Ian Goddard wrote: > > Let me give you an example of what I mean by ambiguities. I would have > no problems in getting GEDCOM to represent my ggg-father and his > descendants. However when I come to his ancestry I have a problem. I > know his father's name, the date of his burial and his age at death. I > know his mother's name, the date of her burial but not her age at death. > I have a copy of the registry record of their marriage. However there > are two individuals of the same name as the father born in the same year > and his age and date of death do not enable me to separate them so > either of these children are candidates. What's more, for one of these > children there were two individuals of the appropriate name and > generation to have been his father. In other words I have three > possible lines to take my ggg-father back two generations. Except I > don't - I have six because there are also two individuals with the same > name as the mother. Admittedly one was somewhat young but not > impossibly so. As far as I'm aware the nearest that GEDCOM could come > to representing this would be as a set of unlinked genealogical > fragments, one starting my gggg-parents marriage and working forwards, > three others representing the alternative lines for my gggg-father and > two representing the alternative lines of my gggg-mother. Take a look at the ASSO structure (p. 29 of the 5.5 document). You can use it to represent any type of relationship, such as possible father/son/spouse/whatever. Just because your software doesn't use it doesn't mean GEDCOM doesn't have it. -- Thomas M. Sommers -- tms@nj.net -- AB2SB