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From: Lee Hoffman <>
Subject: [TMG] Relationship Tags
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:52:01 -0400


Rick Van Dusen (and others) have asked why Relationship Tags cannot
have Roles and Sentences.

Insofar as the Role aspect is concerned, you could say that
Relationship Tags have Roles -- two of them and both are used each
time a Relationship Tag is used. The Roles are, in effect,
Parent (including Mother and Father) and Child (including Son and
Daughter). Each Relationship Tag is, effectively, two Tags unlike
most other Tags. One Relationship Tag is attached to the parent
showing the child's Role. The other is attached to the child showing
the parent's Role and this Tag may or may not be a Primary
Tag. Thus, you have the appearance of Roles with Relationship Tags.

Relationship Tags also have "sub-types" or "sub -Roles" helping
designate the kind of parent-child relationship. This is normally
the BIO type, but may be any of five other standard types as well as
any number of Custom types. These "sub-types" do not _do_ anything
except to help the user remember the type of relationship between the
parent and child. That is, the "sub-types" do not change the way TMG
sees any relationship. So, regardless of the "sub-type", a
relationship is just the parent and the child.

Now, as to sentences.... Relationship Tags do not use sentences
because there is no place to use them. There are two situations when
the data in Relationship Tags are reported in narrative reports. One
is when the [PAR] , [FATH], [MOTH], and/or similar Variables are used
with a Tag Sentence. The other situation only appears in the Journal
Narrative report when the last "paragraph" of a person is printed to
begin the listing of children and it starts with something like:
"The children of ABC and XYZ were as follows:"
A recent change to TMG added the NarrativeChildren Tag which allow
the user to change this Sentence.

These are the ONLY situations that make use of Relationship Tag data
for sentence purposes. No other sentences are printed or created
for narrative reports. Other than the Journal Report, all other
narrative reports (other than using the [PAR], etc. Variables) do not
need relationship sentence as the relationship if shown by position,
indentation, or hierarchy (usually by a number) within the report.

Thus a Relationship Tag Sentence Structure is not needed. I agree
that there are times when a situation needs explained. In those
cases, an Event Tag is useful -- ANECDOTE, NOTE, DESCRIPTN,
EVENT-MISC, MISC, or some other Tag. A Custom Tag such as RESEARCH,
CONCLUSION, or other label could be added for just this
purpose. Further, these Tag(s) could be sequenced and placed to
print (or not) exactly where desired.

Hope this helps -

Lee Hoffman/KY
TMG Tips: <http://www.tmgtips.com>;
My website: <http://www.tmgtips.com/lhoffman>;
A user of the best genealogy program, The Master Genealogist (TMG)


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