Genealogy Chat

SHRat

Take it you do some sort IT support then?

Perhaps we are all dixlesik just a bit. Seriously though, I have great difficulty typing ptoperly. My fingers seem to want to hit the key to ine side of the letter I want. Not joking, it is real hard work to correct things.

Been thinking. Not too keen on Hawkwind, Got a message today which said "Dear Hawk" Didn't quite ring properly.

Apart from "Silver Machine", most of what they did was nothing more than a big dirge. Their 'Dancer' Stacia came on stage with a bottle of Vodka which she drank during the band's performance. and cavorted on the floor whilst flashing bits your mother would be too ashamed to mention.

The Grateful Dead were a much better band. Yup, Jerry G sounds good. I'll try that for a while.

PS G.D. did a number called Wharf Rat. Perhaps you could be WHRat.

I will have to take a look at the new GEDCOM specification. I was perhaps referring to the frequent miss use of it actually; in that you are correct.

I have been thinking about the project for a while, and probably wont get chance to make much progress until the Autumn.

Let’s think about the concepts of software, rather than moaning about interfaces.
In my mind there is a list of individuals, individuals undergo various events, some of which are mandatory (birth and death), some of which are voluntary (marriage, divorce, moving house, changing job).
Relationships between those individuals converge (e.g. marriage, births,) or they diverge (brother moves out, sister married into other line, sister dies).

What am I getting at?
The data has inherent relationships, and patterns of relationships, built into it, but needs to be flexible. I haven’t tried to (because I haven’t needed to) create marriages between relatives in GR tree builder. I’m guessing it is impossible, because I am guessing that each person can only have one relationship with another. That is an obvious example, but what about weddings and witnesses – would you not want to record who was there? What about houses, 6 generations lived in the same place, then moved away, and then moved back… some one was boarding – it is all information/data.

I should point out that the idea is not to visualise all the information, but to interrogate it such that the software gives you the answers you want. Who lived here? Did these people work together?

A note about why visualisation doesn’t matter.
The traditional view of a tree is that you have yourself at the bottom, you look up, and see your maternal and paternal lines coming down, and you look down and see all your children and grand children (the roots). Conceptually it makes more sense to turn it upside down actually. And therefore there is one tree for one family… however, that tree only works for you – it has you at the centre. Therefore everyone has a tree, because the tree is the representation of relationships between them and other people in that tree.

Bob is absolutely correct, and that was exactly my point too. Rob is neither dyslexic, nor does he have a poor command of grammar. But, as I politely pointed out, if he wants people to take note of what he says he need to brush up on his presentation skills.

Given his mention of products such as 'Monarch" (which I used for a few short years in B Bank), I suspect that he is actually quite clued up when it comes to database design and management.

Incidentally as a member of many years, those that know me will be aware that I change my name from time to time - nothing underhand just a way of keeping sane,

Bilbo Baggins, Gremlin, Hawkwind, Brinsley S(hwarz) and several others....! including my real name from time to time.

Interesting Andrew. Not sure I quite agree with the final paragraph though.

I am not convinced that it is fair to criticise GEDCOM for not doing something it was never intended for, It does not store evidence (and by this I take it that you really mean a reference to, or a scan of, evidence, rather than a roll of microfilm or a bound copy of a parish register), but the SOUR element ALLOWS such a reference, while the OBJE records are there to point to any type of file you want; jpeg, mpeg, xls, csv anything you like. True it does NOT include these files within itself, but that is surely unnecessary.

The major problem is not with the file standard, but the IMPLEMENTATIONS of the standard by the various software houses. FTM, for example, complete fails to understand the standard QUAY element. Even worse the premature adoption of GEDCOM 5.5.1 which remains an unapproved DRAFT specification.

I also remain unconvinced that a linear format can not work. I admit that I am going back to the 1990s, but then Monarch was THE tool for extracting data from different database and spreadsheet formats and presenting these in a form acceptable to any other database or spreadsheet; and that used a linear file format very successfully. Expensive, at about £800 IIRC for a single use licence!

Still yours could be an interesting little project, will you please keep us informed?

A divine opportunity to express thoughts and experiences of different software relating to the acquisition, storage and interpretation of data relating to genealogy, is now hidden behind two pages pointless egotistical ranting.

If anyone who has contributed to or read this thread thus far is of the opinion they can contribute objectively to a discussion intended to inform others of the relative merits of a range of software, please get on touch. I am specifically interested in web-based tools which allow the sharing of data (privately) with family and friends.

There are a number of Freeware options which I have considered using, but they tend to lack sensible approach to storing the source data and give little consideration to the inclusion of images. I am considering writing a programme to handle the data and source data relating to family history research. I am tempted to do it online, such that it can be shared.

