OS/2 Shareware BBS: InfoMgt/InfoMgt.zip/ftree12e.zip/Gedcom.txt

Text File | 1997-10-16 | 14KB | 276 lines

Technical documentation for imgedcom.ftx and exgedcom.ftx which are part
of Family Tree for OS/2 also known as Ftree.

IMPORTING GEDCOM FILES
----------------------

This section defines the GEDCOM semantics that are understood by Ftree and
more specifically by the rexx routine IMGEDCOM.FTX.  In GEDCOM each entry
consists of, as a minimum, a level indicator and a keyword.  Except in a
few instances GEDCOM has generalize the level indicator so that the same
type information might appear at more than one level.  Ftree does not
support this level of generalization.  In a few specific instances ftree
will provide for an alternate input format that may involve interpreting
the same data at different levels.  This will usually result in only a
single entry in the database.  The GEDCOM constructions are generally
compatible with releases of the GEDCOM standard up to 5.5. Not all 5.5
GEDCOM contructions are understood by Ftree. The ones that are
understood include:

0 HEAD        This is recognized by ftree as the start of a GEDCOM file
            and causes certain fields to be output to the screen.  But
            no data from a HEAD record is retained.
X SYST        in head record the content is printed to the screen
X SOUR        in head record the content is printed to the screen
X DATE        in head record the content is printed to the screen
1 LANG        This entry will be used to determine the abbreviation name
        used in a month entry for date.  Only English, the default,
        and French are supported so far.

0 @ INDI    A record about an individual - See below
0 @ FAM        A record about a family - See below
0 @ FAMI    An older form of a record about a family - See below
0 TRLR        End of record flag - everything below this point will be ignored
0 EOF        End of record flag - everything below this point will be ignored
0 COMM arg  A comment - The rest of the line and all subsequent text until
        the next level zero will be ignored.

All of the information must be in one file.  If you have several files
they must be concatenated together before submitting them to FTREE.

Individual Record
-----------------

This maps directly to Ftree database structure for a Person.  There are
three words and they must be separated with spaces.  The second word on an
INDI line is taken to be a unique id for the person.  This is preserved and
can be referenced from a family record to uniquely identify a person.  In
GEDCOM syntax the unique id is bracketed with an '@' sign. For example:
@I27@.  It must be numeric with an optional leading I which will be
ignored.

1 NAME arg  The argument to the NAME entry should contain the full name
        of the individual.  The surname should be bracketed with '/' and
        may be on the left, middle, or right of other text.  All other
        text is assumed to be part of the given name.  All of the
        following forms are allowed: 'some names /surname/',
        'name /surname/ more names', and '/surname/some names'.  In ftree
        there are only two places for names, surname and all other names.
2 NFSX arg  The field specifies a suffix name such as 2nd, or Jr. It will
        be appended to the surname entry in Ftree separated with
        a comma.  Note that the TITL tag described below will
        be treated the same way.  Only one of them will be retained.
2 NICK arg  This field specifies a nickname for the person.  It will be
        appended to the first names and bracketed with '()' unless
        a nickname using this syntax already exists in the name field.

1 TITL arg  This field specifies a title for the person.  It will be
        appended to the surname entry in Ftree separated with a comma.
        Note that a TITL would overwrite a name suffix.

1 COMM arg  Any data following this comment tag up to the next level one
        or level 0 entry will be ignored.

1 SEX M|W|F The sex of the person is indicated only M, W and F are accepted.
        where M indicates man, and F or W indicates woman.

1 BIRT        Start of a birth entry.
2 DATE        date of birth - See below for date structure
2 PLAC        place of birth - see below for place structure

1 DEAT Y|NIL An explicit Y or an entry in DATE or PLAC implies that
        the death has occured.  Empty fields imply nothing.
2 DATE      Date of death - See below for structure
2 PLAC      Place of death - see below for structure

1 OCCU arg  This field specifies the occupation for the person. A second
        form of OCCU without an argument is also supported.

