Welcome to Heritage Genealogy, a shareware program to track family histories. I developed this software to track my own family history, and I built some features that I wanted to have, as well as some that other people requested:
(1) No limit on the number of people who can be put in the database, and no limits on number of marriages or children per individual.
(2) Display and storage of arbitrary textual and biographical information for each individual.
(3) An ability to display digitized photographs of individuals and include them in ancestor and descendant charts.
(4) Determination of the exact relationship any two individuals have.
(5) Display of family group sheets, and graphical and textual display of ancestor and descendant charts.
(6) Import and export of GEDCOM files.
If this program does not have a feature that you would like, please send me a note. I promise to take all suggestions for enhancement and improvement seriously. I already have a long list of features to add, including source citation, and annotating and cross-referencing, tree pruning, advanced searching capabilities, etc. Even if your hot item is already on my list, bringing it to my attention may bump up its priority.
I have included a sample genealogy for the Tudor kings and queens of England. All of the features of this program can be demonstrated using this example. I also maintain a Heritage home page on the World Wide Web. This page contains information about the availability of the latest release and ongoing beta tests. It can be found at
http://www.eskimo.com/~grandine/heritage.html
System Requirements
This program should run on any Macintosh running System 7 or later, though I have by no means tested most of the configurations. If you discover a system on which Heritage refuses to run, please let me know about it.
Product Registration
If you like this program, you may register it by running the Register Heritage program to arrange payment through Kagi Shareware (a third party). This program allows several different payment options, including major credit card and payment by e-mail. Alternatively, you may send a check for US$15 directly to
TAG Software
14049 232nd Avenue, S.E.
Issaquah, WA 98027
U.S.A.
e-mail: grandine@eskimo.com
Unregistered copies are limited to 40 people. Registering your copy eliminates this limit and entitles you to unlimited free upgrades as subsequent versions become available. Notification of new releases and ongoing development tests is made by e-mail.
Running Heritage
Heritage must first load the database. Thus, when the program is launched, nothing much happens. A database can be selected and loaded by selecting Open... from the File menu. Double clicking on the database file icon launches the application and loads the database. New databases can be created by selecting New..., while Import GEDCOM... and Export GEDCOM... do precisely that. GEDCOM is a standard file specification used by many genealogy programs for exchanging and even storing information. Many products, both shareware and commercial, are able to process GEDCOM files, and it is a handy tool for exchanging genealogical information electronically between researchers who use different software.
The Heritage Import GEDCOM... command prompts for a GEDCOM file, whose contents are appended to the current database. GEDCOM NOTE fields are added to the biography fields for the individuals they refer to. The Export GEDCOM... command prompts for the name of a file, to which the entire database is then written. Heritage does not, at the present time, allow portions of a GEDCOM file to be read, nor portions of the database to be written. These features are planned for subsequent releases.
After the database is loaded, Heritage creates a window which contains a scrollable list of the names of all the people in the database. This list of names can be alphabetized by surname by selecting Reorder File from the File menu at any time.
Selecting a name from the list makes that name the primary key and enables options on the Charts, Reports, and Navigate menus. A name can be selected either by clicking the mouse button or by typing. Typing causes the list of names to be scanned until a name is found which matches the characters typed, which then becomes the primary key.
The Charts menu contains commands to produce various charts:
Ancestors
Produce a chart of all ancestors of the primary key. Photographs are included in this chart, provided this option is selected. If more than one photograph is available for a given person, the first one is used in the chart.
Descendants
Produce a chart of all the descendants of the primary key. Like the Ancestors chart, this includes photographs if this option is selected in Preferences...
Photographs
Display a photograph of the primary key, provided one is available. If more than one is available, the desired photograph is prompted for. A ``P'' will be shown after a person's name if a photograph is available.
The options on the Reports menu produce textual reports, as follows:
Ancestors
Display all of the ancestors of the primary key. In this report, each individual's father's name is listed on the line below his own. His mother's name is connected by a vertical line to his father's. Thus
AAAA
BBBB
| CCCC
| DDDD
EEEE
AAAA's father is BBBB, and his mother is EEEE. BBBB's father is CCCC, and BBBB's mother is DDDD.
