Mac OS genealogy program that can handle Mills style reference formats
John
was a decent MacOS genealogy program.
I have since learned it is incapable of doing Elizabeth Shown
Mills reference styles. Its limited source definitions are
simply inadequate, and its custom sources require ","s between
fields, so that renders it impossible to do professional
Mills style sources references.
Is there a Mac OS genealogy product that is as enlightened
as TMG (The Master Genealogist which only works on Windoze
so I refuse to run or emulate it) for using Mills style
references?
Thanks, John
Tim Powys-Lybbe
> Some months ago I investigated products and decided Reunion was a
> decent MacOS genealogy program.
>
> I have since learned it is incapable of doing Elizabeth Shown Mills
> reference styles. Its limited source definitions are simply
> inadequate, and its custom sources require ","s between fields, so
> that renders it impossible to do professional Mills style sources
> references.
Is there a need to do this style?
The real need is to provide a reasonably clear set of words that will
lead the diligent researcher to the source document concerned. From the
various academic books in my possession, this does not normally require
very many words or any precise syntax.
--
Tim Powys-Lybbe t...@powys.org
For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/
John
> In message of 14 Jul, John <jhy...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Some months ago I investigated products and decided Reunion was a
>> decent MacOS genealogy program.
>>
>> I have since learned it is incapable of doing Elizabeth Shown Mills
>> reference styles. Its limited source definitions are simply
>> inadequate, and its custom sources require ","s between fields, so
>> that renders it impossible to do professional Mills style sources
>> references.
>
> Is there a need to do this style?
Yes.
Tim Powys-Lybbe
I wonder if you can do a bit better than that: I gave reasons why I did
not see a need. In your reply you have deleted these reasons and not
given any yourself. Might you be able to enter into the spirit of a
debate?
John
> In message of 14 Jul, John <jhy...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Tim Powys-Lybbe wrote:
>>> In message of 14 Jul, John <jhy...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Some months ago I investigated products and decided Reunion was a
>>>> decent MacOS genealogy program.
>>>>
>>>> I have since learned it is incapable of doing Elizabeth Shown Mills
>>>> reference styles. Its limited source definitions are simply
>>>> inadequate, and its custom sources require ","s between fields, so
>>>> that renders it impossible to do professional Mills style sources
>>>> references.
>>> Is there a need to do this style?
>> Yes.
>
> I wonder if you can do a bit better than that: I gave reasons why I did
> not see a need. In your reply you have deleted these reasons and not
> given any yourself. Might you be able to enter into the spirit of a
> debate?
I didn't mean to be rude, but it is a long answer. It is kind of like
those that know what is know why they need it.
TMG is the best program for professional genealogists and it has a
default set of Mills style reference formats built in. For good
reason. They are commonly accepted as either the best, or at least
very good. But I refuse to run anything Windoze. Even under any
emulation. So I can't use TMG on my Mac. I've made "noise" on their
message board about not having a Mac version, but they apparently
aren't interested and never will. So I moved on when I left Windoze.
See the book: "Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts
to Cyberspace" by Elizabeth Shown Mills, 2007, Genealogical
Publishing Company, Baltimore, MD.
Every genealogical program worth its salt needs to allow the user to
format sources as Mills covers in her 885 page book. And to earn a
gold star the program should program them in with the fields she
defines. As far as I know, only TMG gets the star.
So... the short answer is again, yes. Most professional genealogists
accept, if not use, her style.
And before you ask or suggest, Reunion Free Form won't work because
it insists on putting commas (only) between fields. Mills uses
colons, semicolons, angle brackets, etc. I am working on defining
my own Mills formats in it, and have written a sed script to
postprocess and remove the redundant punctuation from the rtf
reports. But this is Rube Goldberg, and beyond the ability of
most users. I think it may work, but haven't finished yet. If
I do get it to work, I'll put the scripts and definitions up
on a web site. But it is taking a lot of my time and I was
wondering if perhaps another Mac program could allow me to
leave Reunion behind. So far, the answer seems to be no.
John
Paul Blair
Accepting all that, John, can you give a brief explanation of what such
a reference is composed of/looks like/some of the variants? I can
understand that there are problems with assorted distinctive marks
(commas, slashes etc) that can confuse text handling utilities. But some
visual idea of a sample would be instructive.
Thanks...
Paul
Ian Goddard
The book you cite was published last year. It seems a little
unreasonable to expect the authors of a program to jump at conforming
with its recommendations within such a short time span. They will, I
expect, have their own set of priorities which they will be working on.
If sufficient demand comes from their users then this would go into
their priorities. If, however, the bulk of their users feel that commas
are good enough then the demand might never be there.
Your solution of a sed script, or possibly Awk, Perl or a C program to
filter the output was one which I was going to suggest.
