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Archiver > TMG > 2002-02 > 1012575434


From: "Jim Byram" <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Witness and Roles and V5.0
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 09:57:14 -0500
References: <NIEGKEACAPDMIDCJOGDEOEAODGAA.gleemc@earthlink.net>


Glee Crocker wrote:

> My understanding is that Witness relationships do not transfer in
GedCom
> files whereas principles do transfer with all of the information.
If that
> is correct, wouldn't that be a reason to have the capability of
having more
> than two principles? Maybe I have misunderstood the transfer issue.
If I am
> incorrect, please correct my misconception.

This is an apple and oranges comparison. The problem is both more
simple and more complex at the same time.

The GEDCOM 5.5 specs treat events as individual events or family
events. The list of events for an individual and family is predefined.
It's best to think of family events as those events that pertain to
the two partners who are the parents in a family.

TMG follows the above conventions when it exports to a GEDCOM 5.5
file. This has nothing to do with 'principal' vs. 'witness' status per
se. Data is output to GEDCOM based on the first individual associated
with a tag (principal1) for individual events and the first two
individuals associated with a tag (principal1 and principal2) (if they
are married) for family events. If you had 10 principals, the above
rules would not change.

There is no reason for TMG not to output to a GEDCOM 5.5 file for all
individuals associated with an individual event irrespective of
whether the individual is p1, p2, or a witness. The GEDCOM will have
no provision to deal with roles per se although this could be
accomplished via the note field. To do the above would require major
and extensive changes to the program and to the GEDCOM output module
and considerable discussion to determine how such a feature might need
to work. I suspect that the other couple of thousand items on the to
do list have a higher priority at this time.

You also get into minor problems. For example, is census an individual
event or a family event? Under the GEDCOM 5.5 specs, census can be
either. And then there is the problem that just because you can create
information in a GEDCOM doesn't mean that the importing program can
deal with the data. The real solution to the above issues (to a point)
will be whatever replaces GEDCOM as the means of transferring data
between programs.

Jim


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