Legacy, GEDCOMs, and Census Plus

[Roger_NZ]

I don't update my TNG data anything like regularly enough, so when it comes time to update I'm usually checking back on notes etc. I use Legacy Family Tree v9, TNG v12 and am up to date with all the mods I use, in particular CensusPlus (great mod).

But it looks like since I last updated, the way Legacy convert the shared census events has changed, and that is playing havoc with the CensusPlus implementation.

Last update (which I think would have been from an earlier version of Legacy, about September last year), the shared events from Legacy went into the GEDCOM in the following form:

1 CENS [description]
2 DATE [date]
2 PLAC [place]
2 NOTE Role: [role]

All these happily mapped to the same census event type in TNG, and got picked up by CensusPlus. Updating was simple, and previously linked transcripts all behaved after "Check Census Link" was run after an import

Now, Legacy seems to only want to export these same events as:

1 EVEN [description]
2 TYPE Census-[role]
2 DATE [date]
2 PLAC [place]
2 NOTE Role: [role]

So every role is creating its own unique event type, and simply fails to behave "properly" in CensusPlus. After running the Check, the Census data does not appear under the person if they shared the event, only the primary person.

If I go to the transcript, it suggests there is a linked person already established. However, if I remove the link and re-establish it, it then creates a "Census" event (as distinct from the "Census-Daughter" one, for example, where I relinked the 1851 event).

I don't know whether this may be as simple as using different options on the Legacy export (although I have tried every sort of combination). The Legacy support people weren't overly helpful, simply saying the way it now gets exported is the way it gets exported.

As much as I really like the CensusPlus mod, I'm almost at the stage of having to turn it off (at least for other than the primary people).

(Thank goodness for backups! Below is how the entry for this appeared prior to the latest attempted update, and ideally what I'd like to stick with.)

Thanks for any thoughts/guidance.

[Ken Roy]

The mod does NOT support shared events.  It supports individual events (none shared).  Some users have managed to get it to work with Family events but that is not shared events.

Is there an option in Legacy not to use shared events?   I only support the mod and have no intention of enhancing it.

[Roger_NZ]

I suspect it is a case of Legacy unilaterally changing the way they convert shared events into individual events in GEDCOMs. Certainly it used to work that the shared census event in Legacy would convert into appropriate individual census events in the GEDCOM, but apparently no longer.

There are a range of options when creating the GEDCOMs, and if anyone else has a formula of how to set these that recreates the original style for shared census events, that would be great. But I suspect it may be a case of requesting Legacy to provide that former facility from their end.

[Ken Roy]

Roger,

Are you sure that you used shared events before?  I know at one time TNG could not handle shared events.  Even now, I think it creates individual events when it encounters shared events.

I have never used Legacy so I cannot help in that area.  You might need to use individual events in Legacy instead of shared events.  If you don't get an answer for any of the Legacy users who also use the Census Plus International mod as to whether they can successfully import shared events, you might need to ask the question on the TNG  user2list.

[jayat1familytree]

Roger,

I still use Legacy 7.5 but I remember in testing both Legacy 8 and 9 that you can set the gedcom to not export "shared" events

but rather export them as singular events which is what I think you want to use with Census Plus.

 

[Roger_NZ]

There are several options in Legacy and it is possible to export events that are shared in that program as stand-alone events in the GEDCOM. I have requested they provide the original format for census events so that in TNG there is consistency. 

In the meantime I have cobbled together a fix which parses the GEDCOM file to convert the offending events into a workable format that Census Plus Intl can work with. I’ll tidy this up and write up a full process as I’m sure others will benefit.