On 19 Apr at 6:54, "John Hanson" <[email protected]> wrote: > David I only have FTM2011 on my machines at the minute (no I don't use > it - just that it is nice to keep up with what others are doing) but I > could find an old one. > > But having looked at exporting a file from it an idea came to the fore > that had been lurking for a while - its default is the export in FTM > format GEDCOM - you need to change the option to GEDCOM 5.5 to get a > version that is more compatible with other programs. I seem to > remember that the old versions had the self-same problem. Maybe that > will help. > > Many programs these days include an option to import directly from > another programs database but the later versions of FTM are lacking > from these. Interestingly I was talking to Simon Orde (author of FH) > at Olympia this year and I gather that it is impossible to get access > to the underlying FTM database and unlike most of the other companies > who publish the details of the database structure FTM refuse to give > out any information. Their inability to export a GEDCOM that is > compatible with other programs strikes me as "once we've got them - > make it impossible to leve" > > Hope this may help It a way, this helps enormously. The ground rules have become a little clearer and, from what you have found, it seems that little has changed in the last six or seven years. About seven years ago I actively looked in to the problem that it was impossible to use so-called GEDCOM files to transfer data between genealogy programs. I came to the conclusion that the program designers deliberately made it difficult in order to lock us into their program for life. Perhaps it is time for the Society to conduct a discreet investigation into the portability of data between programs. Then we could publish the findings and appeal, at least in this country, to the manufacturers to do better. I know that most genealogy programs are designed outside these shores but if we get things rolling, perhaps there is an opportunity for cooperation with Societies in other countries. The first consideration is what sort of data would we expect to be transferred satisfactorily. Here's a start: 1. Normal families of parents and children. 2. Families related only by marriage. 3. Completely unrelated families. 4. Separate data categories for the principal life events, birth, death and marriage. 5. Facilities to put dates in a variety of formats for each event. 6. Facilities to have an address file to associate with these events. 7. Facilities to link notes of data sources to each of those events, dates and places. 8. Facilities to store, hold and cross reference, to people and events, significant documents. 9. Facilities to store, hold and cross reference, to people and events, pictures of people and groups. (And sound recordings?) 10. Facilities to add non-standard types of factual data to people's records, such as education, jobs, etc. 11. Facilities to add significant mounts of text, perhaps in RTF format, to each person's record. Obviously the more complex the data to be exchanged, the greater the problems that will be found in making those exchanges. Or is this all a waste of time? -- Tim Powys-Lybbe [email protected] for a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/