Clarification on spouseref and spousefamilyref objects?

[Tammy]

I'm curious about the need for the spouseref and spousefamilyref objects.  It seems to me that things would be a lot clearer if family objects mapped directly to person objects and vice versa.  Am I missing something about the functional need for spouseref and spousefamilyref?

Thanks!

Tammy

[Dallan Quass]

I don't really like spouseref and spousefamilyref either. If I were
designing an ideal data model from scratch, I'd have direct links
between family and person objects, as you mention.

The reason for their existence is that a fair number of gedcom's attach
attributes to person/family references, like "preferred". A primary goal
of the gedcom project is to preserve as much information from the
original gedcom as possible, so I introduced spouseref and
spousefamilyref so that we would have objects in the data model to which
we could attach these attributes from the gedcom files.

I also added convenience functions (getPerson() and getFamily()) to
automatically dereference the references.

Dallan
http://www.werelate.org/wiki/User:Dallan

[Tammy]

Ha.  Well, thanks for the clarification.  (And the fast response!)

Not sure I understand what preferred means in this context, though.  Favorite child?

The UML diagrams are extremely useful, but I'm curious -- is there any further documentation about what all of the attributes mean?  Many are clear from reading the GEDCOM spec, but others, like this one (or the other fields on spouseref), I can't seem to find any documentation for anywhere.

Thanks again!  

Tammy

[Dallan Quass]

> Ha. Well, thanks for the clarification. (And the fast response!)
>
> Not sure I understand what preferred means in this context, though.
> Favorite child?

I'm honestly not sure either. I assume preferred spouse means that
there are multiple husbands or wives attached to the family, and that
this person is the one that's most likely to be the correct spouse.

> The UML diagrams are extremely useful, but I'm curious -- is there any
> further documentation about what all of the attributes mean? Many are
> clear from reading the GEDCOM spec, but others, like this one (or the
> other fields on spouseref), I can't seem to find any documentation for
> anywhere.

Unfortunately not. Coming up with the data model was an exercise in
"data archeology". I reviewed the gedcoms and came up with my best
guess on what the various fields meant, but since I wasn't able to get
inside the head of the gedcom author, I can't say definitively what the
fields are supposed to be used for.

Feel free to continue to ask questions. I'll give you my best guess as
to what I think the fields mean based upon what I saw in the gedcoms.

Dallan