SeeGEDCOMX - a family history editor
(v0.8b4)
Keith Clarke, London, England, 2005
Introduction
SeeGEDCOMX is a program for browsing and editing family histories
stored as text documents in the popular GEDCOM format. It's fast, and
it's pretty. It's a Macintosh application, not a front-end to a
database–by which I mean that I aim to make reading, correcting and
extending your family's story fun.
When a GEDCOM file is opened SeeGEDCOMX displays a window
containing a listing of the all the individuals in the
file. This is called a Group view and looks a lot like a List
View in the MacOS Finder. There are 'folder' icons for each surname,
with drop triangles that you use to display more information.
This is the starting point for browsing through the entire document.
It's as easy as navigating in the Finder itself, or using a Web
browser.
SeeGEDCOMX has unusual and (in my opinion!) rather nice ways of
extracting parts of a GEDCOM document as new GEDCOM files, reports for
use with a word processor, or as plain text. Report documents can be
created by dragging icons to the desktop, and people can be selected
for export by dragging them into new groups.
I loathe Dialog Boxes. This program is to a large extent an exercise in
seeing how far you can get without them. Most genealogy programs are
centred around 'cards' - a card for each person, another for each
family, for each source of information, etc. Browsing a family
history in a card-based program feels at best like using a succession
of dialog boxes, at worst like looking through a succession of complex
legal forms. SeeGEDCOMX does not look or feel like this. I start from
the position that browsing is central, and browsing should be fun.
Connections between people should reveal themselves naturally, so that
as much information as is known should be shown against each
individual. The screen is not cluttered with boxes and labels that
may be useful one day when you find out which school Uncle
William went to...
SeeGEDCOMX has extensive online help. On classic MacOS it uses Balloon
Help for all user interface elements including menus. MacOS X offers
less, but there are tooltips for most of the user interface but, sadly,
not the menus.
Expiry
Until I reach the long anticipated (by me) goal of a version I'm
prepared to call 1.0, each version of SeeGEDCOMX will expire
approximately six months after release. SeeGEDCOMX v0.8b4 will expire
at the end of June, 2006.
Copyright
SeeGEDCOMX is copyright © 1997-2005 Keith Clarke.
It is made available as shareware. You may evaluate it without payment,
but if you decide to keep it, you should send twenty Euros or twenty US
dollars, as you prefer, to the address below. The latest version can be
obtained from http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/~keithc/. Send bug reports and
related correspondence to keithc--sgc@dcs.qmul.ac.uk.
It may not be sold for profit without my explicit permission.
SeeGEDCOMX may be included on CD-ROM shareware compilations
provided it is accompanied by this README file and a copy of any such
compilation is sent to the author:
Keith Clarke
14 Ruvigny Gardens
Putney
London SW15 1JR
England
Group Views
Clicking on the drop-triangle for a surname will show all the people
who share that surname. Each person is shown with their name and dates
– the dates are guessed if necessary, by considering baptism date,
birthdates of children, parents and spouses, etc. Dates that have been
guessed are displayed in square brackets, e.g. [1542]. These
'names&dates' are the chief way that the document is browsed.
Double-clicking a person's name&date in a Group window will open a
Biography window showing details of that person. Select a person by
single-clicking to use commands from the View menu, to show
biographies, family trees and other views. In tree windows and
biography windows, double-click parents, spouses and children in the
same way as in Group windows.
Double-clicking a surname - say Learoyd - in a Group window will open a
new Group window with just the people of that surname. If you then
group the people in the new window according to place of birth, you can
double-click on a place - say Yorkshire. Then a third window will open,
with all the people called Learoyd who were born in Yorkshire.
Group windows containing just some of the people in the document are
created and manipulated using the Open Subgroup command from the View
menu. People can added to a subgroup by dragging them from other
windows, by Copy&Paste using the Edit menu and by commands in the
View menu. For example, you may want to create a Group containing just
those people most likely to be of interest to your cousin Jimmy.
