TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2004-07 > 1088963668


From: Darrell Martin <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Spouses even though no marriage shown?
Date: Sun, 04 Jul 2004 12:54:28 -0500
References: <485ea3c84c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk><8806b8c84c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk><5a5dc4c84c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk><013201c4611e$2e17a070$6401a8c0@charliexv><07c333c94c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <07c333c94c.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk>


In a multi-level quoted message on this topic, someone wrote:
>[snip]
>> > Or do you think that Generations is incorrect in reporting that
>> > married couples are married?
>>
>> There is a contradiction in your question. How you know that a couple
>> is married unless the user has taken affirmative action to record
>> that they are married?
>
>I know that they are married if the user enters first the male spouse
>and then, on the same main window, the female spouse. This is how you
>enter a marriage in Generations. All the reports then report that a
>marriage has been entered. No further affirmative action is needed.
>
>Obviously if the couple are not married but "Unmarried" or "Common Law"
>the user has to tell Generations of this and the reports will then
>correctly show the new information.
>
>> Do I think that Generations is incorrect in reporting that couples are
>> married when there has been no assertion of any sort by the user to
>> record the event? Yes. The program is making an assumption on behalf
>> of the user that may or may not be correct.
[snip]

Greetings:

The writer who is focusing on the Generations user "making an assertion" appears to be making an unwarranted assumption of his own. That is, that TMG's general way of working can be expected of other programs. For the most part, TMG does not extrapolate any positive statement from an absence of user entry of a particular datum. That seems to most of us to be an excellent way for TMG to work, or we wouldn't use the program. However, if another program *does* extrapolate in this manner, predictably, and the users of that program know it and expect it, then when a user enters data in a way that causes the extrapolation, it is counterproductive to discuss the result **in terms of how TMG would have handled the entry of the same data**.

I therefore conclude that, logically, the statement in the last quoted paragraph above could not stand even if its premise ("there has been no assertion of any sort by the user") were correct. As pointed out by the other party to the conversation, however, the premise is *not* correct. Generations does not require the same kind of action to record a marriage that TMG does, but it does require user action.

Darrell M.


Darrell A. Martin
a native Vermonter currently in exile in Illinois
http://www.darrell-martin.net/genealogy


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