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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1998-11 > 0910103609


From: "jflanguy" <>
Subject: Re: Best Genealogical Program?
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 15:33:29 +0100


>Have you found the perfect bald-headed, round-shouldered genealogical
>program to recommend to us?

If you remove the "perfect" from your question, I can give my (limited)
opinion. First of all, perfect for me does not mean perfect for you. Many
many threads have been written about the "perfect genalogy program", but
only to reveal that we all have different wishes and needs.

Also, I can not speak about programs I haven't used, so I can not say that
the one I use is "better" than such or such program on the market.

If you accept these restrictions, I can tell you what I like and like less
in the program I use. (Pls. bear with any typo or incorrect use of the
English language, a foreign language to me.)

In the "less" column :
- It's a Foxpro-based application and therefore suffers from this DBMS'
limitations. E.g. the mouse does not always work like one is accustomed to
in 32-bit Windows programs.
- Some processes are slow, in particular on the output side, but (IMVHO!)
this is to be related with the power and sophistication of its many
capacities. One can hardly ask for fully-customized, user-controlled reports
AND speedy results.
- I should add that it imposes a high demand on the hardware, which can be a
barrier for some users.
- Any other item that I think of goes into the "wishlist". Honestly, no
other limitation that I am aware of.

In the "love" column
- Event-based.
- Chronological display of events (called "tags")
- Sort dates (secondary dates used to corerctly sort events with no dates or
with an irregular date). I use them namely to display French Republican
dates (regarded as 'irregular') and have them correclty sorted by entering
the Gregorian equivalent in the sort date field)
- Illimited number of tags, including multiple tags for a same event (e.g.
multiple birth dates), allowing for the support of conflicting sources.
- Illimited xxxx (where xxxx can be: length of names, length of places,
number of names, number of people, number of children, etc. etc.)
- Custom-made tags, that can be exported to customer-selected Gedcom tags.
- Extremely efficient management of sources. Documenting your sources is
regarded by many as one of the best reasons to use TMG. (With customized
bibliography and a flavour of Mills and Lakey source categories...)
- Ease of data entry (many date formats, repeat keys, lookups, macros) -
unfortunately, no on-the-fly incremental search
- Numerous date modifiers, including "from-to" dates (useful for e.g. reign
dates)
- "Dated names" : a date can be associated to names variants. I use it to
record the main nobility titles that I want to be considered as names (e.g.
from * to * : Count of * ; from * to *, Duke of *)
- Accent colors, used to visually identify people with particular
characteritics (ascendants of x, people born in y, or whatever)
- Flags - both standard (e.g. sex, living, adopted, "multiple birth", etc.)
and customized
- Exhibits (texts, photos, sounds...)
- Timelines, "history" events
- "Witness" feature (associate a person with an event where he is not the
principal character, e.g. witnesses to a will, godparents, etc. or associate
as many people as you want to one event, e.g. address, census, etc.)
- Better-than-soundex agorithm (display a list of all people with a
different spelling of the same surname)
- AND, also one of the best features, the Custom Report Writer. Yes, it's
sophisticated, (some would say complex) and therefore comparatively slow.
But so powerful. With sophisticated filters, dozens of formats with dozens
of options, etc. Direct writing into many word processor and other formats
(Word, WP, Excel, CSV, etc.). Narrative (verbose) formats with
fully-customized sentences. Etc. etc.

- PLUS a wonderful, highly praised customer support. Often, if a user is
"stuck" or otherwise requires urgent help, the author would call him/her
after hours. Yes, there have been reports of some operators of the help desk
being short of TMG's support reputation. These are between far and few,
though and the author jumps in when alerted. Also, the author really listens
to the customer. Many "best" features are the result of the users lobbying
for them. Many "debates" have been held on different topics - one being the
support of royal and noble names.
Most upgrades have been free for existing users (one exception being the
switch from a DOS to a Windows application).

I could add many other features, but it would look like an advertising
leaflet from the publisher. I only mentioned the ones that I really like AND
use. Some other interesting features are the date calculator, a built-in
text processor, direct reading of many genealogical files (including FTM,
PAF, etc.), merge persons, merge data sets, spli data sets, relationship
calculator (computes and displays all recorded lineages bewteen two
persons).

All this has been done "from memory" and I probably forgot to mention other
major features.

Again, this summary is meant to be a fair account of *my* view of the
program. With no proselytism. Your view could be different. The best advise
I can give is: try it. With the 90-day money-back guarantee, your maximum
risk is to loose some of your time. The potential benefit is to discover a
top-class product.

Jean-Franois Tournai, Belgique

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