Technologically, TMG is more than a decade behind.
The Master Genealogist (TMG) version 7 was released on 2007 Dec 30. That release date was after GeneAwards 2007 announcements just a few days earlier. The TMG 7 review was published in January of 2008, and TMG 7 received the GeneAward for Worst Genealogy Genealogy Product of 2008.
The review found that although TMG 7 it is the seventh major release of this product, TMG 7 still lacks basic features; its GEDCOM support is incomplete, the ANSEL support is defective and the UTF-8 support is non-existent. Its ostensible HTML output isn't HTML at all. Moreover, long-standing defects have not been fixed, and its user interface is not just unfriendly but positively insulting. The whole program is slow, and its import is snailtacular.
There have been few upgrades for version 7. The Wholly Genes upgrade centre currently provides an upgrade to TMG 7.04.
Wholly Genes first shared some details on TMG version 8 late in 2009.
The TMG v8 Preview page they shared back then is still exists.
That preview page provided some screenshots and descriptions.
Wholly Genes just announced the TMG 8 Public Beta.
The TMG v8 Public Beta page appears to be an updated version of the TMG v8 Preview page, the most important difference being the download link at the bottom.
Download is easy. Just click and download, no need to provide an email or anything like that.
The download is about 43 MB. The installer looks and feels dated, because it uses an old version of the Wise Installation Wizard.
The TMG 8 Beta installer creates a Program Group, but does not create a desktop icon.
I created a shortcut myself, and was surprised to notice it appears to be a medium size icon only.
Surprised, because TMG version 7 does feature a large icon. I expect this minor issue to be fixed before the official release.
When I tried to run TMG 8 for the first time, it displayed rather odd behaviour. It would start up, allow me to choose a project, and only then complain that The operating system failed to register an OCX used by TMG.
and rudely terminate.
The full messagebox text told me that I needed to run TMG as administrator just once, and would then be able to run it normally. That is an unusual installation procedure, but I did as was asked. I started TMG as administrator, it seemed to start normally, and then there was an sudden explosion of pop-ups, one on top of the other. Now, a major issue with the TMG 7 user interface is that has pop-up upon pop-up, but this was not that.
The first pop-up was a dialog box from my firewall warning me that TMG was trying to connect to the Internet. TMG had not asked for permission to do that, had not told why it wanted to do that, had not even informed that it was about to do that, so I disallowed the attempt. TMG immediately tried again. I had to deny its unauthorised Internet connection attempts three times.
The second pop-up was from the installer for the Amyuni Document Converter. TMG had started the installer for this third party product without asking for permission, and without telling me.
Overlaying that installation dialog was a warning dialog box from Windows that Windows can't verify the publisher of this driver software
. That dialog box gave me two options; Don't install this driver software
and Install this driver software anyway
.
Installing unverified drivers is not recommended. The Amyuni Document Converter is a a PDF printer driver.
I don't need another one of those and Windows does not particularly like this driver, so I choose the Don't install this driver software
option. That made the driver setup fail.
The fourth pop-up was the same The operating system failed to register an OCX used by TMG
messagebox again, but this time TMG did not terminate when I closed that messagebox. So, I kept following the instructions it had given, closed down TMG and restarted it normally. I had to deny three unauthorised Internet access attempts again, but the dialog box did not return, and TMG did not terminate. It seemed to be running normally now.
I naturally decided to quickly find the options dialog box that would allow me to disable its Internet connection attempts, and was greeted with TMG's hallmark user-unfriendliness; one annoying semi-helpful condescending pop-up upon another. Wholly Genes hasn't gotten rid of TMG's infamous Cue Cards Clutter.
Annoyingly, Wholly Genes does not only default TMG's update check to zero days, but does not allow you to turn the automatic update checks off either. I changed the update frequency to the maximum of 99 days.
I was rather unpleasantly surprised that, the next time I started TMG 8, it started the Wise Updater anyway!
TMG 8 does not strike me as very different from TMG 7, so I took a good look at the TMG 8 Public Beta page again, to find out what's new.
The most important change is a rewrite of the reporting engine, because the TMG 7 reporting engine does not work on Windows 7 64-bit. It is good that this major defect has been fixed, but it is wrong to call that a major upgrade and charge for it. It is not clear yet whether Wholly Genes plans to do this, but All TMG 7 users should get this fix for free.
