There were some follow-ups to this old thread, under a new title. The issue is the GEDCOM standard, itself.
First of all, let's assume that you always choose the override to include all source information in the export (and adjust any Basic sources such that the Source Detail field is either empty or is OK to appear in the citations). Now, for SourceWriter sources you will get all the detail fields. Here's the problem. The Mills-based templates are stored in Legacy in such a way that Legacy can format those master and detail fields into a nice citation. The order in which the fields are used in the output citation is not necessarily the order that they appear in the templates. Some additional words or abbreviations may be inserted automatically in the output. However, upon export, the GEDCOM standard has one field to store all the detail data. The Legacy export has little choice but to simply pack all the contents of the individual source detail fields into one big, concatenated field. In other words, it becomes structured just like a Basic source, and in fact this is what you get if you re-import it into Legacy (or any other system). The resulting printed citation can appear rather garbled and nonsensical, even though all the actual data is there. You simply get all the master fields, followed by all the detail fields. How bad this looks depends on which SW template had been used initially. There was an offer to look into it, but I can't think of how they might fix it without an enhancement to the GEDCOM standard. I may be wrong. I haven't re-tested this recently, so Ron's advice to try it out is still valid. Ward ----- Original Message ----- From: Dave Keeney To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 10:37 PM Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Incomplete Export of Source Details Has there been any advances to this issue in the last year? E.G. has Legacy stated that they will support the exporting of Source Detail in the Source Writer templates? Or anything like that? If not I'll need to go back and unconvert all of my Source Writer sources. Legacy is an important part of my genealogy toolbox, but no more important that my use of TNG. They have to work together, at least for me. On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 11:18 AM, Ward Walker <[email protected]> wrote: I'm trying to create a GEDCOM 5.5 file for a newly found distant cousin. I would like to include my sources. My problem is with the level of source detail exported. SourceWriter source details have important fields on the Detail Information tab that are meant to always form part of the citation on reports, and then the fields on the Text/Comments tab which can optionally be part of a citation (as controlled by checkboxes) or just backup details in the database. Basic sources have an additional checkbox "Add this Detail to the Source Citation on Reports" on the Detail Information tab. This controls the text in the "Source Detail" field on that tab. In my case, if it is a Basic source and I had not checked that box on the Detail Information tab, then the Source Detail field consists of informal notes to myself about what the source applies to or what new info the source adds. I don't mind my cousin seeing these cryptic snippets of text. Unfortunately, when the are included in the export, they are confusing the way that they are appended to the source citation as if they were meant to be part of the citation. I would prefer to omit these from the export entirely. I don't mind including all data from the Text/Comments tabs (master or detail), as long as it ends up in its own place in the target system (not appended to the citation text unless specified so). Here's the rub. The main GEDCOM export panel has a checkbox "Override Source options - include all source information". If I leave this checked, then I get all source detail fields, including all Text/Comments fields and including that unwanted Source Detail field for Basic sources. However, if I uncheck it, then I lose too much. True, the Basic sources only have the Source Detail text appended to the citation if I had indicated so for reports in Legacy. That's good, but now the Text/Comments data is gone too (unless their own checkboxes had been checked for adding them to the citations). Much worse, now the SourceWriter sources have no info from the important fields on the Detail Information panel! The resulting exported citations are badly incomplete. In summary, if I select to override source options, I get all source information, but some of it is awkwardly appended to the citation part of the source, in the target GEDCOM or system. If I don't override, then the export only contains as much info as would appear in a Legacy report citation, for Basic sources, and it contains seriously incomplete info for SourceWriter sources. Is this just a serious design flaw, or am I overlooking something else in the export settings? Thanks. Ward Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
