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Archiver > TMG > 2002-07 > 1025969590


From: Diana Powell <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] 5.02 relationship tags
Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2002 08:34:39 -0700
References: <BBELINAJCPNPOALLDGONOELEDFAA.clcasper@sprynet.com>


Ida Skarson McCormick wrote:
>
> If the stepfather/adoptive father is the primary father, I would
> make a variant of the child's name with this step or adoptive info > in the suffix field. That way it would print on any charts or
> reports. For example:
>
> John James Jones (adopted by Ted), or an abbreviation of this
> phrase

Like Ida and Cheri, I have settled on a similar solution: I create a
name variation with (adopted) in the suffix field. This should work
even better in 5.0 since we can assign a name-var without the adopted
suffix to all but the first tag which will make narrative reports sound
better.

The other issue that has always seemed potentially misleading to me in
register style narrative reports is the fact that once you are a
generation removed from the adopted person there is no way to
differentiate the fact that this is not a blood line of descent (unless
you add a sentence in each descendant's narrative which seems awkward).
In fact if you choose to back reference generations you get something
like this:

John Jones3, Frank Jones2, Robert Jones

In this case Frank Jones was adopted by Robert (and the ADO tag is
primary), but you would never know that from looking at the generational
reference; in fact it suggests a bloodline relationship. What I would
really, really love would be that anytime the ADO tag becomes primary it
triggers the insertion of the word adopted at the point of the adopted
relationship. So, in my example above you would now see:

John Jones3, Frank Jones(adopted)2, Robert Jones

One way to accomplish this (and leave it under user control) would be to
add an option in the report writer to allow for the inclusion of
suffixes in generational back references. As it stands now you can
choose to include middle names, but not suffixes. That would allow the
user to place the word adopted in the suffix field and then control
whether it prints on the generational back references (which are
themselves optional).

In the meantime I am toying with adding a suffix to the primary name of
everyone who descends through an adopted line that says (adopted line)
or something similar. Again, this would only need to appear as the
first usage of the name and after that a name var without the suffix can
be assigned for better reading. The main drawback I see to this idea is
that if I want to create a report where I change the focus from the
adoptive parent to the biological parent I will have to change the
primary name in all the adopted person's descendants back to the name
without the (adopt line) suffix.

Diana Powell

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