Family Historian User Group

I wanted to drop in for reference the link to Keith Riggle's series on GenealogyTools.com:

Replacing Family Tree Maker, Part 1: How to Scrub Your Data

He's doing a series on converting FTM data to other programs and plans to have a post on Family Historian. It will be interesting to see what he has to say.

I've been following this link from the day Ancestry announced they were going to retire FTM. The post on FH is now there.
GenalogyTools: Importing Your FTM Tree into Family Historian 6
Also click on the link within the article for a comparison of all the current genealogy packages accepting a GEDCOM from FTM:
GenalogyTools: Family Tree Maker to GEDCOM to Other Apps Crosswalk

There are a couple of problems with that review not least of which is that the author says that 5.5.1 Gedcom specification was approved, AFAIK it was a draft that was never adopted. With such a fundamental error as this maybe treat the whole review with a pinch of salt.

The first link is a very knowledgeable (a refreshing change from many a 'hack' review/comment) and mostly favourable review, but I think some corrections need to be offered by someone more knowledgable than myself, these spring to mind:

- He makes great play of GEDCOM 5.5.1 being the current standard. This statement is probably not correct, however I think it is used in many areas, and I suspect FTM uses it for export which is why he understandably makes great play of it.

- He says there is no support for UTF-8, yet I think there is now, and why that should be a major problem anyway, I am not sure!

- I suspect from the images he is a mac user, so he might be concerned/ influenced re that, I have no idea how well FH runs on a mac, I only know that many people seem to and that FH tries to make it compatible.

Judging by his corrections of previous parts, he seems very willing to make them.

There is little mention of the speed or features of FH, but I suppose this exercise concentrates on migration rather than usage, and he does say he is working on a review of FH, should be interesting, just seems strange FH seems to be one of the last he tried.

I have replied to that GenalogyTools: Importing Your FTM Tree into Family Historian 6 review to correct its factual mistakes.

Just for completeness:

One of the identified issues on import, is that FH "Changed some valid EVEN tags to the custom _ATTR tag because they contained line details, which wasn’t allowed under GEDCOM 5.5 but is under 5.5.1". As we know from another thread, Individual Events should not have line details, even in 5.5.1 - but Family Events can. Weird.

Googling around, I see that Keith Riggle has already identified this discrepancy (see http://gigatrees.com/blog/a-new-gedcom-5-5-1-wrinkle/) - the author of that blog (not Keith R) claims "Plainly, the intent was for both individuals and families to allow EVENT_DESCRIPTORs for their respective EVEN fields".

That claim is a nonsense. It's not at all clear. Far more likely (in my view and, I think Mike's) is that they first applied EVENT_DESCRIPTORs to individuals and families, then went down the road of a generic FACT for individuals. But didn't finish the job. (And I've only just realised that Families don't have Attributes in GEDCOM, so having a generic FACT for a family's attributes is a bit tricky.)

Yes, Adrian, the DRAFT 5.5.1 is full of such anomalies and inconsistencies. It was a DRAFT for discussion and review that never concluded.

It would be trivial to include <FAMILY_ATTRIBUTE_STRUCTURE> to support FACT <ATTRIBUTE_DESCRIPTOR> but it never happened.

It is for such reasons that:

It must not be used for programming of genealogical software while in draft.

AdrianBruce wrote:Just for completeness:

One of the identified issues on import, is that FH "Changed some valid EVEN tags to the custom _ATTR tag because they contained line details, which wasn’t allowed under GEDCOM 5.5 but is under 5.5.1". As we know from another thread, Individual Events should not have line details, even in 5.5.1 - but Family Events can. Weird.

Googling around, I see that Keith Riggle has already identified this discrepancy (see http://gigatrees.com/blog/a-new-gedcom-5-5-1-wrinkle/) - the author of that blog (not Keith R) claims "Plainly, the intent was for both individuals and families to allow EVENT_DESCRIPTORs for their respective EVEN fields".

