Chris Hill <mailto:[email protected]>
Tuesday, 11 July 2017 3:59 AM
Having been a committee member for the design and implementation of
the EDI standards in Europe, in the mid 1980-1990s, I am well aware
of the issues of getting a standard format. We ended up with a lot of
optional records that most people ignored or did not need, and equally
with the issue of a business decided that he did want them and
insisted that you provide them.
Hopefully, we will get to a basic structure which everyone will
support and with only a few, if any, non-mandatory fields.
Regards
Chris
*From:*LegacyUserGroup
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of
*Michael Feldman
*Sent:* 10 July 2017 20:22
*To:* Legacy User Group <[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [LegacyUG] Problem with V8.0.0.602 and V8.0.0.604
Hi all,
Chris Hill wrote:
[snip]
A worthy ideal overall, but "no exceptions" is unlikely to happen in
practice. The computing world is filled with technical standards of
one kind or another; anyone who works in, or near, a standards
committee know this is like herding cats. And even after a standard is
adopted, some cats will wander off in their own direction anyway
(which is why standards are always revised periodically, to bring
exceptions into the fold, then the process starts again). It's human
nature (and, often, business nature as well).
[ASIDE] The evolution of character-set standards is a good example. I
think the discussion here of the em-dash problems is a manifestation
of this. "Back in the day" (the fifties), a character was represented
as six bits. Of course this limited the total number of characters to
64, which is why the early computers printed everything as UPPER CASE
-- no room for lower case in the character set. In recent decades,
we've gone to 7 bits, 8 bits, and beyond, to try to accommodate all
countries' alphabets and now, even, emojis. Google "number of bits in
an emoji" for character-set fun and games.
[back to GEDCOM] It'll be interesting to see what FHISO comes up with...
Just my $0.02.:-)
Mike Feldman
Michael Feldman <mailto:[email protected]>
Tuesday, 11 July 2017 3:22 AM
Hi all,
Chris Hill wrote:
[snip]
A worthy ideal overall, but "no exceptions" is unlikely to happen in
practice. The computing world is filled with technical standards of
one kind or another; anyone who works in, or near, a standards
committee know this is like herding cats. And even after a standard is
adopted, some cats will wander off in their own direction anyway
(which is why standards are always revised periodically, to bring
exceptions into the fold, then the process starts again). It's human
nature (and, often, business nature as well).
[ASIDE] The evolution of character-set standards is a good example. I
think the discussion here of the em-dash problems is a manifestation
of this. "Back in the day" (the fifties), a character was represented
as six bits. Of course this limited the total number of characters to
64, which is why the early computers printed everything as UPPER CASE
-- no room for lower case in the character set. In recent decades,
we've gone to 7 bits, 8 bits, and beyond, to try to accommodate all
countries' alphabets and now, even, emojis. Google "number of bits in
an emoji" for character-set fun and games.
[back to GEDCOM] It'll be interesting to see what FHISO comes up with...
Just my $0.02.:-)
Mike Feldman
Chris Hill <mailto:[email protected]>
Tuesday, 11 July 2017 2:54 AM
In theory, if everyone assumes that the GEDCOM is a standardised
format. Unfortunately, it is not, and was released in 1996 for the
5.5.1 version. There was a XML version designed in 2002 which never
went anywhere. Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEDCOM.
Anyone, including Legacy, has the ability to add their own additional
records and structures to a GEDCOM file. Plus, it does not support the
more modern functionality, like the ability in Legacy to share events
across multiple people, unless they have fixed that in V9.
Everyone has their own interpretation of what they will support and ,
for a basic list of people, dates, locations it is good. Try to go
past that and you will find differences. Sources can be an issue and
so can multiple parents and adoptions, let alone the same-sex
marriages. Throw Ancestry, FindMyPast etc into that and it just get
worse.
The Family History Information Standards Organisation (FHISO) was
started in 2012 and has just released its very first draft standards
for public comment, at the end of June. Something that I need to review.
Hopefully, if we can get everyone supporting a single standard, with
no exceptions, we will then be able to transfer data with no loss.
Regards
Chris
*From:*LegacyUserGroup
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of
*Leonard J. McCown
*Sent:* 10 July 2017 18:39
*To:* 'Legacy User Group' <[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [LegacyUG] Problem with V8.0.0.602 and V8.0.0.604
*Chris, I thought that the GEDCOM format was supposed to help transfer
your data from one program to another with the basic information
traveling. I moved from Family Roots, to Personal Ancestral File, to
Ancestral Quest with no problems in the past. Leonard*
**
**
*_____________________________________________________________________________*
**
*Leonard J. McCown, Irving, Texas -- McCown Family History*
*217 West 14th Street, Irving, Texas 75060-5903*
*972-254-7952*
*[email protected]*<mailto:[email protected]>*--
**http://www.mccown.org***
*People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to*
*their ancestors. -- Edmund Burke, 1790*
*_____________________________________________________________________________*
**
*From:*LegacyUserGroup
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Chris Hill
*Sent:* Monday, July 10, 2017 11:18 AM
*To:* 'Legacy User Group' <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*Subject:* Re: [LegacyUG] Problem with V8.0.0.602 and V8.0.0.604
That is a different question. I think I would find the hashtags
useful, and possibly a couple of the other additions, but most of them
are, to me, pointless.
The one thing that I do want, and will never get, is a standardised
interface API between the different genealogy programs and the online
systems, so that we can accurately and easily transfer information
with no loss.
Regards
Chris
Leonard J. McCown <mailto:[email protected]>
Tuesday, 11 July 2017 1:39 AM
*Chris, I thought that the GEDCOM format was supposed to help transfer
your data from one program to another with the basic information
traveling. I moved from Family Roots, to Personal Ancestral File, to
Ancestral Quest with no problems in the past. Leonard*
**
**
*_____________________________________________________________________________*
**
*Leonard J. McCown, Irving, Texas -- McCown Family History*
*217 West 14th Street, Irving, Texas 75060-5903*
*972-254-7952*
*[email protected]*<mailto:[email protected]>*--
**http://www.mccown.org***
*People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to*
*their ancestors. -- Edmund Burke, 1790*
*_____________________________________________________________________________*
**
*From:* LegacyUserGroup
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Chris Hill
*Sent:* Monday, July 10, 2017 11:18 AM
*To:* 'Legacy User Group' <[email protected]>
*Subject:* Re: [LegacyUG] Problem with V8.0.0.602 and V8.0.0.604
That is a different question. I think I would find the hashtags
useful, and possibly a couple of the other additions, but most of them
are, to me, pointless.
The one thing that I do want, and will never get, is a standardised
interface API between the different genealogy programs and the online
systems, so that we can accurately and easily transfer information
with no loss.
Regards
Chris