Biography
Display a biography of the primary key. If biographical notes are available for that person, a ``B'' will be displayed after that person's name.
Dangling Persons
Display a list of all people in the database who are not related to anyone else. This is useful primarily for making sure that all the family connections between people have been properly entered.
Database Dump
Summarize and dump the names in the database. This report displays the number of individuals and families in the database, and lists the names of the people in the database. This command does not work properly for more than about 1000 people in the database as the
report runs afoul of the Macintosh 32K limit for TextEdit. Workarounds for this problem are currently being contemplated.
Descendants
Display all of the descendants of the primary key. In this report, each individual's children's names are listed on the line below his own. His children are all connected by vertical lines. Thus
AAAA
BBBB
| CCCC
| DDDD
EEEE
| FFFF
GGGG
AAAA's children are BBBB, EEEE, and GGGG. BBBB's children are CCCC and DDDD, while EEEE's child is FFFF.
End of Line
Display a list of the dead end ancestors of the primary key. This will display a list of people for whom one or both parents are unknown. The names at the head of this list form good starting points for further research.
Family Group Sheet
Display a family group sheet for the family in which the primary key is one of the spouses. If that individual has multiple marriages, the user is prompted for the correct family.
Relationship
Display the exact relationship of the primary key to the secondary key. (The secondary key is created by choosing Make Secondary from the Navigate menu. This menu option makes the primary key the secondary key.) The Relationship command finds a common ancestor of the primary and secondary keys and displays only those descendants of the common ancestor who are themselves ancestors of the primary or secondary keys.
When any of the items on either the Charts or Reports menus are selected, many of the Edit menu options are enabled. Selecting Cut or Copy puts the highlighted text in the clipboard, where it can be pasted into other documents using almost any application. In the case
of a chart, the Copy operation will place the entire chart into the clipboard. In addition, the Page Setup... and Print... options in the File menu are enabled so that the information can be sent to a printer.
Navigating the Data
Navigating through the database can be accomplished by selecting names from the main scrollable list, either by explicitly scrolling or by typing in search patterns. In addition, it is possible to change the primary key by one generation by selecting To Parents, To Children, or To Spouse from the Navigate menu. These options prompt for the appropriate people when they are selected, and the primary key becomes the person selected.
Data Entry
Broadly speaking, Heritage maintains two types of information, namely data about individuals and data about families. Two separate dialog screens are provided for organizing this information. These dialogs are available from the Edit menu. The commands that access them are New Person, Edit Person, New Family and Edit Family. The two New commands bring up the data entry screens for individuals and families. The Edit Person command allows editing of the primary key, while the Edit Family command allows editing of the family information for one of the marriages in which the primary key is a spouse. If there is more than one, the appropriate family is prompted for. The Edit Person can also be initiated by double clicking on the primary key. Shift double click on the primary key will
initiate the Edit Family command.
Entering and editing the data for individuals is straightforward. A dialog screen containing an entry for a person's name pops up on the screen. Any text may be entered in the name field, but Heritage does need to know what the surname is. This is indicated by surrounding the surname with slashes, for example
John Robert /Smith/
Failure to identify the surname properly will not only defeat the alphabetical ordering feature of Heritage, but will cause export of an improper GEDCOM file. This usage is not recommended.
To this record, an arbitrary number of lifetime events may be added. "Events" are major happenings in a person's life such as birth or death. To add an event, select the Add Event button and choose one from the list that pops up. This adds a date field and a place field to the dialog box for that event. Arbitrary text may be entered into the place, but the date field, in order to be properly interpreted by Heritage, needs to be specified carefully. Dates may be entered either as
dd<delim>mm<delim>yyyy
where mm, dd, and yyyy are numbers representing the day, month, and year, and <delim> is the character specified as a delimiter in Preferences..., or they may be
dd MMM yyyy
where dd and yyyy are numbers representing the day of the month and the year, while MMM is one of JAN, FEB, MAR, APR, MAY, JUN, JUL, AUG, SEP, OCT, NOV, or DEC. In addition, Heritage supports imprecisely known dates, so any date may be preceded by ABT, BEF, AFT, or EST to indicate "about," "before," "after," and "estimated."