First create a new empty group and drag Jimmy into it from another
window. Then choose Add Ancestors from the View menu and note the
results. Next choose Add Descendants and Add Spouses. The new group now
contains all Jimmy's blood relatives and their wives and husbands.
In a group window, you can choose that people are grouped according to
their surname,their firstname, their place of birth, their year of
birth, their marriage year or place, and their parents' given names.
This makes it easy to find the person you're looking for and to see
that person in some sort of family or other context. It works best when
the GEDCOM provides all the relevant information, but is useful even
where details are missing for some of the people.
When a single person is selected in a group window, information about
that person may be viewed in a second panel at the bottom of that
window. This panel can be resized by dragging its "separator" control
up and down the window. There is also a preference setting which causes
a single, separate Biography window to similarly track selections in a
group window.
Add a new person to the document by using the New Person command (Edit
menu) in a group window. Once your document has at least one person in
it, it's usually convenient to add more people using a biography window.
Remove a person's record from the document by selecting their
name&dates in the document's original group window and using the
Clear command. In sub-group windows, the Clear command merely removes
the selected person from the group, not from the document.
Biography Views
Biography windows give the name of a particular person, their date and
place birth, occupation, biographical notes, etc. Included with such
personal details are the names&dates of their parents.
The biography window also shows information about each of their married
families - not their birth family - for example, the date of the
marriage, names&dates of spouse and children, notes on that
family, etc. The names&dates of other family members are
selectable like those in a Group view. The same family information is
displayed in the biography window of each spouse.
Biography browser views may include a picture. You attach a picture to
a person by dragging the picture (JPEG) file to the person's biography
window. A reference to the picture file is added to the GEDCOM document
itself–it doesn't matter where you save the picture file, and you can
rename it or move it after adding it to the biography without breaking
the connection.
URLs are displayed in brackets, e.g. <http://www.learoyd.me.uk/>.
Command-click on a URL to open it in your default web browser, email
program etc.
Biography windows have alternative viewing modes. You switch between
them using the pop-up menu in the window's tool bar. The tool bar is
disclosed using a button above the vertical scrollbar. Turn on Balloon
Help if you aren't sure you've found it, or just experiment. On MacOS
X, there is no tooltip or Balloon Help for this feature, but the
toolbar button is in the standard place.
A limited biography view can be disclosed in a second panel in a group
view if you don't want to be opening and closing a lot of windows (see
Keyboard Shortcuts), or you can achieve a similar effect using the
'Single Biography Window' preference setting.
All the text in a Biography window can be selected and either copied or
dragged to another program, e.g. to include in an email.
Editing Biographical Information
Personal information can be edited (Edit... command from the Edit menu)
one item at a time, using a Biography window in the normal browser
mode. For example, click on the person's date of birth to select it,
and choose Edit...; an editing box appears containing text which you
can change or replace. Rather than using the Edit command, you can
select a field and then click on it again, as when you edit the name of
a file in the Finder. Clicking anywhere outside the editing box closes
it, or for single-line editing boxes, you can confirm the change using
the Return key.
Family information can be edited in the same way. Deleting a spouse or
child (Clear from the Edit menu) in a biography window removes the
spouse or child from the family but doesn't delete the spouse from the
document. To totally delete a family - that is, marriage date, spouses,
children, etc - first select all the items within it and delete those,
then select the 'Family' paragraph heading and delete that.
The name&dates of the parents and children in a Biography window
can't be changed. Instead, double-click the parent or child to open their
own biography, and adjust the information there. If a person is associated
with the wrong family, open a biography for one of the spouses in that
family and remove the child or other spouse by selecting him or
her and choosing Clear or Cut.
Footnotes in a biography window can be edited and deleted. 'Source'
footnotes contain the title of a source, which may also be referred to
from other biographies, so thought is needed before changing such a
title. The quoted text is particular to that footnote and can be
changed without affecting any other person's details. 'Note' footnotes
are usually specific to a particular person, family or event.