1 OCCU        Second form of occupation entry.
2 TITL arg  Job title
2 PLAC arg  place will be concatenated with a comma to title.
2 CORP arg  company name will be concatenated with a comma to title.

1 ADDR arg  This field specifies the address of the person.
        There are two forms of this data and the trick is to
        avoid duplicating the information since both may be present. The
        address itself may be specified on this line or any of the
        lines indicated below.  If text appears on the address line
        then only CONT and PHON lines will be permitted.
2 CONT arg  Continuation of the ADDR line.  Multiple lines are supported.
2 PHON arg  Phone Number.

1 ADDR      Without an argument, a more structure form is assumed.
            All entries will be concatenated together on the address line,
            separated with commas.
2 ADR1 arg  Address line one.
2 ADR2 arg  Address line two.
2 CITY arg  City part of address
2 STAE arg  State part of address
2 POST arg  Postal code, also known as zip code.
2 CTRY arg  Country name.
2 PHON arg  Phone Number.

1 PHON arg  A phone number that will be concatenated to the address
        information in Ftree separated by a comma.  This could result
        in duplicate entries of the phone number if PHON is also in
        an address structure.

1 NOTE arg  A note that will be placed in the Ftree memo field.  Multiple
        notes in the Individual record will all be appended to each
        other in the memo field.
2 CONT arg  A continuation line for a note. Multiples are permitted.
2 CONC arg  The argument will be concatenated to the note on the same line as
        the current line. Don't expect a trailing space to be preserved.

1 FILE arg  Set a pointer to the location of a file that is attached to
        the record of this person.  This file can contain any kind
        of information.

1 PARE        This is a two line entry that causes the person to be assigned
2 RFN arg   as a child to the family referenced.  Supporting this entry
        permits older forms of GEDOCM to be supported and will be used
        to build a family record in FAMI structures.

1 PHOT arg  Set a pointer to a photo of this person. - This form is retained
        to support previous releases. It is not standard with GEDCOM 5.5.

1 OBJE        This is the standard multi-media object format. Only the last
        entry in the record for this person will be used.
2 FORM GIF|BMP|PCX Only these types of files will be recognized.
2 FILE arg  This is a pointer to the photo of this person.

All other entries in an individual records will be ignored.  Some of these
may cause loss of significant information while some will be handled
automatically using other techniques by Ftree.  Those that will usually
not cause a loss of information include FAMI, FAMC, FAMS, REFN, RFN, CHEC,
and SIBL.

Family Record
-------------

This maps directly to Ftree database structure for a Family.  There are
three words and they must be separated with spaces.  The second word on a
FAM or FAMI line is taken to be a unique id for the family.  This is
preserved in Ftree but is not used elsewhere during the import.  In
GEDCOM syntax the unique id is bracketed with an '@' sign. For example:
@F27@.  It must be numeric with an optional leading F which will be
ignored.  Note that FAMI is supported to permit the import of older GEDCOM
databases.  All entries of persons in a family entry are made by the id
value with the individual record.  Note that Ftree requires that both
a HUSB and WIFE exist for a family record but a marriage entry is not
required.  Some GEDCOM files do not supply both a HUSB and WIFE entry
in all cases so these will be invented by the interface to satisfy Ftree
requirements.  There can only be one HUSB and one WIFE per family, however
the same person can appear in more than one family. Data from a family
record will automatically appear in both SPOUSES individual data fields
inside of Ftree.

Some versions of GEDCOM files only include the MARR and DIV events if
the event occurred but do not include the Y.  This behavior is most
common with older version 4.0 GEDCOM files.  There is a setting in
IMGEDCOM.FTX source file that can be changed to permit proper
interpretation of these older files. Look for VERS.

