Terry's TMG Tips

Using Second Site - Special Issues

This page updated 10 Jul 2007

Version note: Applies to TMG 6 & 7, and Second Site 1 & 2
Second Site 2.1 or later required for TMG 7

This article provides a few tips on some issues that may arise as you use Second Site. Other articles in this series cover the more normal topics of creating and customizing a site.

Dealing with Split CDs

TMG users that have made use of "Split" Citation Details (CDs) need to be mindful of the implications when creating sites with source citations in Second Site. If you haven't used Split CDs in your TMG sources, you can ignore this section entirely.

Second Site offers a variety of tools to display the source information recorded in TMG in your webpages. By default, Second Site uses TMG's Short Footnote format on the pages displaying the details for individual people, with links to the full footnote. This works very nicely, but may cause problems if you use Split CDs to create your sources, as I do. In that case, the Full Footnote may not work well, because there is no specific CD for it to use. For those that encounter this situation, I see three possible solutions:

1. You could modify your sources. Make sure all CD segments are in conditional brackets, and adjust the wording, if required, so that the Full Footnotes read satisfactorily without the CD information.

2. Under Data > Sources in Second Site, you could change the Source Sentence to use the Bibliography template. If you have important notes in the Comments section of the Source Definition, be sure that the [COMMENTS] element is included in the Bibliography template.

3. The solution I've preferred is to change the source options in Second Site by selecting "Full, then Short" for the Citation Sentence. This produces a Full Footnote for the first citation to a given source for each person, and then the Short Footnote for each additional citation for that person. Then, I uncheck the Show Sources box, since with Full Footnotes displayed for each person I seen no need for a separate list of sources. But I've been told that those that include Exhibits attached to sources won't want to use this approach because the Exhibits are not available.

Language Issues

Second Site, unlike TMG, does not have the capability to change the interface language. The Second Site screens are always in English. However Second Site does have a very capable set of features to produce websites in various "real" languages as well as custom "languages" developed by users for special purposes.

In Second Site, the language capability has two parts:

• The words and phrases produced by Second Site itself as it generates your site. For example page labels, like "Master Index" or "Source Page," months of the year, and various pronouns.

• Text generated by your tag Sentences from TMG.

The first part, the words and phrases produced by Second Site, is controlled in part by the setting in the Site Language field in Data > Language section. But most phrases are controlled by the values entered in the Strings section, and default labels found in many other sections. The easiest way to set all these values to your desired language is to do so when you create a new site definition file (sdf). When you do so, you are prompted to select a language:

You always choose a "real" language here - English, French, German, etc., even if you are using a Sentences from a custom language. The language you select is used to set default values for many String fields, labels, etc. You can then edit specific fields later if you want to modify them.

The second part, controlling which set of Sentences to use, is done with the Sentence Language field of the Data > Language screen:

By default, the Sentence Language is set to the language you selected in the Set Default Values screen when you created the site definition file. For most users, that will be the appropriate choice. However, if you have created a custom language in TMG so that you could modify certain phrases, or to produce special output in Second Site, you would select that language for the Sentence Language. In the screenshot, the custom language "SS1" has been selected, as a user would do if that language had been created to customize Second Site output. See my article on Creating a Minimalist Site for an example of such a usage.

Before you can use Sentences in a custom language in Second Site, that language, and the associated sentences, must be created in TMG. See my articles on TMG's Language Capability for details on how to do that.

The Site Language is set to the language selected in the Set Default Values screen, and generally should not be changed.

Using Multiple Languages

Some users may want to create a site in one language, then create a similar site in another language. For example, one might want to create a site in English for one's English-speaking family members, then create a similar site in German for the German-speaking part of the family. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to "switch" the language used in the site once the Site Definition File is created. I recommend creating separate "parallel" sets of site definitions for each language, using the following procedure:

1. Create a Site Definition in the first language. Make trial sites, adjusting options and settings, and editing the wording in the various fields, until you are satisfied with the resulting site.

2. Create a new Site Definition, choosing the second language in the Set Default Values screen. This sets the many terms used in the site, such as link labels and page titles, to that language.

3. Open a second copy (instance) of Second Site, and open the first Site Definition file in that copy. Now, with the two copies open side-by-side, go through each of the definition screens that you have used, viewing the same screen in each copy. Choose the same options and settings in the new Site Definition as you had used in the first one. Some user-entered fields, especially the Title and Main Page Content fields on the Pages > Site screen, will probably need to be translated to the second language for optimal results.

4. Once all the settings have been transferred, create the site in the second language, and adjust as needed.

To obtain really satisfactory results with a site using Sentences, as is typically done with sites using the narrative format, and sometimes with others, the TMG Project will need to have Sentences in both Languages, and probably memo text in both as well. If you have them in only in one of the languages you end up with a rather unpleasant mix of languages on the "People" pages, as seen in the German version of my Sample site. For more discussion of issues with multiple languages in TMG, see my article on Multiple Languages.

Sort Sequence Issues

Users of Languages other than English often set their "Collate sequence" to a special setting in order to properly sort names and terms containing characters not used in English. Users of English may also choose those settings if their data contains names with those characters.

There is a limitation in Second Site that causes an error if these settings are used in TMG while Second Site is generating the site. If you use a "Collate sequence" other than "General" or "Machine" in TMG, you must temporarily change it to one of these two while using Second Site. When you are finished creating your site, change it back to your normal setting. The change is made in TMG, in Preferences > Current Project Options > Other.

Within Second Site, the sort sequence is controlled by the setting in the "Sort Sequence" field on the Data > Language screen (see screenshot above). Generally the correct sort sequence should be set by the Set Default Values screen when you create the site definition file.

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