Re: [Gramps-users] Re : Is there a particular reason why "Divorce" isn't included as a relationship type?

[Dave S. <dav...@gm...>]

Hi Enno,

Maybe you can help by telling us where the Relationship Type affects others
things we do with Gramps. Where does it come into play? Would adding a
custom type cause something irregular to happen? Does it show up in reports
are cause the relationship to not show up based upon what the type says, or
if were customized?

Bottom line... Just how important is the Relationship Type.

Dave

On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 3:14 PM, Enno Borgsteede <enn...@gm...> wrote:

> Hello John,
> > On 2017-02-25 16:06, Enno Borgsteede wrote:
> >> Hello John,
> >>
> >> The simplest answer is that status and type are different things, and a
> >> relationship type refers to the sort of relationship that people once
> >> had. Divorce as an event is not a relationship, but rather the end of
> >> it, and divorced is a status, not a type.
> >
> > It looks like we're more or less stating the same (albeit in different
> > words) in that events are cause for some individual civil status[1] or
> > the change thereof, e.g.:
> >
> > o Birth (event) -> Born (status);
> > o Marriage (event) -> Married (status);
> > o Separation (event) -> Separated (status);
> > o Divorce (event) -> Divorced [from so and so] (status);
> > o Death (event) -> Died or Deceased (status) and related Widow or
> > Widower [from so and so] (status).
> No we don't. I wrote that status and type are different things. They are
> different in my mind, and in all the software that I work with, or
> maintain.
>
> >
> >> When you take the definitions like this, and software is always based on
> >> formal definitions, a relation type 'married' as opposed to other types,
> >> does not end with a divorce. A divorce creates a new status called
> >> 'divorced' but that does not not mean that the relationship type itself
> >> is changed.
> >>
> >> I set the relationship between my parents and most other couples in my
> >> tree to married, because that's what they were. Divorces, separations,
> >> or deaths, don't change the relationship types that once were.
> >
> > No, but events such as divorce and death do, at least IMHO.
> In yours, yes, but not in mine. For me, a type is like the brand or
> model of a car. If I were to register my car history, I can write that I
> once had a Volvo 440. This car was recycled quite a while ago, but in my
> car history, it's still a Volvo.
>
> When I think of relationships, I see the type of relationship between my
> parents (marriage) as an eternal fact, which means that they were
> married, just like the first car that I owned was a Volvo. The marriage
> ended when my father died, in 2004, but the type of relationship was a
> marriage for most of the time, and until the end, i.e. my father's
> death. And on a similar scale, I see my own relationship to my father as
> an eternal one too. I have sources that suggest that I'm his son, and
> strong reasons to believe that it is a biological relation too, given
> similarities in looks and behavior, including our autism.
>
> >
> > When a divorce (event) becomes effective or when someone dies (event),
> > the civil status of the former or remaining spouse(s) changes either
> > permanently or temporarily e.g. when she, he or they remarry at some
> > later point in time either to each other or to one or more new spouses.
> That is indeed true for the status, but the relationship itself, which
> is a registered fact from the past, is still of type marriage, meaning
> that they were registered spouses when we were born, and stayed that way
> until the end, i.e. when my father passed away.
>
> >
> > If the last event, such as e.g. a divorce or passing of one's partner,
> > that someone was part of, through e.g. a marriage, the last remaining
> > relationship (as well as the related individual civil status if you
> > will) can IMHO never be married, but is either divorced or widowed.
> > Appropriate related individual civil statuses seem to be divorcée
> > (she), divorcé (he), widow (she) or widower (he) of so and so.
> I see what you mean, but in my and fellow Gramps developers' opinion,
> the type applies to when the relationship existed, and the last
> remaining relationship is married. Divorced or widowed is not a type of
> relationship, but just the current civil status of my mother, widowed, I
> mean.
>
> When my former car was recycled, it formally didn't stop being a Volvo.
> The whole car disappeared, and turned into pieces of glass, plastic, and
> metal, just like my father has probably returned to dust, sort of. He's
> still my biological father though, relationship wise, and he still has a
> name in history.
>
> >
> > Please also consider that the only period in one's life that one is
> > unmarried is from the date that one is born to the date of one's first
> > marriage. However long one's first marriage may last, one can never be
> > unmarried again since one has been married (at least once), yet at the
> > same time there may be times in one's life, after that first marriage
> > ended, during which one is not married.
> I get that, but you are ignoring the fact that the relationship type is
> not an attribute of a person, but an attribute or the (past)
> relationship itself. And that type was a marriage when it ended, by
> death in my father's case, so the last registered type for the
> relationship is marriage, period.
>
> My mother's status is widowed, and could have been married, again, but
> it isn't. But that is a different thing. And I think that you are
> comparing apples and pears.
> >
> > This is an area related to this topic that we IMHO should best not
> > explore, at least not on this list. Also please don't take any of my
> > remarks on this topic as negative persé, but rather as a useful
> > discussion about the pro's and con's related to some areas of the use
> > of Gramps that one may take ideas from for one's own use of the
> > software (as I have already done several times) or maybe its future
> > development.
> As a professional software engineer, and user, I want software to be
> stable, in the sense that the meaning of things, i.e. data, menus, etc.,
> doesn't change, unless developers and users agree that there is an error
> that needs to be corrected, or an inconsistency. And I don't see an
> inconsistency here, just like I don't see an inconsistency in
> registering the brand and model of a car that does not exist anymore.
> They are historical facts, just like the marriage between my parents is
> a historical fact.
>
> I see absolutely no reason to change the meaning of the relationship
> type, because it makes Gramps unreliable, and it is useless too, because
> the type that you ask for is redundant. The civil status of my mother
> can be derived from the events that I registered, so there's no need to
> register it twice.
>
> You may ask why the relationship type can be specified then, and I think
> there are two reasons for that. One is that, without it, all
> relationships between men and women would be considered marriages, which
> is nonsense. Children have been born outside marriages for ages, so you
> need a way to register that as a researcher, no matter what the LDS
> thinks of that. The other is that, if you find a birth record, you often
> see an indication of the relationship type, even though you have no
> direct proof of a marriage yet. You can then register that the birth
> source says that the parents were married, without creating a fake
> marriage event. In that case, the relationship is a registered fact,
> which does not necessarily imply that it's true. It's a registered fact
> nevertheless, and registering that is a lot easier than creating a
> marriage event without date and place, or direct source.
>
> Note that this also probably has a history. Once fields are introduced
> in a program, you can not remove them without alienating users, so you
> have to leave them in, even if you later think that they're partly
> redundant, as the relationship type partly is. It can be derived from
> events, when they are there, but it is a time saver when you don't have
> the event sources yet, and for some people, you may never get a chance
> to get those anyway.
>
> My answer will hence stay as it was. To me it makes no sense to change
> anything, because the current code is based on what I think is valid
> reasoning, and once made, the choice can't be changed without serious
> consequences for your fellow users.
>
> regards,
>
> Enno
>
>
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