Comments on: Better Online Citations – Details Part 2 (GEDCOM)

By: sonya staffolani

sonya staffolani — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 12:31:56 +0000

Hi Mark, great article that raises more questions than answers for frustrated family historians, which is a good thing.

I have one to add:

How I wonder could Turnitin.com.au (UN of South Australia’s Baby) be applied to citations in GEDCOM files, and would that work after importation or before, or both?

I, too, am continually frustrated with acceptable formats across the globe. cheers sonya
PS My website is still under construction

By: Better Online Citations – Details Part 4 (MARC XML) | ThinkGenealogy

Better Online Citations – Details Part 4 (MARC XML) | ThinkGenealogy — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:24:44 +0000

[...] cite online sources (Part 1), how citation information can be stored as a file using GEDCOM format (Part 2) and MARC format (Part 3). This post takes the next logical step and discusses MARC [...]

By: Better Online Citations – Details Part 3 (MARC) | ThinkGenealogy

Better Online Citations – Details Part 3 (MARC) | ThinkGenealogy — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 07:08:08 +0000

[...] Online Sources. Some of the suggestions that came from the survey and posts Details Part 1 and Details Part 2 (GEDCOM) was why not use an existing [...]

By: Sheri

Sheri — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:28:59 +0000

Bruce,
I am so glad I came back here to see if anything had been posted. I really love RootsMagic 4 and hated to have to go back. I thought I’d check to see if anyone had an idea. I didn’t know I could remove tags in WC. I will do that until the update.
Thank you for taking the time to tell me that. I’m going to give it a try when I get home tonight.
Sheri

By: Bruce Buzbee

Bruce Buzbee — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:26:58 +0000

Sheri,

This is because some sites and programs don’t know how to ignore user defined tags as detailed in the GEDCOM specs. We will be releasing an update that will have an option to strip the user defined tags out of a GEDCOM to work with those systems that don’t know how to ignore user defined tags.

In the meantime, WorldConnect has an option where you can specify tags to ignore. You can reprocess using the advanced option and remove these custom tags in the gedcom:

_UID,_SDATE, _BIBL,_SUBQ, _TMPLT,_COLOR

- Bruce

By: Sheri

Sheri — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:24:43 +0000

My tree on WorldConnect is now a mess. I tried the importing into another program and exporting to GedCom in a failed attempt to “clean up” some of the mess. So I can answer that. It continues to make bigger and bigger messes.

By: Tamura Jones

Tamura Jones — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:11:32 +0000

Mark,

I’ll save some quibbles about software architecture approaches and supposed camps for later, and focus on what you’ve shown here.

In this post you’ve examined the current quality of the GEDCOM output with regard to EE-citations. A very quick summary might be that the FTM export is poor, Legacy 7 export is mediocre and RM 4 export is good.

That the citations do not transfer well from one program to another is a foregone conclusion, we’d need some kind of GEDCOM standard for EE-style citations, and there is none yet.
I’d still be interested to hear how well these three program imports each other’s citations, to get an even better idea of the status quo.

The more intriguing question is this; how well does each application import its own citations back in again?
That test relates to this fundamental consideration: is it reasonable to say that an application really supports citations if even that application itself cannot import its own exported citations back in without loss?

Another relevant question is how well their export matches the existing GEDCOM standard?
That question directly relates to another practical issue: how well do other genealogy applications import their current EE-style citations?

- Tamura