what I want.

>
>2: It loses the direct (cross reference) linkage to the principal(s) of the
>witnessed event again because it duplicates the event.

This is the same argument as No. 1. Again, this is exactly what I want.
What I want is to duplicate the way the data would be entered if I had
entered it directly into lineage linked software like FTM or Legacy.

>
>In both cases Gary Hester, the author, has gone to a lot of trouble to
>include as much information (in an unstructured manor) as possible to allow
>us to subjectively sort out the mess but there could still be situations
>where it is impossible to resolve ambiguities.
>
>If there was a way to resolve these ambiguities using standard GEDCOM, then
>I would be the first to support demands for its inclusion in TMG. However,
>as it stands, I would not support their inclusion. Personal opinion, maybe,
>but whose to say it is any less valid than your own!

If a GEDCOM export option is allowed, but you feel it's not appropriate for
your particular data set. THEN DON'T USE IT! There are many features of
TMG that I don't use, but that doesn't mean I advocate for them to be
eliminated.

>
>If you feel that strongly about it, you can always develop your own GEDCOM
>generator add on for TMG (and potentially other databases as well!) using
>GenBridge or direct database manipulation as WIT2NOTE does, or you can use
>WIT2NOTE itself (if you are sticking to TMG4 -

I have limited time for hobby programming which would also compete with my
limited genealogy time. This is why I buy commercial software like TMG. I
will be happy to buy WIT2NOTE when it is ready. I tried it once and it did
not work for me. I'm willing to try it again. I have written code to
transform GEDCOM to HTML and to strip unwanted information from GEDCOM
files. It really isn't that complicated. I am currently still using UFT and
am waiting to see if I should write code to read UFT FoxPro files, UFT event
GEDCOM, or TMG 5 data. I will not buy TMG 5 until it has the ability to get
the data out as well as in, so my own programming is on hold for now and has
been for 2 years while waiting to evaluate TMG 5 and my own final descision
on which will be my future genealogy database program following the demise
of UFT.

>However, no matter what you do, you will not succeed in transferring *all*
>of the data from TMG to another family tree database using GEDCOM. At best,
>instead of having one event with multiple principals and witnesses, you
>will effectively end up with multiple copies of the same event each with
>one or two principals *or* one witness. This is the fundamental limitation
>of GEDCOM.

I understand that. This is what I want.

>
>Anyway, all of this has been thrashed out before and I do not wish to go
>into it all again!
>--
>Wade Oram

I will continue to beat this drum because it is VERY important to me. I have
at stake many thousands of hours of data entry over 20 years.


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