Adding New Information
New information is normally added in a biography window. Use one of the
commands Add Person Info, Add Family Info, or Add Info. If you're
starting from a new, empty document, use New Person in the initial
group window.
To add a new "life event", such as a baptism, to a person, use the Add
Person Info sub-menu in the Edit menu.
Marriages, divorces and other information is associated with families
rather than individual people. Changes are nevertheless made in the
biography window of either the wife or husband of the family. To
add a Divorce record, select the marriage, the other spouse, or one of
the children of this family, then choose "Divorce" from the "Add Family
Info" sub-menu.
To add information to an existing life event for an individual - say a
birth record that records a date but not a place - select the
"Birth" label in their biography window. This changes the title of the
Add Info sub-menu to "Add Birth Info". Then choose "Place" from
the sub-menu.
To add a source citation to an event, select the event and choose
Source from the Add Info sub-menu. This creates a new source record -
you should edit its title and any text you wish to quote from the
source.
If wish to cite a source that's already used in your GEDCOM document,
find another place where the source is cited and copy it; then paste it
on to the event where the new citation is needed. N.B. this will
mean that two events cite the same source. If you now edit the source
title in either citation, it will change it in both places.
All the Add Info commands for any particular event are also available
by control-clicking on the event name in the biography window.
Attaching People to Families
This section describes how to enter relationship information between
people who are each already described in the document. The GEDCOM
standard requires that spouses in a marriage are recorded as either
husband or wife. SeeGEDCOMX can only do this if it knows the sex of the
people concerned. The standard also appears to say that the sex should
be recorded as a single letter, M or F. Some genealogy applications use
Male and Female, which may make the commands you wish to use
unavailable.
To enter a wife/husband relationship, copy one of the partners to the
clipboard, then browse to the other partner, and use the Paste As
Spouse command. This command is available when the other partner has no
existing marriages: a new family record is created in which the
partners are wife and husband. It is also available when the partner
has existing marriages, but one of these marriages has no partner
recorded. Indicate which family is intended by selecting the 'Family'
or 'Marriage' or 'Children' paragraph headings before using the Paste
As Spouse command.
To enter a child relationship, copy the child to the clipboard and
browse to the delighted parent. In the parent's window, use Paste As
Child. This command is available if the parent's sex is recorded, and
he or she has no married families - one will be created containing the
child and the parent as wife or husband. It is also available if the
parent has exactly one married family - that one will be used. If the
parent has multiple families, indicate the one to which the child
belongs by selecting one of the paragraph headings as described above.
You can also enter a child relationship the other way round. Select the
person who is to be recorded as the parent, browse to their child's
biography window, and choose Paste As Parent. This command is only
available if the child has no birth family already recorded, and the
parent has either no married families (one will be created) or
exactly one married family.
To move a child from one family to another, in the same document, use
Cut and Paste. Select the child in the list of children of the
first family, and use Cut. Then select the "Children" paragraph for the
second family, and use Paste As Child.
Both Paste As Spouse and Paste As Child will create new families if
used when there is nothing selected in the Biography window, and it
appears that none of the families in the window are appropriate to
receive the pasted person. If SeeGEDCOMX guesses wrongly, use Undo and
select a suitable paragraph heading to indicate which family you
intended to target.
Adding New People and Families
Open a Biography window and use one of the commands New Person, New
Child, New Husband, New Wife or New Family from the Edit menu. You can
also use the New Person command from the main group window. All the
'New' commands in the Edit menu create new people or new families -
sometimes both - in the document. If you want to indicate that two
existing people are related (parents, children or spouses), see the
section "Attaching People to Families".
To add a new person to the document and at the same time, link them to
an existing person as a child, use the New Child command in a biography
window.
