Family Historian User Group

I noticed that this plugin defaults to something called “Asymmetric Format?” Why?

I am not asking for a political response. I get the purpose. What I am curious about is what the impact of having this turned on does to the exported GEDCOM? Are there consequences of exporting my data with this enabled.

I know in today’s world that this affects less than 3% of the population. I like the fact that in my tree when I add a spouse to a lady it expects a man and vice versa. This also helps with automatic surname additions for children. These are simple features but very nice to have present. Far be it for me to judge others on how they live. That is not my point or argument here. It seems to me that software should serve the needs of the majority while allowing modifications to accommodate those who need it and not force this by default.

If there are consequences to having “Asymmetric” enabled then these features should be disabled by default. Otherwise, it makes no difference other than chaffing my backside, “no pun intended,” every time I see it.

This option only affects Same Sex couples in your tree.

I recommend you read the Family Historian Help for "Exporting Same Sex Relationship Information" this covers the reasoning and explains the pit falls of sharing the information with other programs.

On a point of order: File > Import/Export > Export > GEDCOM File is a built-in command feature and not a Plugin.
So I have changed the Subject of this posting.

Plugins are add-on tools written by users to extend the capabilities of FH.
They reside in the Tools > Plugins window and downloaded from the Plugin Store.
See plugins:index|> Family Historian Plugins for details.

Just to confuse you further, there is an Export Gedcom File Plugin that adjusts various GEDCOM structures to suit the specific GEDCOM dialect of many popular genealogy products. It also has a Same Sex Relationships option.

The Asymmetric or other options have no impact on heterosexual partnerships in your data.