* Why the 5.5 Pretence?

[rtilyard]

This is probably an old chestnut, except I couldn't easily discover an answer as '5.5.1' cannot be entered as a forum search term!

Can Simon give a meaningful response to this post please.

Why aren't GEDCOM 5.5.1 tags supported?

I asked this question of FH support and the laughable response was that 5.5.1 was/is only a draft.

Here's why I'm so very confused with this nonsense response.

1. The very first product to support 5.5.1 before the ink was even dry was PAF 5.0.

2. All major competitors support 5.5.1 tags.

3. FH supports UTF-8. This is part of 5.5.1 NOT 5.5.

4. FH now supports a plethora of custom tags as it wants part of the TMG pie.

Please Simon, when will common sense prevail so that FH can be more innovative than the rest of the genealogy software pack?

[AdrianBruce]

"the laughable response was that 5.5.1 was/is only a draft" - why is this laughable? If you aim to work from standards, you need to follow standards. Not drafts. It's not as if the 5.5.1 drafts are even internally consistent. I have, on several occasions, wanted to find the commentary on why certain things had changed in that draft, and I have failed, so clearly it's an incomplete draft. With that in mind, is anyone in a position to confirm that any given draft is complete? I've a suspicion, as well, that I have seen different versions of the draft.

"The very first product to support 5.5.1 before the ink was even dry was PAF 5.0". So? All that confirms is that the GEDCOM Standard and PAF were under different management. In any case, last time I looked, PAF didn't support FROM ... TO dates, so its support of 5.5.1 must be vague at best.

Having said all that, there would be be, I agree, many advantages to supporting "5.5.1". There is a Wish List request for exactly this - see http://www.fhug.org.uk/wishlist/wldispl ... lwlref=390 - this has the score of 133, taking it into the top 1/8th of requests - just. Of course, there'd probably need to be arbitrary decisions about which version of 5.5.1 were to be supported and whether it was indeed internally consistent.

There is also, I have to say, a pig in making FH 5.5.1 optionally compliant - user defined attributes were proposed for 5.5.1 (good!) in a manner totally different from the way FH has done them (oh bother!).

So while I support the adoption of 5.5.1 (whatever it is), I don't agree that it's a simple no-brainer with no issues.

[tatewise]

I am not convinced that PAF implemented any Gedcom specification particularly well. (Few products do!)
That is why I had to write the Import From PAF Plugin to cope with all its anomalies.
For one thing, it certainly does NOT adhere to the Gedcom DATE formats.

I don't understand why Adrian says 5.5.1 Custom Attributes are so different from FH, because as far as I can tell it is just a matter of replacing the _ATTR tag with the FACT tag and everything else is the same.

[AdrianBruce]

"I don't understand why Adrian says 5.5.1 Custom Attributes are so different from FH"


You know what, Mike? Neither do I! I had got it into my head that the GEDCOM 5.5.1 user-defined attribute was "upside down" compared to the FH equivalent. But reading the "manual", the quoted example is:

1 FACT Woodworking
2 TYPE Skills

"Skills" would be the type of attribute and and "Woodworking" the value. For some reason I had it in my head that the 5.5.1 implementation would have had "Skills" on a line before "Woodworking" - though I have no idea now what I thought the tags themselves would be. For the avoidance of doubt, the 5.5.1 proposal quoted above is fine by me!

I guess this makes it an even better idea to have a 5.5.1 option! But I am still convinced that we don't actually know what the differences are between 5.5 and 5.5.1 as the "what's changed" commentary list is incomplete.

Thanks you for pointing out my confusion, Mike!

[NickWalker]

Please Simon, when will common sense prevail so that FH can be more innovative than the rest of the genealogy software pack?

Please can you explain which features Family Historian is missing that GEDCOM 5.5.1 would bring to make FH more innovative? I'm genuinely interested! If, as you say, 'All major competitors support 5.5.1 tags' how would adding something that everyone else already has be innovative?

[craigmollekin]

Perhaps sending an email to Calico Pie (the programmers of Family Historian) might provide fruitful answers