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Archiver > TMG > 2002-02 > 1012582242
From:
Subject: RE: Re: [TMG] Witness and Roles and V5.0
Date: Fri, 1 Feb 2002 08:50:42 -0800
Small clarification. The UFT and TMG definitions of principal are the same. UFT allowed other people to be identified with the event and have a role at that event - as in census roles, or participants in a wedding, etc. But those people were not indicated as principals. The only event in UFT that had more than one principal was the wedding event.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Velke [mailto:]
Sent: February 01, 2002 8:27 AM
To:
Subject: Fwd: Re: [TMG] Witness and Roles and V5.0
Jim said:
>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.
I can think of a good reason. If I am linked as a witness to your Baptism
event, then such a GEDCOM file would indicate to other programs that _I_
was baptized on that date.
The main problem here is that UFT and TMG had different definitions of
"principal" and some former UFTers insist they are the same thing and
should act the same way. It is true that UFT allowed any number of
"principals" meaning "people who are important in the event." But in TMG
the term means "people who are the subject of the event" and that is NOT
the same thing. I haven't heard any good reason to allow more than two
principals (as we define it) in any event type.
Census is arguably an exception but most people seem content to record the
heads of household as principals and everyone else as witnesses (perhaps
with their roles). After all, the focus of the census _was_ the head of
household and other people in the record did not have equal weight (which
is not to say that they aren't "important").
GEDCOM is not an argument to do otherwise. GEDCOM allows census events to
be communicated in two ways: as an "individual" event or as a "family"
event ("family" being headed by man and woman who are parents of all of the
others) and TMG supports both. GEDCOM does not support linking non-family
groups of people to an event (as TMG does) and it does not have a way to
associate people who were merely "important" to an event (as TMG
does). That is unfortunate but it is a fact. If you insist on using
GEDCOM to communicating data types that it wasn't designed to communicate,
then you should be prepared for disappointment.
It is a backward argument to change the nature of genealogical data in
order to overcome the fact that a particular transfer medium doesn't
support it. As in my first paragraph, to record someone as the focus of an
event when he was merely "important" to it is a form of corruption. To
take an aggregate event and communicate it as a bunch of distinct
individual events (especially when it doesn't carry with it the roles of
the individual players) is likewise a form of corruption. We'd be
encouraging both by allowing people to apply the term "principal" in a way
that it was not designed.
To the extent that there is a need for changes to the way reports are
generated (e.g., adding witnesses on charts), then that it a different
issue and we are happy to consider such suggestions. But it doesn't
require changing the definition of "principal" nor corrupting your data.
-Bob
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