--
Ian
Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard
at nildram co uk
Tim Powys-Lybbe
Thanks for this account. But I still cannot see a reason for this
requirement apart from:
"Most professional genealogists accept, if not use, her style."
My suggestion was that all that was needed was to adequately identify
the source document so that it could be re-found for further
examination if necessary. I cannot see that a set of punctuation rules
helps this process.
(I regret that I do not have, nor have I read, a copy of Mills' book.)
Steven Gibbs
>
> So... the short answer is again, yes. Most professional genealogists
> accept, if not use, her style.
Do you not mean "most professional genealogists in the USA ... "? Does
she have any influence in the rest of the world?
Steven
John
> The book you cite was published last year. It seems a little
> unreasonable to expect the authors of a program to jump at conforming
> with its recommendations within such a short time span. They will, I
What I didn't mention was the first of her books was published in 1997.
"Evidence!: Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian" by Elizabeth
Shown Mills CG, CGL, FASG, FNGS., Genealogical Publishing Company,
Baltimore, Maryland (1997).
Her standards for references have been accepted by those in the know
for a long time. Like TMG users.
> expect, have their own set of priorities which they will be working on.
> If sufficient demand comes from their users then this would go into
> their priorities. If, however, the bulk of their users feel that commas
> are good enough then the demand might never be there.
>
> Your solution of a sed script, or possibly Awk, Perl or a C program to
> filter the output was one which I was going to suggest.
>
John
John
My published genealogies would be in English, yes, USA based, most
likely. English speaking, certainly. I see to recall reading that
TMG handles British reference styles, but am not sure at this
point. It is too tangential to my needs to go look up.
John
John
> Ian Goddard wrote:
>
>> The book you cite was published last year. It seems a little
>> unreasonable to expect the authors of a program to jump at conforming
>> with its recommendations within such a short time span. They will, I
>
> What I didn't mention was the first of her books was published in 1997.
>
> "Evidence!: Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian" by Elizabeth
> Shown Mills CG, CGL, FASG, FNGS., Genealogical Publishing Company,
> Baltimore, Maryland (1997).
Here is how Mills references her own first book in her second book:
Mills, Elizabeth Shown. <i>Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family
Historian</i>. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1997; revised,
16th printing, 2006.
Notice the field separators colon and semicolon. I should properly have
used it in my first reply. I am only working on learning to be
fully conversant with her style. ;-)
John
> Thanks for this account. But I still cannot see a reason for this
> requirement apart from:
>
> "Most professional genealogists accept, if not use, her style."
>
> My suggestion was that all that was needed was to adequately identify
> the source document so that it could be re-found for further
> examination if necessary. I cannot see that a set of punctuation rules
> helps this process.
This is valid if it meets your needs. It doesn't meet the needs of those
who would like to publish their work. Then you'd have to conform to
a consistent, and publisher accepted standard. I want to build this in
from the get go.
John
John
Mills style defines a standard style for over 100 types of genealogical
"evidence". It consists of how a Bibliographic version should look (1),
the first full reference to it (2), and subsequent short references
to it (3).
TMG uses all three! I sure wish they'd make a Mac version!
Here is a concrete example using semicolons for
"Corporate Records Bound Volume":
(1) Source List Entry (Bibliographic):
Fields:
Name of Collection
Series
Repository
Repository Location
Sample:
Duveen Brothers Records, 1876-1981. General Business Records, 1907-
1964. Getty Research Institute, Los Angles, California.
(2) First (Full) Reference Note
Fields:
Record Book Title (Quoted Exactly)
Page
Series
File Location
Corporate Collection
Repository
Repository Location
Sample:
"Clients Property Book #1, ca. 1907-1919,: p. 129; General Business
Records, 1907-1964; Box 119, Duveen Brothers Records, 1876-1981;
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California.
(3) Subsequent (Short note)
Fields:
Record Book Title
Page
Collection
Sample:
"Clients Property Book #1, ca. 1907-1919," 129, Duveen Brothers
Records.
So there you have it. If anyone needs further explanation, please
look at Mills' book. I need to get back to programming.
John
singhals
At the risk of being voted Most Grumpy -- 1997 is barely 11
years ago. I realize it's an eternity to the
tomorrow-is-obsolete cohort, but it's not exactly a
world-land-record for endurance. Noel Stevenson's book was
wildly popular and much-cited for far longer, and most genie
programs didn't incorporate his version either.
Then too, people who use reference citations in their
day-job tend to stick with the style they're familiar with;
people who publish use the style their publisher wants used,
right or wrong.
Cheryl
singhals
> Tim Powys-Lybbe wrote:
>
>> Thanks for this account. But I still cannot see a reason for this
>> requirement apart from:
>>
>> "Most professional genealogists accept, if not use, her style."
