Jay and John,
I don’t expect these features/structures to be re-imported intact into the
target system (whether another product or back into Legacy). What I meant by
‘workaround’ is to bend these structures into the standard GEDCOM format.
Shared events become separate events. (I acknowledge that something would have
to be done with ‘roles’.) SourceWriter sources already become Basic, but Legacy
should re-order the information so that the basic source reads OK.
I said ‘option’ because there might be opportunities for competing vendors to
do a more intelligent interchange. You are saying that RM and Legacy can
interchange shared events via GEDCOM, so there must be a special way to encode
the non-standard structures. My wish is for an option that suits an unknown
target system as best possible using only standard GEDCOM. I’ve never run into
a cousin that uses RM.
BTW, I sympathize with the testing challenges. I was a software tester and test
manager. Perhaps it is time for Millennia to invest in some automated test
cases for regression testing. But my complaint is with the design of new
features. If I can’t send my digital data to a fellow researcher, even in a
simplified state, then I better not use that feature. It is not fully
implemented.
Ward
From: John B. Lisle
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2013 4:32 PM
To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com
Subject: Re: Exporting Shared Events [WAS: Re: [LegacyUG] Shared vital Events]
Ward,
I really wish to take exception to your "half implemented" comment.
In the long run, the purpose of Gedcom is to communicate information to another
product. Not all products have all of the same features.
Shared events - as far as I know - only exist in Legacy, Roots Magic, and a
variation in The Master Genealogist. Currently, the Gedcoms for RM and Legacy
can interchange Shared events perfectly.
Supposedly, TMG (not TNG!) does not import or export any Gedcoms that contain
anything but Gedcom 5.5.1 standard tags so shared events (They call them
Witnesses) do not escape from their bubble. (I have not played with TMG in a
while, and, recently, I have had TMG users dispute this assertion but without
evidence.)
What neither RM or Legacy do is to create a Gedcom where Shared events are
converted to regular events for Gedcom export. I do not believe that anyone has
yet determined how this might look, yet.
--> Note: It is likely that some further enhancements need to be made to Shared
events so this conversion exercise might be done as part of any enhancements.
One of the proposed enhancements is to add role notes onto the person sharing
the event and including in the event sentences the ability to structure the
Role Notes with the Main notes. In a Gedcom export to regular notes, would you
have to add to the notes that the event was shared from someone else and this
person participated as a <role>.
There are currently several Gedcom options that are clearly designed to
facilitate export to a 3rd party product. (eg, the 2 note conversions, the Q
dates conversion.) When you do those conversion, you do not plan on
re-importing those Gedcoms back into Legacy.
I can tell you with confidence that these are not all easy changes. Each change
is fraught with challenges with folks with existing family files that might be
damaged.
Almost every Gedcom export change has to be married to a Gedcom import change.
When you start to add in Privacy concerns and partial gedcom export options,
you have very difficult functionality to test. I personally did a lot of
testing in this area and was only able to cover a fraction of all of the test
cases that exist.
I almost forgot to chat about SourceWriter Sources... again. These are a Legacy
unique features. Each template comes with its own baggage with respect to
Gedcom export. I believe that, when a new Template is created, the Gedcom
export and import may sometimes be needed to be updated to support it. (I do
not claim to be the SW expert among the testers so I do not look at this.)
Being able to export a SW Source and then re-importing it into Legacy is really
only an archival issue. The key is can Legacy Gedcom export convert a SW source
into a standard "Basic" source without loss of content that can be in turn
understood by most 3rd party products.
john.
At 03:20 PM 12/5/2013, Ward Walker wrote:
Jay,
I think it will be a long time before we have a new interchange standard that
deals with these two features. To my thinking, whenever a software vendor
implements a proprietary new feature for data entry (and internal data
structure), they should implement a workaround for the export of the resulting
data. From day one. Why would I want to send to my distant cousins a GEDCOM for
which I have to apologize due to its garbled sources or missing events?
The Legacy import process already has a few workarounds to accommodate
non-standard quirks in GEDCOMs generated by other products. Why not workarounds
for the two export issues? They both sound achievable at a reasonable cost.
Iâve already gone down the SourceWriter road, but I can easily avoid shared
events until this happens. They are a nifty feature that is only half
implemented.
Ward
From: Jay 1FamilyTree
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2013 2:23 PM
To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com
Subject: Re: Exporting Shared Events [WAS: Re: [LegacyUG] Shared vital Events]
Ward
When the standards for Gedcom were created way back when, this 'new feature'
wasn't even considered or even imagined.
Don't blame the software for it, blame the standards that haven't been
updated.
Whatever browser you are using to read this email and view the web certainly
isnt following the standards of the HTML 3.0 which was the first widely used
and accepted standards for that category of electronic data.
As Kristy said, the issue is wit the gedcom.
Jay
On Thu, Dec 5, 2013 at 7:44 AM, Ward Walker <wnkwal...@rogers.com> wrote:
I agree, Gavin. To me, this is equivalent to the problem with SourceWriter
source citations. I have long advocated that Legacy reformat these into
readable detail citations during the process of converting them into Basic
sources for the GEDCOM export. It seems that Millennia does not believe that a
usable GEDCOM export is important.
Every proprietary new feature should have an option to be mashed into the
primitive GEDCOM standard without loss of data.
Ward
From: Gavin Nicholson
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 8:56 PM
To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com
Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] Shared vital Events
Thanks Kirsty,
Well I will be putting a change proposal in because it would be simple to
export a copy of the events to each person. Yes it won't be shared anymore but
that is far preferable to not existing at all. Essentially, with this as it is
you can't use shared events and then give your data to anyone who doesnt use
Legacy :-(
Thanks for making us aware of this one.
Gavin...
From: Kirsty M. Haining [mailto:khain...@comcast.net]
Sent: Thursday, 5 December 2013 11:48 AM
To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com
Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] Shared vital Events
Gavin, that is exactly what Iâm saying. Using a gedcom export, the data
shows up ONLY under the event initiatorâs dataset.
Keep in mind, however, that if you use Legacy to create your reports,
charts, sharing via PDF files, etc. then the shared events should appear
properly within the particular reports (according the report options youâve
chosen). The issue is with gedcom export.*
cheers,
Kirsty
J
*Or, technically, the issue arises anytime youâre using another software
program to handle a Legacy file, be it gedcom or native FDB format.
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