John,
New GEDCOM: From previous LUG discussions it sounds like it will be years
before a new interchange standard replaces the current GEDCOM standard.
Legacy-RM Interchange: RM is not of any relevance to me. Am I alone in this
regard?
Specific SW Problems: Gavin has illustrated a typical example of the
SourceWriter GEDCOM problem. It has been reported to Legacy Support long ago.
Try this: export a file and import it back into a test Legacy file. Create a
report and look at your citations. All those that used a template of any
complexity at all will have the words and phrases out of order (at best). This
is not anecdotal. There is a clear cause. In attempting to preserve the
master/detail relationship within the GEDCOM, the fields get shuffled into a
different order. My idea of a workaround is to flatten each citation out into a
mostly Detail citation, with the words formatted as in a normal Legacy report.
Collaborating Online: I would think that exporting a significant chunk of
Legacy data to a web-based tree usually involves the same GEDCOM interchange,
aside from special implementations like FamilySearch Family Tree. Anyway, if a
newly-found cousin/researcher wants to import a significant portion of my tree,
seeing it online won’t help them. I have to send them a file. Usually they
barely know how to operate the software that they have (often FTM) and are not
open to starting over with a new product just to accommodate me. If their tree
is only online (e.g., Ancestry), then yes, they could grant me access to add my
branch interactively. Painful.
Am I making my case, yet, that GEDCOM export is a vital component of any new
feature design?
Ward
From: John B. Lisle
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2013 6:55 PM
To: LegacyUserGroup@LegacyUsers.com
Subject: Re: Exporting Shared Events [WAS: Re: [LegacyUG] Shared vital Events]
Ward,
Thanks for your note.
Please see below...
john.
At 05:18 PM 12/5/2013, Ward Walker wrote:
Jay and John,
I donât expect these features/structures to be re-imported intact into the
target system (whether another product or back into Legacy).
I do expect, at some time in the future, that Gedcom will have an option to
export SW Sources in a form that they can be re-imported into Legacy perfectly.
Not being the programmer, I do not know what the issues are.
What I meant by âworkaroundâ 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 ârolesâ.)
Agree. At this point, let's walk before we run.
We already export so that RM can import them perfectly, and we can import RM's
perfectly.
SourceWriter sources already become Basic, but Legacy should re-order the
information so that the basic source reads OK.
As far as I know, SW Sources exported into Gedcom as "Basic" are able to import
into other programs. I know of no specific problems although I am sure some
exist, either based on specific templates or types of included data.
--> One problem that has been reported on this list is that note fields on
export in sources are not getting the formatting codes and space code
conversions when they are requested in the export.
If you know of specific issues, not just anecdotal reports, then you need to
get them to support so that they can be reviewed and included in the bug list.
I said âoptionâ 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.
The two vendors seem to have "agreed" to adopt the same syntax. This same
syntax has been presented to TNG (Web Publisher) for his future implementation
of Shared Events. (TNG Users... if you want this in TNG soon, you really have
to ask TNG to include it.)
My wish is for an option that suits an unknown target system as best possible
using only standard GEDCOM. Iâve never run into a cousin that uses RM.
As I said before, I want this too so I can use Shared Events. BUT... I want to
let the implementation settle down as more should be coming. hopefully soon. ;-)
BTW, I sympathize with the testing challenges. I was a software tester and
test manager.
You might want to consider offering yourself up for the Test team. ;-)
Perhaps it is time for Millennia to invest in some automated test cases for
regression testing.
Above my pay grade... But possibly a thought moving forward. I introduced
automatic testing to many companies before I retired. I am not current with
what is in the market today, and, if it would fit with Millennia's development
process.
But my complaint is with the design of new features. If I canât 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.
In my opinion, Legacy has the best balance of advanced customizable features
and "non-proprietary" data of any of the major vendors. Personally, I try to
get my fellow researchers to convert to Legacy so I can send them a Legacy
backup file. And, if they do not want all of the data, ready to go, they get a
Gedcom.
In 2013, however, collaboration is not really done best by sharing files. It is
done with web/cloud based solutions like TNG, Ancestry Files, Family Search
Tree, etc.
john.
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.
IâÂÂve 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 IâÂÂm saying. Using a gedcom export, the
data shows up ONLY under the event initiatorâÂÂs 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
youâÂÂve chosen). The issue is with gedcom export.*
cheers,
Kirsty
J
*Or, technically, the issue arises anytime youâÂÂre using another
software program to handle a Legacy file, be it gedcom or native FDB format.
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