Date ranges may also be used. These have the form
BET date AND date
or
FROM date TO date
In these cases, "date" can be any date as specified above, including the tags ABT, BEF, AFT, and EST. The first range is implies that the date was a single day during the specified time period which cannot be pinned down any more precisely. In the second case, the implies that the activity happened continually throughout the period of time (a "residence" for example).
Two events happen so frequently that special keyboard shortcuts have been added for adding them. Command-B will add a birth event and Command-D will add a death event, but only when the person dialog box is on the screen. Events may also be removed by pressing the Remove Event button, and they may be chronologically ordered with the Reorder Event button.
In addition, buttons for Biographies and Photographs are included. These enable textual biographical information and photographs to be associated with an individual. Selecting Edit Biography will bring up a standard edit window. Heritage will allow arbitrary textual
information to be entered and edited at this point. Selecting Add Photograph brings up a standard file dialog box that prompts for a PICT file. This file can be any PICT file, and its contents will be displayed whenever Photographs is selected from the Charts menu and perhaps when ancestor and descendant charts are drawn, depending on the options selected.
Entering the information for families is a little more complicated. Selecting New Family or Edit Family from the Edit menu brings up a dialog which contains boxes for a marriage date and place, an annulment date and place, and a divorce date and place. It also includes six buttons for Select Husband, Remove Husband, Select Wife, Remove Wife, Select Child, and Remove Child, as well as buttons for Cancel and OK.
Dates and places may be entered just as they are for individuals. Adding people to a family is also straightforward. Selecting one of the Select buttons brings up the main scrollable list of names and enables the Load Person option. When the appropriate person has been selected from the main list, selecting Load Person will bring back the family dialog and place the primary key into the slot selected. Double clicking on the person at this point will also
execute the Load Person command. Selecting people as children enters them into the family in the appropriate birth order if known and at the end if not. The Remove buttons do just
that. Remove Children will prompt for the child to be removed from the family.
Once the family has been appropriately edited or entered, the update can be either included in the active database or discarded, depending on whether OK or Cancel was selected.
Changes and additions to both individuals and families are not permanently saved until Save is chosen from the File menu. Quitting the program without saving the changes is possible by specifying Discard at quitting time.
People may be deleted by selecting Delete Person from the Edit menu. This command will remove the primary key from the database. If this person is the only spouse for a given family, that family will also be deleted. All references to this person will be stricken from the database.
If Delete Family is selected from the Edit menu, then the family in which the primary key is a spouse will be deleted from the database. If married more than once, the appropriate spouse will be prompted for.
One final option is the Merge People option. This command will tell Heritage that the primary and secondary keys are really the same person, and it will merge all of the information for them. Thus, if one has ancestors and one has children, a single person with the ancestors of the one and the children of the other will be formed. Both the primary and secondary keys will be replaced by this new person.
Customizing Heritage
Heritage can be customized using the Preferences... menu. This menu can be found under the Apple menu. This dialog currently provides four options. The first selects the display mode for names, either as they were entered or with the surname last. The second option selects the delimiter character for entering dates. Most characters are acceptable, but the space character and the slash "/" should not be used. The slash cannot be used because it creates an ambiguity with the date entry scheme which cannot be resolved. The third option selects which of the two entry modes for dates is used when displaying dates for editing. The fourth option determines whether or not to include photographs in ancestor and descendant charts. This option can require much time and memory. If a desired chart or a portion of it fails to appear as expected, this is a symptom that the memory requirements for the program need to
be increased.
Bug Reports, Comments, etc.
I am interested in receiving feedback of all kinds about this software. Please direct bug reports, comments, suggestions, and complaints to
