Windows Utility Programs for Pedigree

This is a summary of a presentation given by Colin Liebenrood at the PUG Meeting in Oxford on 9th November 2002.

What are Utilities?

They are useful programs that work with the Pedigree family of programs: Pedigree, PediView and PediTree. The emphasis is on Windows programs, for users who expect to use the mouse and other now-familiar facilities.

Two major groups:

General Purpose.
Special Purpose.

General-purpose Utilities

Many possibilities, available for free or at small cost. For example, the following are all shareware (try before you buy):

WinZip - Compression and Archiving. Useful for back-up of databases and especially for sending e-mail attachments. Advantages are a single file containing the whole database, much reduced in size. Available from www.winzip.com or on disk from various suppliers.
PDF995 - Producing PDF Documents from Trees etc., for sending to correspondents. The corresponding Acrobat viewer is free and widely available. Works as a Windows printer-driver that you can select before "printing". Available from www.pdf995.com.
GEDCOM Viewer - View strange GEDCOM files. Allows you to see names and relationships, so you can judge whether it is worth importing into a Pedigree database. Reads GEDCOM files from all popular genealogy programs, also PAF 3, 4 and 5 files, TMG 4.x database files, Family Tree Maker files and Legacy files. Here is a sample display. Available from www.mudcreek.ca.

Other utilities providing similar functions are available.

Special-purpose Utilities

Designed especially to work with programs from Pedigree Software: Pedigree for DOS, PediView and PediTree.

Pedigree Printing - Printing from Pedigree for DOS under Windows.
GedUtils - various processes on GEDCOM files.
PedSpecs - Display of Pedigree Database Definitions New

PedSpecs for DOS

Display and Analysis of Pedigree Database Definitions. First issued as a BASIC program 1991, as a compiled program with full facilities 1992.
Here is some sample output:-

RECORD Marriage

   FIELDS: Name              Type              Tag

           husband           Person            husb
           wife              Person            wife
           children          Person            chil
           marriage          event             marr
           divorce           event             divo
           adopted           Person            adop
           div               logical           div
           WifeSurname       text              WSn

      PICTURE TreeDetail
           if marriage.notes between"("and")" then " = "
           else if descendant.spouse present then |"m." end end
           if #descendant.marriages > 1 or marriagenumber > 1
           then "(" marriagenumber ")"
           end
           detail(marriage)
           ["div."div detail(divorce)]

PedSpecs Cross-referencing

Cross-reference indexing to allow easier understanding of the relationships between elements. (added in 1995)

MarHusb         Marriage        Picture                            361   227  367
marked          Person          Picture                            131  disp
Marriage                        Record                             299    88   89  108  436  443
marriage        Marriage        Field    event (Group)             306   231  318  323  342  347
                                                                         359  362  364  439  508

This is fine for printed copy, not for on-screen use.

An associated printing utility, PrintPed, was provided in 1994 by Mark Draper. This isn't suitable for the Windows environment. Worse, one anti-virus program thinks (wrongly) that PrintPed is infected.

PedSpecs Used-by Lists

Uses / Used-by List tried for a talk to PUG 1999, in a printed booklet:

Marriage.MarHusb() uses
  event.normal(), event.notes, Marriage.husband, Marriage.marriage,
  Person.name()

Marriage.MarHusb() used by
  Marriage.HusbandsFam(), Person.partners()

Marriage.marriage used by
  Marriage.FamilyMar(), Marriage.MarHusb(), Marriage.MarWife(),
  Marriage.REPORT_Family, Marriage.TABLE_Family, Marriage.tree(),
  Marriage.TreeDetail(), Person.BBFather(), Person.REPORT_Pedigree,
  Person.TABLE_IGI, Person.TABLE_SourceNotes, plan.detailbox()

Marriage.MarWife() uses
  event.normal(), event.notes, Marriage.marriage, Marriage.WifeName()

Marriage.MarWife() used by
  Marriage.WifesFam(), Person.partners()

PedSpecs --- Showing Relationships

A diagram showing the Picture scripts used by the DetailBox() script. Drawn by 'hand' from PedSpecs output for the booklet. Not realistic for frequent use.

PedSpecs for Windows

Program required a total re-think for on-line use. Some considerations were:-

Multiple windows to permit simultaneous views of related elements.
Hyperlink jumps to related elements.
Index of elements.
Used-by lists.
Graphical displays of database element relationships.

PedSpecs Development

Steadily increasing internal complexity as development proceeds. There is a big jump in the transition to the Windows version.

Pictprn (BASIC) 1991
PedSpecs (C) 1992
PedSpecs with Cross-references (C) 1996
PedSpecs for Windows (C++) 2002

Development of the new Windows version continues to improve presentation and add facilities. The program isn't yet generally available. A few evaluation copies have been given out and user's comments are awaited. Once the results of this evaluation have been incorporated, PedSpecs will be made available to all.