New Child is available when the subject of the biography has no
recorded marriage, spouse or children: in this case a new family record
is created as well as the new child. It is also available when the
subject has exactly one recorded marriage: the child is added to the
family of that marriage. If the subject of the biography has multiple
marriages, you can make the New Child command available by selecting
any record for one of the families, to make it obvious to which
marriage the new child belongs.
To add a new person to the document and at the same time, link them to
an existing person as a parent, use the New Parent command in a
biography window.
New Parent is available when the subject of the biography isn't already
linked to any parent. It creates a new family record in which the new
person is a wife or husband, and the subject of the biography is a
child. Set the sex of the parent as soon as you can after creating the
new person.
The New Family command inserts dummy records for a marriage family for
the subject of the biography. These include a dummy spouse, marriage,
and notes record. A wife or husband, who is already recorded in the
document, can then be pasted over the dummy wife or husband record, or
you can use the New Wife (New Husband) command. You add a marriage date
and other information for a new family by selecting some information
from the family, and using the Add Family Info command.
Copying Information
Each item of genealogical information in your GEDCOM document - a date,
a place, a baptism, a source, an individual, etc - can be selected,
copied, and pasted into new locations in your document. The items are
tagged according to their kind and can only be pasted into appropriate
places. For example, if you copy a date from a baptism event, you can
paste it onto a birth event if you first select the "Birth" paragraph
marker. You can't paste a date onto a person, a family, a source or a
place, so if there is no selection or you've selected a source or
place, the Paste command will be disabled.
You can copy and paste multiple events, say all four baptism, birth,
death and burial events, from one person to another in one go. You
can't include a family event - such as a marriage - and a personal
event at the same time.
The displayed text of each item is also put on the clipboard when you
Copy. You can paste this text into other programs, such as your Mail
application. You can make multiple selections using command-clicking
and shift-clicking. For example, you can copy and paste all the text in
a biography window into an email by clicking on the first item in the
window (the name of the subject) and then shift-clicking on the last
item, and choosing Copy. Then simply move to another program and choose
Paste.
People can be copied and pasted within a GEDCOM document. People can
pasted into subgroup windows using the standard Paste command. To
associate a person with another person, you have to specify the
relationship, so there are multiple paste commands - Paste As Parent,
Paste As Spouse and Paste As Child.
Paste As Parent is available when there's a person on the clipboard;
that person's sex is known; the top window is a biography window; and
the subject of the biography window isn't already the child of a family.
Paste As Child works similarly, but you don't have to know the sex of
the child.
Paste As Spouse is available when there's a person on the clipboard,
that person's sex is known, and the top window is a biography window.
To attach the spouse to an existing family in the biography window,
select that family (Family, Marriage or Children heading - there must
not be an existing spouse) and the Paste As Spouse command will apply
to that. When there is no selection, Paste As Spouse adds the spouse to
the last family with a vacancy; if they all have spouses already, it
makes a new family record.
To copy a source, click in the footnote where it says "(source)". Then
select the paragraph heading, e.g. Birth, Burial, Marriage and choose
Paste Source from the Edit menu.
To copy a complete item from one person to another, such as a census or
marriage entry, select the Census or Married paragraph heading and
choose Copy; then browse to the other person and choose Paste. The
complete entry will be copied over, including references to any
footnotes that may be attached to it. Quotations that appear in source
footnotes are part of the citation, not the source, so these may be
edited or replaced after copying, without altering the original.
Events like these can be copied from one document to another. Did I say
that you could have more than one document open at a time? The LDS
(www.familysearch.org) provide GEDCOM downloads of information from the
IGI (mostly baptisms and marriages) and from some censuses. In either
case a record - baptism, marriage or census - can be selected in the
downloaded file and pasted into your own document, complete with source
citation. Unfortunately the IGI downloads don't include vital
information - such as parents' names - in a direct quotation from the
source, so you usually have to add this later.