That claim is a nonsense. It's not at all clear. Far more likely (in my view and, I think Mike's) is that they first applied EVENT_DESCRIPTORs to individuals and families, then went down the road of a generic FACT for individuals. But didn't finish the job. (And I've only just realised that Families don't have Attributes in GEDCOM, so having a generic FACT for a family's attributes is a bit tricky.)

Tim Forsythe is (to quote his site)

Web developer, poet, genealogist and owner of Gigatrees.com, a collection of free tools and services designed to help family historians do a better job of documenting and presenting their family trees.

I would guess that Tim might be the author of the blog.

I came across a couple of interesting articles on GEDCOM standards.

The Perils of Following the GEDCOM Standard

A Gentle Introduction to GEDCOM in which it states:

Officially, version 5.5.1 is still a draft, but that is only because FamilySearch forgot to make it official. Many applications, including their own PAF application, use GEDCOM features introduced in GEDCOM 5.5.1.

BTW: I have split, renamed, and moved this from Plugin Discussion Family Tree Maker Tidy (13092) to Importing and Exporting.

I have just started to use FH - had been an FTM user but bought FH at end of last year for obvious reasons. I've imported a GEDCOM (exported from FTM but) but looks like all the media links have been lost. The media is there, at least I think (there doesn't appear to be a counter to compare). Ar least some of the photos appear to have kept there links but very little else. I'd really appreciate some help

Welcome to the FHUG.
Yours is a common first impression for FTM migrants, but those Source Citation Media are there, but not as visible as they could be.
See Media not showing up in the property box (13229) and New to FH media from FTM 2011 failed (13218).

Another way of seeing your Source Citation Media is to use the camera icon Media button on the toolbar at the top. Choose the option to View Media Linked to... and then tick only Associated Source and Source Citations.

There is a pre-release FH V6.1.2 that adds Show Media buttons to make Citation Media more visible. See http://www.family-historian.co.uk/downl ... ade-to-6.1, but beware it is work-in-progress.

See independent review GenalogyTools: Importing Your FTM Tree into Family Historian 6.

Also see how_to:import_from_family_tree_maker|> Import from Family Tree Maker (FTM).

As a newcomer how_to:key_features_for_newcomers|> Key Features for Newcomers should be of interest.

There is a lot of development to FH itself and to Plugins to smooth the migration from FTM, so wait a while before committing to transferring your project. You have at least a year to decide what to do.

Hi Chadwi.

I'm a fellow FTM refugee so no expert. However, you should be able to see the number of media items you have.

Click on the records window (the symbol that looks like a pile of coins on the left hand side). Select the media tab and sort the list by clicking on 'record id'. For me, the number of the last one in the list is the same as the total number of media items in FTM. That might reassure you that your media is all there.

From that list, if you click on a piece of media, then click the property box (pointy finger at the top) you get details including where it's linked to (Links tab).

From the Focus window, clicking on the camera button at the top, and then 'view all media for...' should show all the media for a person, and from there you can open docs etc by clicking on the green button with a black triangle in it.

As you can tell from the links in the post above, there's a lot of work going on to help out people moving from FTM.

An easier way to discover how many records you have is the File > File Statistics command.

BTW: The largest Record Id only matches the number of records until a record gets deleted, then there will be a gap in the Record Id. See glossary:record_types_and_record_id|> Record Types and Record Id for details.

Thanks for the advice in seeing a media count - all seems to have moved across, even if I can't see it! Looks like I should hold fire and wait for further improvements before moving across

Anyone knowledgeable enough to review http://genealogytools.com/family-tree-m ... crosswalk/ and respond?

I doubt if any one person can review all products - or do you mean just the FH columns, which are better than most already, and should improve again with FH V6.1.

Mike, I meant the FH columns -- as you say better than most already but I'm not sure Keith Riggle is working from the latest version of FH.

To be fair, he can't review FH V6.1 until it is formally released.

As the discussions about pre-releases are public, I don't see why somebody who understands the implications can't alert him to them. If only to enable him to be ready for the new release...