>>
>> My suggestion was that all that was needed was to adequately identify
>> the source document so that it could be re-found for further
>> examination if necessary. I cannot see that a set of punctuation rules
>> helps this process.
>
>
> This is valid if it meets your needs. It doesn't meet the needs of those
> who would like to publish their work. Then you'd have to conform to
> a consistent, and publisher accepted standard. I want to build this in
> from the get go.
I believe that the NGSQ and the NEGHSQ and SoG all have/had
slightly different citation requirements for published mss.
One uses the citation style preferred by one's publisher.
Many publishers prefer their series to be self-consistent
over decades. I understand that Mills' recent book changes
some things she had in the 1997 one, and I know the 1997 one
was clearly different from CMoS and MLA.
"Best" is a value judgment each of us must make based on the
circumstances where "best" is needed. "Best" for NGSQ isn't
necessarily "best" for SoG.
Cheryl
Robert Melson
John,
Cheryl said it a couple of posts back on this thread and you
just now at least recognized it - you use the citation style
required by your publisher. If he says Chicago Manual fo Style,
you don't use Mills or Library of Congress or what-have-you, you
use CMoS.
The important thing is NOT the style you record your bibliography/
citations in but that the information you record is complete and,
whatever the style, makes it possible for another researcher to
locate the same bit of information.
BTW, look at phpGedView's source citation mechanism. Sounds a lot
like what you're looking for. Also take a look at how gramps
handles the problem.
Surreal Ol' Bob
--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable
reason so few engage in it. -- Henry Ford
John
> John,
>
> Cheryl said it a couple of posts back on this thread and you
> just now at least recognized it - you use the citation style
> required by your publisher. If he says Chicago Manual fo Style,
> you don't use Mills or Library of Congress or what-have-you, you
> use CMoS.
My chosen style of source referencing is Mills. Done deal.
> The important thing is NOT the style you record your bibliography/
> citations in but that the information you record is complete and,
> whatever the style, makes it possible for another researcher to
> locate the same bit of information.
That's okay if it meets your needs. It does not meet mine.
I want to use Mills style. Done deal.
> BTW, look at phpGedView's source citation mechanism. Sounds a lot
I don't see where you can define a set of Mills style. Unless you
code it yourself in php. It looks like a no gain over what I am
doing. It also seems to rely completely on GEDCOM fields. GEDCOM
is very limited. And I'm not a fan of doing it totally on line.
I like my program and data on my notebook, and I put reports up
on the web as I wish, when I wish. Not the whole ball of wax.
I like to know it is on my disks, backed up, less subject to
hacks, or accidentally making it all public, ...
> like what you're looking for. Also take a look at how gramps
> handles the problem.
Also appears at least as limited as Reunion in this regard. I
didn't see where source formats could be programmed and saved.
John
>
> Surreal Ol' Bob
>
Robert Melson
Whoa, pal! No need to get snotty. I understand - and
understood - that it's your preference to use Wills. My
comment, and Cheryl's, spoke to the idea that an author
usually needs to conform to his publisher's desired style
of source referencing. If your publisher requires, say,
Chicago and you submit using Wills, you're off on the wrong
foot and likely have one strike against you from the outset.
"Done deal" doesn't work and won't work with any publisher
I know of. (If you're self-publishing or publishing
through lulu.com or Ancestry, that's another matter,
entirely.)
As for phpGedView and Gramps, they struck me as possibilities.
If they don't work for you, they don't. Thought I'd mention
them just in case.
I'll make this one last recommendation, then drop the subject:
contact the one or two publishers at the top of your list and
ask what they require in the way of source citation formats and
work to meet those requirements. You can even ask if they'll
accept/recognize the Wills system. But don't go in with a
take it or leave it attitude - that'll get you nothing but a
rejection slip.
Slightly-miffed Ol' Bob
Ian Goddard
>
> Here is how Mills references her own first book in her second book:
>
> Mills, Elizabeth Shown. <i>Evidence! Citation & Analysis for the Family
> Historian</i>. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1997; revised,
> 16th printing, 2006.
This is a mixture of punctuation (colon, etc) and markup.
The <i/> element is markup to tell an HTML rendering engine to put the
enclosed text in italics.
If that citation style was used in printed in a book, or in a word
processor document or PDF which you would be doing if preparing an MS
for publication, I'd expect to see it in italics.
In the days of typewriters we used to use underlining in the MS and the
typesetter would know to set that in italics. I'm not sure that a
typesetter would necessarily do that with HTML markup, they might just
reproduce the tags. An alternative would be to /indicate the italics
like this/ and it's possible that your email client will treat it in
that way - but again a typesetter might not follow that convention
unless specifically instructed to do so.