TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2002-02 > 1012614953


From: "F. Langset" <>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: [TMG] Witness and Roles and V5.0
Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2002 02:56:36 +0100
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20020201101637.074610b0@mail.hwrd1.md.home.com>


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Ref: Bob Velke, 1 Feb 2002"Fwd: Re: [TMG] Witness and Roles an"
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[message cliped]
> 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.
[message cliped]


Hi Bob Velke and the list,

I agree with the above with one exception, and I also would add that
it is likewise a form of corruption to communicate an aggregate event
as if it was an event with only one or two principals/focus persons.
We have to, in a form, corrupt the data whatever method we use
because the media, the GEDCOM file, cannot communicate all the
information we have.

What I cannot see (yes, I admit that I now overstate what is actually
said in the above citation) is that one should not enable the user
to communicate more accurately what she wants because it implies that
she thereby is given the opportunity to also communicate something
that is less accurate or even wrong. I also cannot see that enabling
the user to do something wrong necessarily is to encourage the user
to do things wrong. This is in my opinion more an issue for user
interface design which specifies how to implement the functional
requirements (="user's wishes").

It makes sense in my mind to be able to export to GEDCOM some events
where the individual is assigned as a witness to the event in TMG,
_as if_ the individual had been assigned as a principle of that event
in TMG. This is, as I see it from the user's angle, the most
important thing (i.e. important in discussion, not in TMG). The
importance and validity of communicating the fact that a person lived
at a certain place at a certain time is not less important or valid
because one also is able to communicate the misleading fact that the
bridesmaid possibly was the bride of the priest in a wedding, without
the listener being able to see that this is wrong. It is also not
less important or less valid because one did not at the same time say
that another individual also lived at the same place at the same time
and that the relationship between those two individuals was father
and child. You might have lost some very important information, but
the importance of and validity of the information that _was_
communicated is not less. Specifically, it is not of less importance
or validity because the listener might make various assumptions that
is not implied in the communication, such as that the child was the
head of the household. He lived there anyhow.


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