* cooperation via GEDCOM

[TimT]

I use FH now v3 and am cooperating with extended family around the world who use various programs including FTM, UFT/Roots.

We each have files with much overlap extending to 5000 odd entries and want to produce a 'definitive' version. We assume we will use GEDCOM as the transfer mechanism.

I have been reading as much as possible from this site (very useful!) to see what we are letting ourselves into. I have seen discussion on incompatibilities on events, tags etc.

However, I have not found discussion on linking from citations to the actual document/image files. Further I just don't understand what i read looking at the GEDCOM standard. I assume GEDCOM has a standard for citations, but what about the links? (I see in FHv3 manual that GEDCOM supports embedding). Will we find that each of us has to manually or otherwise fix links? Is there a best way to set up the file structure to make life easiest? I understand within FH about support for 'working with external file links'; I don't know what support other programs have in this area.

Has anyone suggestions of good sites to read on the best way to cooperate?

tim

ID:1488

[Jane]

FTM does not support multimedia export via gedcom at all, at least not in the last version I used.

my first recommendation would be to set up a trial with all the parties, each creating a small file and sharing it.

With FH you have the best chance for exchanging data 'intact' with other programs as there is no export involved.

In the links section is a small program I wrote FHC to convert the extended multimedia links of FH to basic ones which I know programs like Rootsmagic can read.

I would avoid using embeded images if you can as this can be difficult to manage as files grow very large very fast.

Its probably better simply to do a multimedia report and send on your images along with the gedcom.