I know about the Gedcom file format – it’s limited in respect of storing evidence. One needs to think about what the data actually represents and the relationships between the data objects before accepting to represent it in linear list form.

Maybe he thought he was being clever and that we wouldn't notice.....After all we are not as clever as him, or that's what he thinks. :-)))

why indeed!!!!

I am totally stumped - doesn't take much I know. Why is BrinsleyS posting as Hawkwind as well on the same thread?

Sue

as you said Bob "with some respect" I see no respect in his postings

Ann, with some respect,

SH Rat "Seems " to know what he is talking about..

it isnt a matter of dyslexia..

unfortunately I reckon he assumes every one else is on the ball with his method of explanation........

A lot of it went OVER my head, and I assume that it went over many others' heads also.
Brinsley s was merely pointing out that the layout COULD have been more idiot friendly...........

Bob

who the hell are you to criticise peoples' manner of posting!!! some people on here are dyslexic, some are not good with grammar, some are bad at explaining what they want, so live with it

Waves to Rob Moffitt. Splendid piece of deduction.Did you ever get to see either of the bands? (BrinsleyS was really Brinsley Schwarz)
PS: BTW I'llBSW FTM, At least I can understand it.

BTW Hawkwind when were you going to let on that you are/were BrinsleyS?

Well maybe.

I accept you are trying to make a reasoned argument, but if you think that your presentation is to acceptable standards then that is a very sad indictment as to the state of today's education standards.

If I had presented this for my GCE in the 1960's It would have got an immediate fail.

I'll spell it out. What is this load of ..... then

""""If I get started on why TMG suits me best I'll be here all day and not cover everything!
1st off it is EVIDENCE based, all entries should have a CITATION with an identified SOURCE and a measure of reliability of the information. It has embedded Chapman codes. There are over 60 standard reports, all of which can be filtered to include/exclude groups of people, events, tags etc. Every report can be modified if required, ( I have about 30 custom reports most of which have been created from scratch). You can make new tags and flags, (TMG makes them GEDCOM compliant, but most other programs get indegestion trying to interpret these.)
All the panels of the screen can be moved, resized or switched off. I have three different layouts, on three different machines (that is what their licence alows, My home PC, my work PC (I work for myself), and my laptop. The home PC has a large screen so the main panel has 40 lines of details for the focus person, his relationship to me, his BMDs, childrens births, census records, occupations, addresses, property transcations, newspaper reprtos, EVERYTHING, all showing the degree of confidence in the records reliability, and whether a memo is attached, oh and his M+F. underneath his children's panel gives 12 lines for their names, birth and death years, and their spouses and whether they have children on the project, next to that the same panel but these are siblings of the focus person. On the right of the screen I have a 40 line selection from all the names in the project, centred round the focus person. Then a panel with a selection of flags (male or female, living or deceased, adopted, multiple birth, etc) and a small custom toolbar with the 16 tools that I use most often. Clicking on any person or event anywhere on any of these panels takes you straight there. All my direct ancestors are automatically highlighted in every panel (you can even highlight cousins a different colour, etc.). I keep my data on a small removeable disk drive and use it DIRECT from there, everything lives on it except the screen layouts as they are different for each of my three computers. I back up to any of the pcs from time to time (must do it now, just added 30 names)

Any drawbacks, well only one, it is SO versatile and powerful that it takes a while to get to grips with. I was changing settings and view parameters for about a year before I got things JUST the way I like them.

If you are serious about your research IT IS WORTH A LOOK, try :--
http://www.gurney.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/TMG.htm
click the link for a free download of V6 trial version."""""

Wow.....Take a breath, we might even step back off the pavement.....!

If you like I'll send it to my Silver Machine and put some paragraphs in it - yes? - then some of the other members might understand the point you are trying to make.

No it isn't good enough.

Your posting timed 22::21 which appears to be addressed to BrinsleyS is the point in question..Try reading it for yourself.

If you want to go on a crusade then you need to set it out concisely and in a manner that will endear people to take notice.

SHRat Sorry, given up - cant read that. Try putting paragraphs in your message.

I've not come across a famiy history program yet that is not gedcom compliant and we have over 20 different genie programs.

Ron
www.genealogyprinters.com

Yes I gathered that he thought it was best but I wondered why, and whether or not it was worth taking a look.

I don't understand the comment about having to convert files. Isn't that what the gedcom format is all about, compatibility between different tree program. Doesn't it support gedcom then?

The price difference between TWR and My History is a bit odd, TWR is owned by My History.

Ron
www.genealogyprinters.com