I made a similar suggestion on the main mailing list shortly after the announcement. It wasn't received very well. Most people preferred to think someone would take over TMG so they wouldn't have to make a change. I think we will have maximum leverage over the next few months. Other vendors would like to see TMG users move to them to increase their customer base. This is evident by the speed in which TMG Direct imports are surfacing. I think they will be willing to add some functionality as well as long as it doesn't conflict with their own conceptual design. (Which is what you were saying. It may be popular, but just not feasible to implement). We can't expect them to intuitively know what we want so we do need to specifically ask for it. And, we can't expect them to create something that looks just like TMG. I have made enhancement requests to both Legacy and RootsMagic to allow Alternate names to be linked to a tag and then use that name in the generated sentence. I have also asked for the ability to add multiple variables to the sentence construct either through a split memo function or multiple memo fields. Existing RootsMagic users have also been asking for this. I think that increases the chances of seeing it implemented. For RootsMagic, I have also submitted an enhancement request to allow a role to be assigned to principal. I have just recently purchased RootsMagic and Legacy. As I experiment with them, I expect to find more features I would like to see added. For the more critical ones, I will submit enhancement requests and post on the mailing lists. This will give existing users a chance to chime in that they also would like to see this (or in some cases say they hope it won't ever be implemented. :-)). Additionally, its an opportunity for existing users to offer a work around to achieve a similar outcome. Moving to new software is going to mean some things will need to be done differently. Discussions on the other mailing lists help identify other options. Who knows. Some of them may even turn out to be better than what we currently do with TMG. Sheila Altenbernd -----Original Message----- From: John Nunnally via Sent: Monday, September 29, 2014 5:09 PM To: tmg-refugees@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [REFUGEES] [TMG-REFUGEES] Reality check.. >> Agree except that I doubt there would be concensus on a "top five" wants list. The "top 5 list" suggestion apparently did not express what I meant to convey. I agree completely that we would each have our own list. But perhaps we should "vote" for the TMG features that are most important to us so a "top 5" most important features emerges. This might be very helpful to developers of other packages. Likewise, if a feature I have exploited extensively gets only one vote (mine), then I probably just need to assume that I will be on my own as far as getting my data transferred elsewhere. Quite a few years back, I participated in a very large users' group that made suggestions to the developers of the software we used. Obviously, the number of suggestions for the same feature greatly increased the probability that it might be considered. The company took the most requested suggestions and ranked them on a scale of 1 to 3 as to how well it fit with their concept of the product, and then the technical difficulty of implementing the suggestion. So a popular suggestion ranked P3,T1 was very likely to actually become part of the product. But even if a P1,T3 suggestion was very popular, it probably would never show up. I imagine this is exactly the kind of analysis going on with all of these developers. If we can help the developers prioritize based on how likely a feature is to attract TMG users, we do them and ourselves a favor. John N. *** To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to TMG-REFUGEES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the message subject and body. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to TMG-REFUGEES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message