Making Arbitrary Changes to the GEDCOM document
Arbitrary changes can be made to the document using the Raw GEDCOM
Editor. This is accessible via the tool bar in a Biography window. It
displays the underlying data for the individual and his or her family
or families. This data can be edited (by the brave) though my advice is
always to make a backup copy of your GEDCOM document first. It's very
easy to make mistakes. When using the raw editor, new people and
families can be inserted into the GEDCOM, using commands from the Edit
menu. The program makes up unique GEDCOM reference strings for such
insertions. Don't try it if you don't know anything about GEDCOM.
A person's GEDCOM cross-reference number is in the first INDI record
shown in the GEDCOM Editor. It's also shown in the toolbar of the
default 'browser' biography window, when you select one of their
'INDIvidual' attributes.
Ancestor, Descendant and Family Trees
Simple Trees can be obtained using commands from the View menu to
operate on the selected person or people. When a 'folder' of
people sharing the same surname is selected in a Group view, the Family
Tree command opens a family tree window. It will open more than
one window if some of the people sharing the surname don't appear to be
related.
The people shown in a family tree are determined by working backwards
from the original selected person, to find the earliest ancestor from
whom they appear to have inherited their name. The program then works
forward to find all people who also appear to have inherited their
surname from the same ancestor. This isn't perfect (particularly for
large parts of Wales before about 1800, since surnames didn't exist in
this sense), but it's very useful. To cope with variations in the
spelling of surnames, and the use of patronymics, male descent is used
where there's no surname match.
In family trees and descendant trees the names&dates of people are
selectable and double-clickable. When the selected person is dragged
(to another window, e.g. a Group view, or to the desktop) that person
and all the people in the tree to the right of them are also dragged.
Try it.
The amount of detail shown for each person or couple in the tree can be
controlled from the View menu or from a pop-menu in the window's
control pane.
The tree can be scrolled by holding down the mouse button over the
plain background and dragging. When the tree is large this is
more convenient than using the scrollbars.
A large tree can be difficult to browse because brothers and sisters,
if they have many descendants, may be displayed too far apart to fit on
the screen. In this case the number of generations shown can be limited
using a text entry box in the window's tool bar. Type a single digit
into it. This feature doesn't interact very well with the "Single
Tree Window" preference.
Reports and Printing
There's only one style of report, which gives details similar to those
in a Biography View, but you have complete control over who is included
in the report.
The Report command in the View menu works on the currently selected
people. It offers a non-interactive view of the biographies of those
people (including pictures where available). The report can be printed
in the usual way, and on MacOS X, a Portable Document Format (Adobe
Acrobat PDF) document generated using the Preview button in the Print
dialog.
A "one person report" can be printed directly from that person's
Biography window.
Create reports as word processor documents by dragging the
word-processor icon from a Group window to an open folder, a disk
volume (e.g. zip or floppy) or the desktop. These reports are in Rich
Text Format (RTF), which can be read by most word processing programs.
If you're going to send the file to a PC user, make sure its name is
short, and ends in ".rtf". TextEdit on MacOS 10.3 opens .rtf
files but doesn't handle footnotes.
Selected text in any window can be dragged to an open window in a
(modern) text editor, e.g. SimpleText or BBEdit. Many
modern email clients also accept text drags. Similarly text clippings
can be made by dragging selected text to the desktop.
Trees can be printed using Print... from the File menu, which prints
the whole tree on as many pages as needed - suitable for pasting
together to make a single large sheet. Prints of trees which are
suitable for including in a report can be made using the F1 key (sorry,
it's only temporary, though it's been stuck in this state for some
time).
Dragging a person or marriage from a tree creates a picture clipping of
the part of the tree which is below the person or marriage. The
clipping can then be dragged into a graphics-capable program, for
example SimpleText. Alternatively the SimpleText icon in the tree
window's tool bar can be dragged to the desktop to create a SimpleText
picture file.
Exporting part of the document
You can save the GEDCOM for just those people whose names&dates are
displayed in any window, leaving out any information about people not
in the window. Simply drag the SeeGEDCOMX icon from the window's tool
bar to the desktop.