I find the phrase The screen shots were made of TMG v8 running in Windows 7 64-bit
on that page reassuring. It tells me that Wholly Genes is now making sure that its application
runs on modern systems, so its users can upgrade without having to fear for TMG's functionality. I ran TMG 8 Beta on Windows Vista 64-bit, and apart from the aforementioned less than ideal installation experience, and, well, TMG being TMG, encountered no problems running it.
The reporting engine has been completely rewritten, and sports a few new features, such as a preview mode that supports several zoom levels, embedded images, footnotes and page numbering styles, but that does not change the fact that it is mainly a defect fix, and defect fixes should be free.
When I reviewed TMG 7 in 2008, I stated that its ostensible HTML output carried
only the vaguest resemble to actual HTML, and remarked that to describe TMG’s HTML output as a proof-of-concept code, hastily cobbled together more than a decade ago, and never looked at since would be sheer kindness
. I recommended that you pick an alternative, any alternative,
as its output could not possibly be worse.
The TMG 8 Public Beta states that TMG 8 features Enhancements to the HTML output
, so I decide to give this a try.
TMG does not have some create web page
option. You create one or more web pages by creating a report and then choosing HTML as the output format.
That choice is not available for all reports, but just a few.
I picked the Ahnentafel
report and discovered that it is not an ahnentafel report at all, and not a misnamed ahnenlist report either, but actually an ahnenline report; it does not show a complete ahnenlist, but shows just one ancestral line.
Although TMG isn't an MS-DOS application limited to 8.3 filenames, TMG still uses the three-letter *.HTM extension, instead of the preferable four-letter *.html.
The HTML output that TMG 8 generates is a lot better than what TMG 7 generates.
For starters, all HTML tags are in lowercase, as they should be.
The TMG 7 output lacks a doctype and a character set declaration.
The TMG 8 Beta output opts for one of the easiest doctypes, HTML 4.01 Transitional, and
specifies ISO-8859-1 instead of UTF-8, and forgets to use the mandatory title tag,
so the page TMG created does not validate, but it almost does.
The specified character encoding is almost certainly incorrect, as the Windows ANSI character (code page 1252) set that TMG uses internally is not the same as ISO-8859-1, but a superset of it.
Still, there is no dobut that Wholly Genes is trying to get it right this time, and this is a Beta.
With a just a few corrections, TMG 8 might output be correct and valid HTML. That would put TMG's HTML output near the top of the pile instead of the bottom of pile.
For many years, TMG's ostensible HTML output was so awful that users practically had to buy Second Site to get decent web pages. Second Site still offers many features that TMG lacks,
but starting with TMG 8, it is no longer necessary to get a third party product
for reasonable HTML output.
TMG's HTML output is basic HTML, and it still doesn't use or support style sheets,
but going from sheer rubbish that only works because browsers are so smart to nearly valid HTML is a serious improvement.
Memo to Wholly Genes: GEDCOM 5.5.1 has been the de facto standard for more than a decade.
I'm sure that more than a few readers would like to know whether Wholly Genes improved TMG's snailtacular GEDCOM import speed. I've not bothered to test that, as it is rather time-consuming and beta releases are often a tad slower than the final release.
I decided to use the new capability test, and take an initial stab at determining TMG's fan value, by importing the FAN18.GED file. After about ten minutes, TMG seemed to hang at 99%
import for another ten minutes, so I aborted the import and tried a smaller file.
TMG imports FAN15.GED in about two minutes. The import listing complains that WWW is an unknown tag!
Memo to Wholly Genes: GEDCOM 5.5.1 has been the de facto standard for more than a decade.
TMG's GEDCOM export supports three different characters encodings, two of which are illegal.
TMG still supports the illegal IMBPC character set, and defaults to the illegal Windows ANSI character set, I choose to export using ANSEL, as that is the only legal choice it offers.
Trying to export a GEDCOM from TMG still requires suffering its GEDCOM export Wizard from
hell. It is one screen of weird options after another. You cannot just click through
and rely on its defaults settings, as that would export only part of your database.
The export sure wasn't fast, but what I cared most about is wether the exported
GEDCOM file is valid or not.
I don't care much for the 1 DEST GED55 line, I think that should be
1 DEST TMG, and I don't like that TMG made up a submitter called
Submitter Name
when it could have prompted me for my name. Other than
that, the GEDCOM output looks valid.
I used VGED, a GEDCOM validator, to be sure, and VGED does not agree; VGED issues 32.769 warnings.
That is 32.768 times the same warning. VGED complains that the last-change date that TMG
exports for each individual has Invalid data length
. It looks okay, but examination of the GEDCOM shows that each date is followed by 18 spaces!
VGED reports this as a warning, but it is actually an error. The GEDCOM specification
does not allow any spaces there. What makes this particular error rather embarrassing for Wholly Genes is that I called their attention to this in the TMG 7 review more than three years ago already.
The 32.769th warning is caused by another issue. TMG imported and exported the submitter listed in FAN15.GED as an individual, thus adding an individual to the exported GEDCOM that wasn't in the original database. VGED issues a warning because it is an insular individual, that no other record links to.
The TMG 8 Beta seems unable to import the FAN18.GED file, so I tried a smaller one.
The TMG 8 Beta seems to import the FAN15.GED file just fine, but does not export it correctly. TMG has modified the database (!), and the exported TMG GEDCOM is still invalid.
TMG 8 Beta's fan value is 0.
TMG 8, an genealogy application to be released in 2011, still does not support Unicode.
TMG 8, an genealogy application to be released in 2011, still does not support Unicode.
TMG 7 is based on Visual FoxPro version 9. Microsoft released Visual FoxPro 9 back in 2004. More than four years ago, in March of 2007, Microsoft announced that there would be no version 10, and that it would completely stop supporting FoxPro in 2015.
TMG 8 is still based on FoxPro version 9, and that's odd. That TMG 7's reporting does not work on Windows 7 64-bit is basically because FoxPro is dead. The sensible thing isn't redoing the reporting engine to make it work again, only to have something else fail on Windows 8. That is like fighting the symptons instead of the disease. The sensible thing to do is to abandon FoxPro in favour of something with a future, and redo the entire application.
TMG could sure use a face lift to remove some of its wrinkles, but leaving FoxPro for something better is not just about TMG's clumsy user-interface. Even the latest and greatest version of FoxPro does not support Unicode. That does not make it impossible to create a Unicode application on top of a FoxPro database, but it sure makes it harder. Relevant to TMG users is that, even in the TMG 8 Beta, Wholly Genes has still not done so.
TMG 8 does not support Unicode, and it still cannot write UTF-8 GEDCOM files.
TMG 8 still fails to recognise UTF-8 GEDCOM file with a Byte Order Mark (BOM).
The application still shows a message directing to you the GEDCOM Import
help topic,
and that help topic still direct you to a Wholly Genes forum thread from 2004 (!),
in which you are recommended
to open the GEDCOM file in NotePad and save it
as Windows ANSI, and to ignore the warning you'll get regarding loss of data.
That is the worst self-serving advice
possible, presumably because Wholly Genes does not want to give you real advice: switch to a modern genealogy application that does support Unicode.
By the way, if the UTF-8 GEDCOM lacks a BOM, TMG 8 will not warn you about its lack of UTF-8 support, but silently import the file as if it is an ANSI GEDCOM, mangling your data in the process. That is deliberately defective behaviour.
To characterise TMG 8 in just a few words, TMG 8 Beta is TMG 7 with a new report engine. That new report engine works on Windows 7 64-bit, offers a few new features, and produces passable HTML - and I suspect that the TMG 8 release will produce valid HTML.
Sadly, that is about all the good news. The installation is awkward,
the user-interface is as awful as ever, and once again, defects that were known
years ago still haven't been fixed. TMG's GEDCOM import is deliberately defective,
and its GEDCOM export always produces invalid GEDCOM files, even if you pick the only valid character encoding it supports.
TMG still doesn't understand GEDCOM 5.5.1 and the most basic shortcoming of all is that TMG still doesn't do Unicode. Technologically, TMG is more than a decade behind.
Overall, TMG 8 does not feel like a new release, but like TMG 7 Service Pack 1.
TMG 8 is a product stuck in a time-warp. MG feels dated because it is dated.
TMG desperately needed a rewrite a decade ago already, and still needs that rewrite.
Its awful user interface, defective GEDCOM support and lack of Unicode support may have been passable in the previous millennium, but make this product utterly discommendable today.
Where's the real upgrade?
TMG 7 user Nathan Maling writes about the TMG 8 Public Beta.
He finds that the update does not meet his expectation set by a major number release, as the items listed in the upgrade are fixes and enhancements rather than new features
.
He remarks upon major shortcomings of TMG's GEDCOM export and problems deinstalling TMG 8 to return to TMG 7,
and is not impressed by its support for word processors from the 1980s and early 1990s
.
After months of silence without another beta, Wholly Genes has released TMG 8.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.