Editing GEDCOM (section)

===Ordering of events that do not have dates===
The GEDCOM specification does not offer explicit support for keeping a known order of events. In particular, the order of relationships (FAMS) for a person and the order of the children within a relationship (FAM) can be lost. In many cases the sequence of events can be derived from the associated dates. But dates are not always known, in particular when dealing with data from centuries ago. For example, in the case that a person has had two relationships, both with unknown dates, but from descriptions it is known that the second one is indeed the second one. The order in which these FAMS are recorded in GEDCOM's INDI record will depend on the exporting program. In Aldfaer<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.aldfaer.nl |title=Aldfaer, Hét gratis stamboomprogramma|trans-title=Aldfaer, the free family tree program |website=www.aldfaer.nl|language=Dutch|location=[[Netherlands]]|accessdate=2022-10-01}}</ref> for instance, the sequence depends on the ordering of the data by the user (alphabetical, chronological, reference, etc.). The proposed XML GEDCOM standard<ref name="xml gedcom"/> does not address this issue either.