FTW TEXT is a misfeature of Family Tree Maker. Family Tree Maker is a product of Ancestry.com. Thus, Ancestry.com is responsible.
Ancestry.com did not create the FTW TEXT problem. Family Tree Maker was originally created by Banner Blue Software. It has been owned by Broderbund, The Learning Company (TLC), Mattel, Genealogy.com, and MyFamily.com.
Ancestry.com did not create the FTW TEXT problem, but in all the years it owned Family Tree Maker, it never stopped FTW from misleading its customers either. As the current owner, Ancestry.com is responsible for the FTW TEXT problems.
Ancestry.com maintained the existing Family Tree Maker product for a while, but eventually decided to do a rewrite and release the new product using the same brand name.
The new product is actually so different that use of the same name seems inappropriate. The differences between the products do necessitate distinguishing between them, so the original product is now known as Family Tree Maker Classic and the new one as New Family Tree Maker.
Family Tree Maker 16 is last version of Family Tree Maker Classic. Family Tree Maker 2008 is the first version of New Family Tree Maker.
Family Tree Maker Classic reads and writes FTW TEXT. New Family Tree Maker only reads FTW TEXT.
Many FTW GEDCOM produced by Family Tree Maker Classic are based on GEDCOM 5.3. New Family Tree Maker only accepts GEDCOM files based on GEDCOM 5.5.
New Family Tree Maker reads both GEDCOM and FTW TEXT. Well, it really reads the mixture FGTEWDTCEOXMT instead, and that is a defect; a FGTEWDTCEOXMT reader is neither a good GEDCOM reader nor a good FTW TEXT reader.
Just as many GEDCOM files produced by FTW have version 5.3 in their GEDCOM header, many FTW TEXT files produced by Family Tree Maker Classic have version 5.3 version number in their FTW TEXT header.
New Family Tree Maker’s FGTEWDTCEOXMT reader checks the version number, and rejects files that do not have version 5.5. Many FTW TEXT files have version number 5.3, so New Family Tree Maker rejects those files.
That rejection of FTW TEXT 5.3 files initially gave me the impression that New Family Tree Maker does not support FTW TEXT at all. It actually supports FGTEWDTCEOXMT and I’ve been able to import several FTW TEXT files by manually changing their FTW TEXT version number from 5.3 to 5.5.
I do not recommend that trick. I do not recommend manually changing version numbers or character encodings unless you know what you are doing and are prepared to deal with the consequences.
…it is ridiculous that you have to buy FTM version 16 to import an FTW TEXT file produced by version 12 into FTM version 18.
The best way to get an FTW TEXT file into New FTM is to import it into FTW Classic, and then import the FTW database into New FTM, either directly or via GEDCOM.
The issue with this approach is that it requires you to have a copy of Family Tree Maker Classic. As the Family Tree Maker 2009 review noted, it is still for sale. You can probably get it cheaply on eBay, but it is ridiculous that you have to buy FTM version 16 to import an FTW TEXT file produced by version 12 into FTM version 18.
A new version of an application does not need to write every old file format, but it should read the important ones. In particular, it should read all the files created by earlier versions of that application, and compensate for all known mistakes.
That New Family Tree Maker does not read all FTW TEXT and FTW GEDCOM files created by earlier versions of Family Tree Maker is a serious shortcoming.
That New Family Tree Maker does not write, but does read FTW TEXT files is as it should be. There is no good reason to write FTW TEXT files instead of GEDCOM files, but the current version of Family Tree Maker should be able to read files written by its predecessors.
Sadly, New Family Tree Maker does not read all FTW TEXT files created by its predecessors. It does not even read all GEDCOM files created by its predecessors, not even all GEDCOM 5.5 files.
Another serious limitation of New FTM is that it does not support ANSEL or UTF-8. FTM Classic does not support UTF-8 either, but it does support ANSEL, and New FTM cannot read it. Even worse, it pretends that it can read it and mangles your text without any error or warning message.
New FTM’s limited FGTEWDTCEOXMT reader should be replaced with a capable GEDCOM reader, one that supports GEDCOM 5.3 in addition to GEDCOM 5.5. It should also support supports ASCII, ANSEL and UTF-8, or at the very least admit that it does not support it.
New FTM should not write FTW TEXT files, but the product should include an FTW TEXT reader for the sake of backward compatibility.
That FTW TEXT reader should be integrated into New FTM, and New FTM
should simply
display Importing FTW TEXT
instead of Importing GEDCOM
when it is asked to import an FTW TEXT file.
Making sure that new versions of FTM read files written by older versions of FTM is essential, but still just a partial solution.
It still does not address the fact that FTW TEXT is not GEDCOM and that most genealogy applications do not read FTW TEXT. Ancestry.com should provide a free FTW TEXT to FTW GEDCOM conversion tool.
It is very easy for Ancestry.com to do so. They do not need to develop
anything new or even modify existing code at all. Ancestry.com already has Family Tree Maker 16.
The easiest way for Ancestry.com to provide the necessary
conversion tool is to make Family Tree Maker 16 a free download.
Ancestry.com merely needs to fix the misleading FTM 16 export dialog box and update the help file, following all the recommendations provided in Documenting FTW TEXT, and they can release Family Tree Maker 16 Mark II as the necessary conversion tool.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.