TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2005-04 > 1112723670


From: Neil Bell <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Use of special TMG features
Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2005 10:54:30 -0700
References: <20050405051007.94D3E3948@sitemail.everyone.net> <1112716673.23556.2.camel@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <1112716673.23556.2.camel@localhost.localdomain>


Gordon Banks wrote:

>One thing that worries me about using TMG with all the customizations
>I've made is that one day Bob will retire and the "Microsoft" of
>genealogy will buy TMG and kill it. I'm sure they would offer more than
>anyone else who would plan to keep the program around in competition
>with their FTM junk.
>
>
I totally agree!

Using any customizations or special features such as "witnesses" or
"roles" carries significant risk over the long run. These cannot be
GEDCOM exported to other programs in the event that TMG is sold to some
other company or simply discontinued. For that reason I suggest using
only those features which will properly export via GEDCOM if you have
ANY concerns about the future long-term prospects in genealogy software,
whether moving to exciting new software, discontinuance of your current
software or whatever.

That is one reason for placing research tasks in a "to-do tag" rather
that using the "tasks" feature. That way you know they will export if
you desire. In short, the more special features you use, the more
"locked-in" you will become. TMG has a rich set of standard
capabilities that *_will_* export via GEDCOM - use those and be safe. I
learned this lesson some time ago when my daughter started using Legacy
and I needed to export my data for her use. It took me nearly a year to
to this and revert to just using standard stuff. I had to eliminate all
my witnessed events such as Censuses and convert them to separate census
tags for each member of the household. She is now a happy camper and so
am I since she now has the results from my 20 years of well documented
research. I would never even consider using roles or witnesses etc. again.

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