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Archiver > TMG > 2004-03 > 1078325337


From: "Gregory Winters" <>
Subject: RE: [TMG] FTM Import and Footnotes
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 09:48:57 -0500
In-Reply-To: <9EACB07EDEF67647B2261D7750EC370A09463E3D@exchange6.cgcent.miami.edu>


Scot:

I go one step further than your line of thought and maintain that what I did
in FTM was *not* 'non-standard.' There is a difference between maintaining
references in a database according to established genealogy standards and
creating printouts from that database. When creating a report - *any*
report, the author has the right to insert footnotes into the text.
Footnotes may include references to Sources, but they don't have to. There
is not a one-to-one correspondence between a Source/Citation and a footnote.

I went so far as to accommodate the TMG requirement that *all* Citations be
assigned to the Master Source List in order to (hopefully) 'validate' my FTM
footnotes in TMG. I could understand the desire of the designers to
maintain a reference structure between the database and the reports.
However (as you insinuate below), unreferenced footnotes are certainly not
'non'standard' reporting devices, and they are every bit as valid as
referenced footnotes. This is why FTM includes this feature in their
database engine. Clarifications, additions, anecdotes, informal
correspondence, etc., are the stuff that non-referenced footnotes are made
of - none of which require a Citation in order to be 'standard.' (*All*
specifically non-referenced footnotes are actually implicitly referenced to
the author, anyway.)

The upshot is that if I had created a formal Citation for each and every
comment that I had originally entered into my FTM database, then I would
have literally hundreds of non-sensical Citations to manage - which defeats
the purpose of what a Citation is actually supposed to represent: a
sub-reference of Source.

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: Sutton, Scot G. [mailto:]
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 9:04 AM
To:
Subject: RE: [TMG] FTM Import and Footnotes

Jim,

Can you please cite the reference from which you have determined that
manually entering a footnote in FTM is "non-standard". It is simply an
allowed option of the program. If it were to be considered non-standard,
then so would much of the information entered into TMG. So, does that mean
that TMG users should not use such options as roles, flags, split citations,
etc. because it may come back to bite them if they ever need to migrate to a
new program? I would hope that if I ever feel the need to migrate away from
TMG (assuming I ever get migrated to it), the reason would be that there is
a better program available and that the better program would allow me to
easily transfer ALL of my data stored in TMG to the new program. At a
minimum I would hope that the conversion process would provide a useful log
of any data omitted or altered during the conversion. Such is not the case
with the GenBridge FTM to TMG conversion at this time.

BTW, WG bent over backwards to make sure that the migration from UFT to TMG
included all of the user's data. Why is the same consideration not shown to
FTM users who wish to migrate? Are we less important because of the program
we initially chose to use?

Scot

-----Original Message-----
From:Jim Byram [SMTP:]
Sent:Tuesday, March 02, 2004 11:54 AM
To:
Subject:Re: [TMG] FTM Import and Footnotes


You basically chose to enter your data in FTM in a non-standard way
to
control how sources were output to reports. Which is fine. Now that
you are
trying to move your data out of FTM to another program, those
practices have
come back to bite you.

Jim




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