At 7/14/2015 13:05, Terry Reigel wrote: >As I recall the discussion with Bob and the beta team when this was >addressed (I'm thinking in TMG 6 or 7) the design was that it was to >work only with a place holder. I was surprised to see that at least >sometimes it works without. > >I believe that the conversion that was applied to existing Projects at >the time interpreted entries under the old rules (which recognized three >bars as two segment dividers) and re-formatted with two bars for each >segment separated by a space if empty. So if cases exist with multiple >bars without spaces I think they were added by users after that conversion. My recollection is much the same although I do not recall that it was ever "official" that three bars indicated two segments (and four indicated three segments) . Users were seeing that and many had started doing it that way. But it was inconsistent as some users found. Also I think it was in an upgrade to v5 or v6 that it was decided to require the placeholder space. Split Memos were introduced in v4, but the aberrant output didn't really show up until later. Since v4 was written in Foxpro and v5 was a complete re-write into Visual FoxPro, I suspect that v5 had the first reports of inconsistency. Also note that GTMOTMG does not include any mention of space place-holders. Further, the discussion about Split Memos on TMG-l was occurring in 2005. The first reference to a space place holder was in a message from Darrell Martin <http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/tmg/2005-04/1113499880> where he mentions the space was important. Possibly earlier discussion took place there, but I have searched enough. <G> In any case, the upgrade that included the conversion to the space placeholder came with the advice to users to examine their Split Memo usage to ensure the correct usage. I think the conversion only converted the three-bar separators to two bars-space-two bars. Any four bar (or multiple, but even number) separators just had space holders inserted. So users that had four bar separators planning on more than one segments within the bars had to make sure manually the conversion was applied correctly. Lee .