Your point is well taken, but...
1/ Gedcom was last updated in the late 1990s. In my opinion, it will never be updated significantly again because (a) too many applications depend on the current implementation and from a development viewpoint are static. For instance, RootsWeb's WorldConnect has not had any development work done in almost 15 years, yet it is used every day and has an enormous inventory of data that no one would like to see disappear. And (b) too many Gedcoms exist in physical inventory. No one would accept making those unusable.
2/ Gedcom has several mechanisms for extending its functionality. Legacy has many more functions than Gedcom designers ever imagined when it was released, yet with one big exception, almost all Legacy functionality can be exported and then re-imported into Legacy. (I think the one big exception is SourceWriter sources. They are re-imported as Basic sources.)
The problem between products is that each product has a different data model and often different limits to functionality.
For instance, two features mentioned on this list recently between Legacy and TNG. Legacy supports adding media to Source Citations and having Shared Events. TNG does neither. I am sure there are dozens of other items. You cannot blame Gedcom because TNG does not support those features.
If you are, like I am, using TNG for Web Publishing, you know that you have 2 choices: accept the limitations and either not use Legacy functionality that TNG does not have or accept that some of your data is not viewable in TNG.
--> In place of TNG, I could also have said Family Tree Maker and the same considerations are in place.
What is a problem with Legacy is when Legacy does not export any of its data OR it exports the data in a fashion that cannot be accepted by the receiving software. Such is the case we discussed recently with Child Status in Legacy.
john.
At 12:00 PM 3/31/2015, David Abernathy wrote:
One needs to remember that GEDCOM is a very old standard and has not been up dated since the early 1990âs.
It was never designed to do a lot of things it is being forced to do today.
It was designed to convert ALL of the data in one product so it could be used in an another product.
Now we have people complaining that an GEDCOM is showing too much and at the same time others complaining that data is being left out.
Why not just use these tools for what they were designed to do.
Thanks,
David C Abernathy
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== All outgoing and incoming mail is scanned by F-Prot Antivirus ==
From: Ward Walker [ mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2015 12:43 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [LegacyUG] Source Comments in GEDCOM [WAS: Details text showing up in Footnote citation]
See below...
From: Brian L. Lightfoot
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2015 2:15 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] Details text showing up in Footnote citation.
...
Now for the really bad news that nobody has yet caught. I seems this info on the Comment tab of a Master Source is always included on a GEDCOM submission which kind of negates my idea of keeping it private.
Brian in CA
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Brian, I agree that there is bad news here, especially when the target system for the GEDCOM is not well-behaved. I ran into this with my TNG experimentation. I have just run some additional tests in order to sort out what is happening. Results are below. In summary, I always uncheck the export box that says âoverride source optionsâ. Otherwise, TNG bloats the source citations with unwanted text/comments from the source Detail, and also displays citations that were unwanted. But this is a compromise, because now Sourcewriter detail fields are missing (at least for the templates that I tested) a Legacy issue. There are other TNG source-handling issues no matter which override option you choose.
Ward
******* Legacy Sources On Export to GEDCOM ****************
(Export to 'Legacy' GEDCOM was selected for most of these tests.)
If choose to override source options:
- Sourcewriter Sources:
- Master source Text/Comments: Included in GEDCOM
- Detail Fields: Included
- Detail source Text/Comments: Included
- Basic Sources:
- Master source Text/Comments: Included
- Detail Fields: Included
- Detail source Text/Comments: Included
- The source is included in the GEDCOM even if the box 'Include this citation on reports' was unchecked on the source detail panel. (There is a _CIT No tag that Legacy probably uses on re-import, but a non-Legacy target system would not.)
If choose not to override source options:
- The Entire citation is missing if you do not check 'Include this citation on reports' on the edit Detail panel. Otherwise...
- Sourcewriter Sources:
- Master source Text/Comments: Included
- Detail Fields: NOT Included!!
- Detail source Text/Comments: Included only if had checked 'Add this text/comments to the Source Citation on Reports.
- Basic Sources:
- Master source Text/Comments: Included
- Detail Fields: Included only if had checked 'Add this Detail to the Source Citation on Reports'
- Detail source Text/Comments: Included only if had checked 'Add this text/comments to the Source Citation on Reports.
TNG Import:
- Displays the source list name first, in the citation (i.e., the name that is supposed to be for internal use, only!!)
- Displays no master text/comment text in the citation, or if click on the source number.
- But DOES expands all the master source text/comments under the citation in the PDF report!!
- Displays master source media, when click to drill down on the source number.
- Displays available source detail fields in the citation, although not when drill down on the source number. (Master info only.)
- Displays source detail text/comment data, if present, right in the citation!!
- Displays no source detail media. (No media link.)
- Displays the Description field of the Detail Media file, in the citation!!
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