Genealogy Chat

This is only really relevant to developers and the more technical user.

It will certainly only affect you if you use downloaded ged files.

Does anyone know what's happening with the file tags "1 FAMS @1@"
to 1 FAMS @F1@ " for example.

I can't find any announcements here at all!

To be honest your question may be relevant to developers and the more technical user but as members we do downloaded gedcom files to import/export tree's but surly only GR have the ability to answer your query as its their system

Have you contacted GR support

Roy

Edit; In my experience, when importing or exporting Gedcoms info does go missing on occasion depending on what software you are using and the site you downloaded from

sometimes this can be resolved by deleting the Gedcom and then doing another download

Thanks for your reply Roy. I teve not contacted GR support as yet. This is a brand new problem and I thought that a grass roots approach would yield best results. Can I ask you as a ged downloader, have you downloaded recently and has it affected your viewer/translator/editor?

gedcom is an industry standard and is therefore generic, there are one or two small differences between providers but it looks like this change is set to blow a lot of software out of the water! I'm a professional software developer but a mere amateur genealogist, so I may have been sleeping when it comes to ged version updates.

Bob

Ravon, I no longer use GR for my tree, I use family tree maker i have done for the last 7 years, I only ever kept a basic tree on GR but have now removed it,

members never used to have these problems until GR introduced their "new improved tree" most long serving members still use the old tree on GR because the new one is imho not fit for use, as with many other problems the site has suffered since it was taken over,

If you do contact GR support as most members have over the last 9 months i hope you don't get their standard reply eg, thanks i will pass this to the development team, and then go on to blame your browser and suggest you do some maintenance on your PC to resolve the problem,

As far as learning more about Gedcom's i can only suggest that you try Google and see what you can find

Roy

Edit; I hope my reply has been informative but whilst i am not a big fan of GR it's self any more, I do very much value the long serving members with a wealth of knowledge and experience who are always happy to help

GED is nothing to do with GenesRU, it is a crummy file format developed by and for the use of the LDS (the IGI people). In default of anything else being available it has become widely used for FH file export / import. LDS do not charge for the use of GED and there are plenty of open source implementations. FAM means, amazingly, FAMily !!!

As GED is very quirky and there are various versions of it importing / exporting GED does not always produce the expected results. The latest text version is 5.5. There is a later version with some support for photos etc but GRU have not adopted it. I don't think GRU say which version they use.

I def. would not recommend using GRU as yr prime fh history database. A lot of people do however, complete with extensive notes, contacts, photos etc. (a) this locks you into GRU (b) judging by the last 6 months the export facility (such as it is) could be broken at any time and you'd be high and dry. In any case if you export the tree, edit it offline and then import ALL contacts, notes, photos disappear. The exported GED is text only.

The upside of having a tree on GRU are (a) it offers a very handy tree graphic viewer with features such as descendency, pedigree views, (b) the map gadget is very handy for showing where people are located (c) you can share trees - I have quite a few shares and my experience with shares is 99% positive. Unfortunately GRU have introduced a "new tree view" (it is the same underlying data) which is badly broken. Along the way the "new" tree has severe bugs when you try to create a tree with it, photo uploading is broken, maps have disappeared etc etc. It also has just about the worst user interface I have ever seen on a commercial product for the general public. Whether any of this will ever be fixed is debatable as GRU is less than forthcoming in keeping members in the loop.

The consensus on these boards is that the "new" tree should be scrapped and the bugs in the old tree (caused by the new tree) fixed and things put back to how they were end 2011. IGP though takes the party line. In any case not much has happened for months as GRU has been busy fixing a total collapse in performance (done), mucking about with the boards and wrecking the message system. At any moment Smaug like the dragon's attention will return to the old tree and with a great roar it will be toast.

The spec for GED 5.5 is here:
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~pmcbride/gedcom/55gctoc.htm

There are moves afoot to switch from GED to XML but LDS support for this is tepid to say the least. Microsoft's (free) family tree program imports GED but exports XML. The XML produced can be read by Excel etc. Microsoft's program has nice graphics and supports any kind of relationship, very PC.

"The GEDCOM specification does not offer explicit support for keeping a known order of events. In particular, the order of relationships (FAMS) for a person and the order of the children within a relationship (FAM) can be lost. In many cases the sequence of events can be derived from the associated dates. But dates are not always known, in particular when dealing with data from centuries ago. For example, in the case that a person has had two relationships, both with unknown dates, but from descriptions it is known that the second one is indeed the second one. The order in which these FAMS are recorded in GEDCOM's INDI record will depend on the exporting program. In Aldfaer[51] for instance, the sequence depends on the ordering of the data by the user (alphabetical, chronological, reference, etc.). The proposed XML GEDCOM standard[49] does not address this issue either."

