TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2004-07 > 1089113699


From: Darrell Martin <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Spouses even though no marriage shown?
Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 06:34:59 -0500
References: <30273817.1089062030877.JavaMail.root@wamui09.slb.atl.earthlink.net><019901c462f5$8bc52840$6401a8c0@charliexv><6.1.0.6.2.20040705223242.0441c4c0@popd.ix.netcom.com>
In-Reply-To: <6.1.0.6.2.20040705223242.0441c4c0@popd.ix.netcom.com>


At 12:34 AM 7/6/04, Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:
>On or about 07/05/04 18:05 a carrier pigeon from Jim Byram delivered:
>
>>no other data. The Marriage flag is unset. If you open and save the Edit
>>Family screen, the Marriage flag will be set to Married. You can also set
>
> And this behavior, changing a flag without the user making an explicit change, is considered acceptable?

Greetings:

What is a "flag"? Not just in TMG, in any program?

You are applying TMG-think to Generations. "Flags" in TMG tend to be visible and controlled directly; still, even TMG changes some of them indirectly, such as "Living" when certain Tags are entered. But every second of every day, somewhere, multiple computer programs appropriately change small data fields that indicate status without a hint of user input. And Bob V. has reported, if I read him right, that what might seem to indicate a "marriage flag" in Generations is not such a field anyway.

The real issue is whether patterns of Generations data values, which create reports and displays which consistently indicate the existence or non-existence of a particular marriage, are interpreted by GenBridge so the resulting TMG data reflects the same existence or non-existence of that marriage. The complexity or obscurity of the data values that create those reports and displays may reflect well or badly on the design of Generations, surely. However, if GenBridge is to be effective it must deal with the data as it is found and as Generations interprets it, not as it "should be". WG has already made two changes in the Generations to TMG GenBridge module, and Bob V. has indicated a willingness to continue dealing with the situation. The user who brought all this up seems satisfied with the process.

There are circumstances where a program does not consistently display or report the same output each time for the same values in the data. This is either a bug, or a feature which requires a context that cannot be gleaned from the data files. There may be such a bug, or feature, in Generations; there seems to be some discussion about this. Absent that, whether a certain "flag" means what it "obviously should mean" ought to be a motivation for GenBridge to work accurately (so Generations users can escape a bad program), not an excuse for why it does not.

Darrell M.


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


This thread: