Hello!
I inherited the genealogy work done by my dad. He used the Dutch Haza21 program to do this. When I took it over I decided to convert the data to the Gedcom format. Haza21 has an export function, but it has many faults and I had to write some Java programs to get the gedcom file in such a shape that it was usable. I decided to use Ancestris to continue work on the genealogy as it is committed to support the gedcom standard. I also looked for a neat program to publish the genealogy and found Ged2Site. When playing with this software I stumbled over what seems to be a fundamental problem with Associations (tag ASSO). Up to now I had not paid much attention to associations, Haza21 exported them and Ancestris seemed to accept them as well. Most entries are for witnesses (for christening, marriage, death announcements, etc.). Looking at the output of Ged2Site I noticed that the associations were the wrong way around. Instead of the grandfather being mentioned as a witness to the christening of his grandchild, it was mentioned that the grandchild was a witness to the christening of the grandfather. When analysing what the cause of this reversal might be, I found that there seems to be a different interpretation by Ancestris (and for that matter also Haza21 as the exported association records originate from there) and the Gedcom specification.
The Gedcom specification says:
Version 5.5
ASSOCIATION_STRUCTURE:=
n ASSO <XREF:INDI>
+1 RELA <RELATION_IS_DESCRIPTOR>
+1 <<SOURCE_CITATION>>
+1 <<NOTE_STRUCTURE>>
The association pointer only associates INDI (individual) records to INDI (individual)
records.
The ASSO record may only be used for relationships that aren't otherwise supported by the
Lineage-linked Form. Parent-child relationship must be recorded using the INDI.FAMC and
the FAM.CHIL records.
The person's relation or association is the person being pointed to. The association or
relationship is stated by the value on the subordinate RELA line. For example:
0 @I1@ INDI
1 NAME Fred /Jones/
1 ASSO @I2@
2 RELA Godfather
This GEDCOM fragment states that @I2@ is Fred's godfather.
Version 7.0
ASSOCIATION_STRUCTURE :=
n ASSO @<XREF:INDI>@ {1:1} g7:ASSO
+1 PHRASE <Text> {0:1} g7:PHRASE
+1 ROLE <Enum> {1:1} g7:ROLE
+2 PHRASE <Text> {0:1} g7:PHRASE
+1 <<NOTE_STRUCTURE>> {0:M}
+1 <<SOURCE_CITATION>> {0:M}
An individual associated with the subject of the superstructure. The nature of the association is indicated in the ROLE substructure.
A voidPtr and PHRASE can be used to describe associations to people not referenced by any INDI record.
The following indicates that “Mr Stockdale” was the individual’s teacher and that individual @I2@ was the clergy officiating at their baptism.
0 @I1@ INDI
1 ASSO @VOID@
2 PHRASE Mr Stockdale
2 ROLE OTHER
3 PHRASE Teacher
1 BAPM
2 DATE 1930
2 ASSO @I2@
3 ROLE CLERGY
Ancestris seems to interpret association records in exactly the opposite way. So the fact that an individual is a witnessis not recorded with the entry for the individual that is the target of the association, i.e. the one that is christened, but with the individual that is the witness.
The Ancestris documentation also explicitly mentions this in the description of the Association Tab of the Aries Editor.
I have searched the forum and have found several discussion concerning associations, but all the relevant ones seem to be in French. Unfortunately my French may be sufficient for simple conversations, but is not good enough for technical discussions.
Therefore, my apologies, if this question was already presented.
Could someone clarify the issue? Maybe I got something completely wrong, but I would like to understand how Ancestris handles associations and why, if that is the case, there is a discrepancy with the Gedcom specification.
Thank You
