Help talk:GEDCOM/The Master Genealogist

I added screenshots and comments for all the steps in the Export Wizard that I thought had relevant choices, and updated the screen shot of Step 5 to version 7.

Terry

Very well done!!!!! We need more stuff like this. If you have anything to add to the other help pages it would be greatly appreciated. --sq 13:17, 1 December 2009 (EST)
Thanks, Solveig. I'll keep that in mind as I look at the others, but TMG is really may thing. See, for example, my Terry's TMG Tips website, and my "Primer for TMG" book.
Terry, I have found that TMG concatenates several TMG source fields into the title and puts the date into the WeRelate Volume/Page field. I have found it is simpler to edit the Gedcom sources before importing them into WeRelate. I was going to update the Help page suggesting this, but you are much more knowledgeable about TMG. If there is a better solution let me know. Otherwise, I will edit the page in a day or two. Thanks - Rick

Rick,

It's not just the TITL element, but all the GEDCOM source tags that can receive the contents from multiple TMG Source Elements. See my Considerations for Exporting Sources to GEDCOM Files article for details. The core issue is that TMG has far more Source Elements than GEDCOM recognizes, so TMG "stacks" the contents of elements that seem similar into the best-fit available GEDCOM Tag. In many cases the data is prefixed with the name of the TMG Source Element.
Since TMG users can define their own Source Elements, there is no limit to the number of different Source Element names that might appear in a GEDCOM, and thus no possibility of a receiving application, like WeRelate, creating a pre-defined map in order to apply them to produce reasonable output. As a result, the flexibility TMG offers its users precludes any automated translation of sources to another application via GEDCOM with any expectation that the resulting sources in the new application will read anything like they did in TMG, or even make much sense.
In limited cases it might be possible to improve the results by editing the GEDCOM as you suggest, depending on the complexity of the Sources in question as defined in TMG. But it should be noted that editing a GEDCOM is not for the casual user. While it is just a text file that can be deciphered, it is not easy for a novice to understand, and there is the possibility of corrupting it.
If you want to add notes to the article describing how you are doing that feel free. I would suggest your notes acknowledge that all of the GEDCOM source tags can have this issue, even if you find that only specific ones seem to be issues with your own data. And I'd include some comments acknowledging that editing GEDCOMs isn't for everyone. Terry