Starting from a Tree window it's easy to export exactly exactly the
descendants of a particular person, or their ancestors.
From a Biography window, it's easy to export a family group.
Start from a Group window grouped by birth date to export just those
people born, say, before 1900 – and so probably no longer living.
Start from a window grouped by birthplace to export, say, just those
born in Suffolk.
When exporting from group windows, you use the Export... command from
the (File menu), which prompts you for a file name. If you're
sending the file to a PC user, choose a short name ending with
".ged". All details directly concerning the group of people will
be preserved in the exported GEDCOM, even if they aren't displayed by
SeeGEDCOMX - which may happen because it doesn't understand all
possible GEDCOM records.
Merging GEDCOM documents
The idea when merging GEDCOMs with SeeGEDCOMX is to construct a group
containing the required individuals from the two documents, then export
its members to a new document. I'll describe this using an example of a
common situation.
To be on the safe side, before doing anything, make copies of the
original GEDCOM documents and work on those.
When a cousin sends me a GEDCOM containing details of part of our family
that she's been working on, I open this document alongside my own. Let's
suppose that it's "descendants of William Learoyd.ged". I show this
document "ungrouped", so that I can easily step through the people one
at a time. So that I can see each person's details as I do so, I expose
the "biography pane" at the bottom of the index window for the document.
I resize the index window so that it uses the left side of the screen.
Let's call this window L.
Then I turn to my own document. I open a subgroup window, and find
William Learoyd. My plan is to snip him and all his descendants from my
document, and replace them with the people from my cousin's document. So
I choose "Add Descendants" from the View menu, then "Add Spouses". These
people will be largely the same as those in the other document. I put
the subgroup window on the right of the screen. Let's call it window R.
To check that I'm not going to lose anything interesting, I carefully
work down through the people in window L, comparing them with those in
window R. If I have something that my cousin doesn't, I copy it and
paste it into her document.
At this stage, I have a nice clean version of her original contribution,
so I save it in case of mistakes later on.
Now I turn to my document again. I select everyone in it (Select All
from the Edit menu), and choose Open Subgroup from the Edit menu. This
gives a window just like the index window, except that I can both add
and remove people from it without changing the document. Eventually I'm
going to export the people in this window to a new document, so I'll
call it window E. I select all the people in window R, and drag them to
window E, even though they were already in it. The effect is that
exactly those people are now selected in E. I remove them by choosing
Clear from the Edit menu. Now I select everyone in L, and drag those
over to E. Finally I have just the right people. I drag the "SeeGEDCOMX"
icon from the toolbar to the desktop, and the document is created.
All that remains to be done is to close the documents we've been working
from, and open the new one. At this point, the new document contains two
sets of people that aren't connected in any way. So finally I find
William Learoyd in the index window, and copy him to the clipboard. Then
I find one of William's parents, and open their biography. William isn't
listed in the children, because we cut him out a few minutes ago. So I
choose Paste As Child to attach the "new" William to his parents.
Toolbars
Biography, Group, and Tree windows all have tool bars whose visibility
is controlled by a small button, which on MacOS X is at the right end
of the title bar, and on earlier MacOS's is at the top of the window's
vertical scroll bar. The tools are a bit sparse - typically a pop up
menu to control the presentation of data in the window, and some icons
which may be dragged to the desktop to create a document.
Keyboard shortcuts
These are quite extensive. In Group windows they're modelled on those
of the MacOS 9 Finder.
In any window you can select someone by typing the first two or three
letters of their name.
Keyboard shortcuts in a Group Window
In the Group window, type the first one or two letters of a
surname. If the names of all the people
with that surname are visible, then type the first few letters of
their first name.
The RETURN key expands the view of the currently selected surnames or
birth places.
The up and down arrow keys move the selection one place.
The spacebar scrolls down through the list one page at a time.
Alt-up-arrow moves to the top of the list.
Alt-down-arrow moves to the bottom of the list.
Command-left-arrow collapses the currently selected surname or birth
place "folder".
