TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2000-12 > 0975733267


From: Lee Hoffman/KY <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] GEDCOM (was ROOTSWEB)
Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2000 00:01:07 -0500
In-Reply-To: <F255gkUrfavNoNBpsiL00004042@hotmail.com>


Gene Stuff wrote:
>I think a wish-list item is in order for a future version of TMG. The
>discussion below makes a very good point. Perhaps TMG should allow the
>creation of a NOTE for each event from the sentence template and
>corresponding data in order to better preserve and export the data contained
>within TMG. Another possibility would be to create a single note for each
>individual by combining the software-generated text from all or some
>user-chosen events.
>
>GEDCOM is in fact a report type and despite its shortcomings has become the
>standard method of exchanging data between genealogists. TMG is a nice
>program, but it doesn't have the largest share of the market and entering
>data in such as way as it cannot be exported in GEDCOM is probably unwise.
>All software has a limited lifespan. Data will eventually have to be
>exported or be lost. I've been programming for 25 years and the only file
>type which has so far survived all the myriad software and hardware changes
>over the years is ASCII text. In my mind that makes data in GEDCOM format
>much more preservable than data in Foxpro databases or FTM format or
>whatever. In fact, there should probably be as many report styles for GEDCOM
>export as there are for any type of printed report and the user should have
>as much control of how, who, and what gets included.
>
>Also, I think the possibility certainly exists for someone or several
>someones to write utilities that could export more of the data in GEDCOM
>format.

If a programmer is to follow the "standard" for GEDCOM, there is only one
way to export the data and that does not include the Sentence Structure.
But if the TMG Sentence Structure was exported to GEDCOM, then it would be
disregarded when imported into another program (at best it would go to an
error list. The reason is that no other program would understand the codes
and variables used in the TMG Sentence Structure. It is proprietary to TMG
and no other program uses it.

Now if you want to change the GEDCOM "Standard", well, good luck. The LDS
Church (owner of the GEDCOM "Standard" indicated a few years ago that they
were looking at a possible new version based on the GEDCOM Future Version
Model. About three months ago, they announced that that plan had been
cancelled and any new version would likely be very different than what is
now used. At the same time, they indicated that there would likely not be
any changes to the current version.

Now if the user wanted only full sentences to be in the GEDCOM notes, then
the user could enter complete sentences in the Memo field of each TMG tag.
To make sure that the TMG narrative reports weren't messed up, the default
Sentence Structure could be changed to just the variable [M]. This could
be done on a global basis for each Tag Type (wouldn't take long --
probably an hour or so once -- after all there are only 100+ Tag Types and
some of those already have a default Sentence Structure of [M]).


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

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