Here is a mini GED file. I could if you like get into the nitty gritty of all this but it is a right yawn and anyway GEDS as I said a crummy file format and not something with which you want to clutter up yr mind.

0 HEAD
1 SOUR Reunion
2 VERS V8.0
2 CORP Leister Productions
1 DEST Reunion
1 DATE 11 FEB 2006
1 FILE test
1 GEDC
2 VERS 5.5
1 CHAR MACINTOSH
0 @I1@ INDI
1 NAME Bob /Cox/
1 SEX M
1 FAMS @F1@
1 CHAN
2 DATE 11 FEB 2006
0 @I2@ INDI
1 NAME Joann /Para/
1 SEX F
1 FAMS @F1@
1 CHAN
2 DATE 11 FEB 2006
0 @I3@ INDI
1 NAME Bobby Jo /Cox/
1 SEX M
1 FAMC @F1@
1 CHAN
2 DATE 11 FEB 2006
0 @F1@ FAM
1 HUSB @I1@
1 WIFE @I2@
1 MARR
1 CHIL @I3@
0 TRLR

I think I need new glasses. I clicked on here, dead curious at a thread entitled God flies :-S

should of gone to specsavers ;-)

Roy

maybe too many glasses :-D

Further work on this gedcom problem.

Just discovered, there are no "ABT" tags in the 5.5 version. That means we will lose the 'circa' indicators.

I like to know which dates I'm certain about. I thought that circa was biblical in our faith.

Come on Genes, please tell me that I'm wrong!

Ravon, It would appear that if you want a reply other than their standard reply, you would need to post on the GR facebook page although even on FB they tend to give much the same standard replies but at least you stand a better chance of any type of response,

http://www.facebook.com/#!/genesreunited

Roy

Having used ged files for over ten years now, and yes, they may be crummy Rollo, but no one has yet come up with anything to replace them, I have some experience to draw from as a user.

From time to time I have conducted a number of basic tests by transferring data from commercial tree programs such as FTM to sites such as GR and Ancestry, back again, and vici versa

What I would say is that I found most problems are caused not by the ged format itself, but by the sending or receiving tree programs inability to interpret all the data correctly.

There were many issues but those that come up most often is that of date formats failing to transfer properly, fields being truncated because the receiving program is not set up right, and the use of non alpha / numeric characters.

What I find best works for me is to have my master tree on my PCs - I use FTM for that but no doubt other reputable programs are just as good. I then transfer using crummy gedcom as 'throwaway' files to wherever I want to copy data to, GR, Ancestry, Tribal or whatever. If something gets lost in transit then who cares.

PS - I stand to be corrected if I am wrong but I believe GR's import does not support all possible ged fields, lengths and formats.

Hi GreenPen, nice of you to take an interest. Don't get me wrong, I believe totally in the GedCom data file concept and as you say, anyone can use as much or as little of it as they think fit. What is wrong however is to take our information in one format and pass it back in another. Not without very good cause anyway. That's the case jumping from gedom 3 to gedcom 5.5 especially so without any announcement.

You may keep a master copy of your ged on your hard drive but many rely on their providers, especially as we are constantly encouraged to believe in the safety of the cloud.

Further investigation reveals that version 5.5 does maintain ABT tags. It seems that the error occurs during download, which suggests that these tags are stripped during the read/write process and that would come down to very sloppy programming.

http://biographiks.com/pleasant/gedcom-xml.htm

I don't see an issue with sites accepting v 3 or whatever in but only exporting v5.5 as long as what you put in isn't lost or corrupted. I could understand there could be an issue if it were to accept v 5.5 but send back v3

It is more the fact that many site's underlying database is not fully compliant which is causing the loss of information.
.

e.g. try something like this

1.Create gedcom export from FTM.
2.Import to GR (or other site of your choice)
3.Create gedcom export from GR / other site
4. Import back into FTM

You will be not be surprised that the your tree is now markedly different to what it was to start with.

Importing into Ancestry then exporting back out again seems to create the least damage in my experience. Other sites are not so good.

I think that you have made your mind up already, but its easy enough to prove. Make sure that you have at least one individual with the date of birth ticked as "unsure" . This as I'm sure you know will give you a "c" or circa marking on the date. This is achieved in Gedcom logic by producing an "ABT" tag. You will find that in your GR graphic tree display the individual will be marked "c 1823" for example . Prior to GR's recent tinkering if you downloaded your ged file you could easily locate the individual by name and examine the relevant tags ABT would be there preceding the date.
If you export the ged file now you will find that all ABT tags are missing and quite simply no ABT then no circa!

If you doubt me, try it. It only takes five minutes.