Not all of us want to use Ancestry's online trees, but I sometimes use them for things I wish to share with others, such as trees I've researched for friends.
My offline software provides much better facilities, so sometimes I'll do a download to check things like the addresses being consistent.
So today I've been editing the GEDCOM for one tree to produce a reasonable local version.
The problems I've noticed are mostly in the "Description" part of records. Here I tend to put my transcriptions of register entries, so that I don't need to keep referring to an image.
The main disasters are:
- Loss of semicolons. Because Ancestry removes line breaks, I use semicolons. Thus a marriage might include "...John Smith, Miner; Mary Jones, 23, ...."
That gets written out as "...John Smith, MinerMary Jones, 23, ...." - Inclusion of HTML entities rather than the correct characters. Thus "<illegible>" becomes "<illegible>".
- A similar, but worse, translation for ampersand. Thus, "Marks & Spencer" is likely to become "Marks &Spencer".
Note that HTML entities are not supposed to appear in a GEDCOM unless they are to be treated as literal text.
The second and third problems can be sorted out with a text editor,
but only if you know the problem exists.
The first problem can't be detected except by examining every event with more than one line of text.
The problems are not encountered consistently. There are times when only one semicolon is removed. Sometimes a church is "St. Michael & All Angels" and other times it becomes "St. Michael &All Angels".
Should my friend decide to fork out for a subscription rather than working as a guest, I will need to go through ALL these records manually. If they are in the GEDCOM used for the transfer, they continue under the new ownership.
Yes, I've logged a problem report. Anyone believe anything will be done?
Anyone noticed any other inconsistencies I will have to bear in mind?
