TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2002-02 > 1012583483


From: "Gene Stuff" <>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: [TMG] Witness and Roles and V5.0
Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 17:11:23 +0000


>From: Bob Velke <>
>I can think of a good reason (not to output for all individuals). 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.

Yes, I agree with you that this is a problem. (Yeah, Bob we agree on
something!) It's not a problem in UFT because the user controls who gets
exported by who was marked principal.

>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.

Yes, I (mostly) agree with you here also. Surprised?

In UFT the mark of principal is mostly used to control output. To that end
I might mark a direct ancestor a principal if I wanted the text of the event
to print (easily) in reports and to show on the individual screen, even if
he was not particularly important to the event.

>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 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...

Yes, I agree with you here also. GEDCOM does indeed not support linking of
multiple people to a single event. But, then again neither do the programs
that I want to transfer data to, FTM, Legacy, etc.

>
>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

Bob, we have many areas of agreement. I hope you will consider GEDCOM to be
a form of a report and kindly consider how witness data may be exported to
it as well as to printed charts and reports. I have a couple of
suggestions.

1) Simply allow the user to export witnesses to GEDCOM if he/she wishes.
After all it's my data and this is what I want to do with it. Load it up
with all kinds of notes, warnings, and caveats if you wish, but then let me
do it. PLEASE! In this instance I really don't want to be "protected" by
you.

2) Create a new type of indicator similar to principal, but used to control
GEDCOM output. i.e. "GEDME". Or allow GEDCOM output to be controlled by some
kind of a flag.

3) Make some other suggestion as to how this information can be preserved
upon transfer of data to other software.

or

4) Issue strong warnings to users that witness information cannot now and
never will be exported via GEDCOM and that if they wish to preserve such
data electronically they really should not use that feature of TMG. (Kind of
negates the reason for using TMG in the first place in my mind, but you're
in control here.)



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