Command-right-arrow expands the currently selected surname or birth
place "folder".
Alt-command-left-arrow collapses the currently selected surname or
birth place and those within it.
Alt-command-right-arrow expands the currently selected surname or birth
place and those within it.
A biography panel can be exposed at the bottom of each group view,
using its own disclosure triangle. This shows information about the
current selection in the group view. As you move through the group
using, for example, the up- and down-arrrow keys, the biography is
updated without your needing to open additional windows. Alternatively,
to choose your own location for the biography view, choose "Use a
single window" and "follow group select" in the biography preferences
rather than using the panel in the group view.
In a tree window, type the first few letters of the person's first name.
The tab key moves through all the people shown in the tree in order of
name. Shift-tab moves through the people in reverse alphabetical order.
Arrow keys move to adjacent people in the tree.
Source Management
It's important to understand the difference between 'source records'
and 'source citations'. A source record identifies a particular source
of information - a book, parish record, on-line source, an interview,
etc - which may then be cited (referred to) any number of times. Some
people like to make separate source records for extracts from a book or
other source.
SeeGEDCOMX (up to and including v0.8) has very limited support for source records,
reasonable support for source citations.
Source citations are displayed as footnotes, and can be edited. A
source record's title - and not all source records have title fields -
is also shown in the footnote, along with various parts of the
citation. A source can have an abbreviated title (ABBR) and/or a long
title (TITL). The abbreviated title is shown in a footnote, or if there
is none, the long title. If the source record has neither, the author
(AUTH) is shown; if there is no author field either (we're getting
desperate now) then the source record's GEDCOM cross reference value is
shown.
When a new source citation is added, let's say using Add Source
Citation with a death field selected, SeeGEDCOMX creates a new source
record as well as a new source citation. (This may change in future
versions.) The new citation is shown in a footnote. You can edit the
new source record's long title (TITL) in the footnote, but no other
part of it. You can edit any part of the citation.
There's no good way to edit source records at all, as yet.
Deviations from the GEDCOM Standard
I use a non-standard GEDCOM tag '_TODO' to list current research
directions for particular people, and '_NMARR' in a family record to
indicate that the parents are known to not be married (in trees, this
produces displays similar to "Charles Scotha (1801-) ~ Camilla Powles
(1802-)". It's unlikely you'll find any such records in anyone
else's data. I also use 'NOTE' records with FAMilies, and so
SeeGEDCOMX displays them, though not many other programs seem to
handle them.
Limitations and Requirements
The program was written for my own use, which is for a family history
involving people almost all born in England, Wales and Scotland. It
doesn't handle event-oriented data at all, and doesn't display GEDCOM
records which it doesn't understand. Support for editing the contents
of the document is limited. It isn't in a fit state to be
localised for other languages or countries. I expect to address these
deficiencies and polite suggestions will be welcomed.
SeeGEDCOMX is a work-in-progress, and may eat your GEDCOM
document or crash your computer (though it won't crash the computer if
you're using MacOS X, of course). Any use you do make of the software
is at your own risk. See below for restrictions on copying and
distribution.
SeeGEDCOM, the non-Carbon application, requires a Macintosh with a
68020 processor or better, with a minimum of 8 MB RAM, or a PowerMac
with at least 16 MB (though MacOS takes this much on my system, on its
own, so really 24 MB must be the smallest useful setup).
System software for v0.4 should be MacOS 7.1 or newer.
SeeGEDCOM will use the Appearance Manager 1.02 or later, if
present. Much of the functionality requires the presence of
Drag&Drop, which has been part of the standard system since
MacOS 7.5. Display of pictures in Biography windows requires QuickTime
2.5 or newer. Contextual Menus require MacOS 8.1.
SeeGEDCOMX requires MacOS X version 10.1 or later, or may run on MacOS
8.1 or newer with CarbonLib. I've hardly tried the latter, and would be
pleased to hear how well it works.
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