![]() A final improvement of GEDCOM 5.5.1 is how it structured multimedia records. Without these tags, apps must use custom tags, like _LATI and _LONG in iFamily, which may be ignored by other apps. GEDCOM 5.5.1 also added tags for fax numbers, email and web page addresses, and latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates. GEDCOM 5.5.1 added the UTF-8 character set, which is now the most widely used character set on the World Wide Web (Wikipedia, citing several sources). GEDCOM 5.5 allowed only the ANSEL, US ASCII, and UTF-16 character sets. Modern genealogy apps should be able to import and export version 5.5.1, which is the latest standard (discounting version 5.6, which was similar to 5.5.1 but also include an XML structure that was never widely adopted). iFamily expects GEDCOMs to be formatted according to GEDCOM 5.5 for import, so it undoubtedly exports them as 5.5. The iFamily website states, “As GEDCOM export is disabled in our demo, hold it’s performance to the same standard as our GEDCOM import process.” Fortunately, iFamily uses GEDCOM tags for its Event Types, so I could at least surmise what tags it would use to export a GEDCOM. GEDCOM 5.5.1:As noted above, the iFamily Demo does not include GEDCOM export. This shortcoming also leads to the next problem. That’s probably why it imported my invalid event description into the Event Name field. But here’s the problem: iFamily doesn’t have a separate event description field it has only the Event Name field, so if there’s both a description and a name (which is really a type), it can import only one or the other. On its website, iFamily gives even worse advice on the Tutorials page under Tips it states, “Enter ‘Y’ for a birthdate or deathdate if you want it to be searchable during consistency checks.” If a date is unknown, you should not enter “Y” in the date field (or the place field) you should enter it in the event description. Fortunately, iFamily doesn’t squawk if you leave the date blank. ![]() If a date is unknown, it must be left blank (unless it can be estimated). Also notice in Fig 2 the statement, “An event must have a Date, a Type and a Name.” I agree an event must have a type, but a Name is required only for user-defined events like Arrival or Departure, and I strongly disagree that an event must have a date. ![]() The Event Name is the Event Type spelled out, such as “Birth” or “Death.” But where it should say “Birth,” it imported the invalid description instead, and there’s no way to change it. iFamily also violated this rule it imported invalid event descriptions into the Event Name (Fig 2). Many genealogy apps violate this rule, including Family Tree Maker (FTM), which enabled me to include it in my test GEDCOM file. Invalid event description: The only entry that a birth, death, or marriage event description (called a “descriptor” in the standard) may have is the letter “Y” to assert that the event occurred if and only if both the date and place are blank. ![]()
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