I know what you said was shorthand, but we should clarify this for folks who may be new to Gedcom. Please excuse this long rant.
Gedcom is an old standard. There are two variations that are in use: 5.5 and 5.5.1. I think they are both over 10 years old.
Legacy is capable of exporting a Gedcom to either of those standards, should you choose to do so, meaning that the only Tags included in the export are the ones specified in those standards.
However, just because a Gedcom complies with the standards, that does not mean that the Gedcom will necessarily be able to export ALL of your data.
The Gedcom standard also gave Vendors an option to create proprietary Tags to extend the types of information that is exported. One could say that as long as those Tags follow the standard, the Gedcom is 100% compliant, but that does not mean that another vendor will be able to interpret those proprietary tags.
Based on my analysis of 100s of Gedcoms, I do not know of any instance where Legacy Gedcoms are exporting data incorrectly, based on the standard and including the rules for proprietary tags.
The test team did lots of Gedcom exports and imported those Gedcoms into many other products successfully. Of course, not everything was imported, but that was because the other vendor did not handle Legacy proprietary tags.
I recognize two uses for Gedcoms: exporting data to another product or creating a Gedcom archive of your family file for yourself or a research collaborator.
As Sherry has said, in 10 years of support work, only a handful of support issues have required the Gedcom as an archive.
--> As we identified another data item that is not included in the archive, we reported this to development. Except for SourceWriter sources, I am not aware of any important item in Legacy that is not being archived. We archive tags, PP exclusions, Privacy, Event Definitions, etc, etc. If anyone finds something that is not in the archive, please alert us to it. Please feel free to write me privately.
Another common use of Gedcom as an archive is when you want to share data with a Legacy user who has not upgraded to the current release. Unless they are on an archaic PC, I encourage them first to upgrade to current version.
--> A quirk of Legacy when exporting a FF to a Gedcom for archive purposes is that Legacy only exports from the family file what the Family File is actually using. IE, if you have unused Custom Events, Locations, Master Sources, or other Master List items, they are not currently exported.
The most common use by far is to share data with another application. I do not know of any current issues with Legacy Gedcom going to other vendors where the issue was the Gedcom export. All of the times I have seen problems, the issue was with the other vendor's import software.
As for importing a Gedcom into Legacy, Legacy has many special functions to do extended processing of Gedcoms from many popular programs. Development has been very supportive of enhancements to Legacy to facilitate imports from other programs.
thanks,
john.
At 10:16 AM 11/30/2013, David Abernathy wrote:
Neither does Legacy or any other program.
None of them are 100% GEDCOM compliant.
Thanks,
David C Abernathy
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From: William Boswell [ mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, November 30, 2013 6:13 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] GEDCOM
All I did was copy my 7.5 data files over to a new data folder for 8 then had 8 convert it. Anyone who exports to a GEDCOM is going to have a lot of work ahead of them. I remember exporting to a GEDCOM from FTM back in 2009 and I'm still fixing all the problems it created. FTM doesn't like users to transfer to a better program without giving you more headaches.
Bill Boswell
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