1 HUSB id   This entry assigns the specified husband to this family.

1 HUSB        Alternate form of HUSB record to support older formats.
2 RFN id

1 WIFE id   This entry assigns the specified wife to this family.

1 WIFE        Alternate form of WIFE record to support older formats.
2 RFN id

1 CHIL id   This entry assigns the specified child to this family.
        This entry type is only supported in FAM record types.

1 CHIL        This entry without an id is only supported for FAMI record
        types.  It triggers the entry of all previously saved child
        information for this family.

1 MARR Y|Nil A marriage event is signified by a Y or implicitly by an
        entry in the date or place fields. See comment on 4.0 above.
2 DATE        Date of marriage
2 PLAC        Place of marriage

1 DIV  Y|Nil This entry indicates the husband and wife are divorced if
        the Y is present or a date is mentioned.  DIV is only supported
        in FAM record types. See comment on 4.0 above.
2 DATE        Date of divorce gets placed in the 'End' entry in Ftree.

1 DIVO Y    This entry indicates the husband and wife are divorced if
        the Y is present.  Only supported in FAMI record types.

1 COMM arg  Any data following this comment tag up to the next level one
        or level 0 entry will be ignored.

All other entries in a family record will be ignored.  Some of these
may cause loss of significant information while some will be handled
automatically using other techniques by Ftree.  Those that will usually
not cause a loss of information include CHEC. A entry of '2 OTHE' in HUSB
or WIFE entry to signify a second family will be handled automatically by
Ftree.

Date Format
-----------

The preferred format for a date entry is 'day month year'.  This entry may
optionally be preceded with a modifier.  ABT, AFT, BEF, EST are the only
modifiers accepted and mean about, after, before and estimated
respectively.  Month may be entered as a three letter abbreviation or a
number. The LANG entry in the HEAD section will determine the accepted
abbreviations for months. Some fields may be missing if they are unknown.
Internally a Y entry on a MARR, DIV, DIVO, or DEAT line is stored as ABT in
the year 0.

The older form of YYYYMMDD is also accepted where YYYY is the year, MM is
the month entered as a number, and DD is day.  Unknown entries should be
entered as 0's so that the full 8 characters are always present.  Appending
an 'A' to the 8 number sequence is decoded to the ABT modifier.

Place Format
------------

The place format for Ftree is a free form entry.  Some GEDCOM files may
contain a comma separated list with fixed meanings as to the order and
number of commas.  These commas will be preserved but not interpreted by
Ftree.

EXPORTING GEDCOM FILES
----------------------

This section documents the EXGEDCOM.FTX program for exported GEDCOM files
as a backup or for other systems.  Generally all of the structures in
the FTREE database can be exported without loss of significant information
into an industry standard GEDCOM format.  (Currently events and user
defined tags aren't supported but they will be in a future release.)
The GEDCOM format is a revision of an older PAF format and has, itself,
gone through several revisions.  In general exgedcom.ftx outputs a
file that is compatible with version 5.3 of the standard but can
be configured by changing a variable, VERS, in the source to output the
lastest 5.5 version.  In many instances the 5.3 output will also be
adequate to communicate with systems that understand versions as low
as 4.0.  Be aware that some other systems have severe line length limits
and may truncate data when read.  The oldest format, PAF 2.0, cannot be
generated by this program although the import program can read it.

EXGEDCOM outputs a file that is subset of the data that is understood
by the GEDCOM import routine.  A HEAD record is output, followed by
a separate INDI record for each person in the database.  A FAM record is
generated for each family in the database and finally a TRLR record is output.
Some receiving systems expect to see additional records such as the
name of the submittor of the file.  This information can be placed in
a separate file using the same basename as the intended GEDCOM output file
except that the extension must be .INC instead of .GED.  There is a
SAMPLE.INC file that accompanies FTREE that can serve as a template for this
file.  The data must already be in GEDCOM format.

The individual records output NAME data, and optionally the new structured
form in 5.5, SEX data, BIRTH data, DEATH data, TITL data, PHOTO data
(called OBJE in 5.5), OCCU data, ADDR data, FILE data, NOTE data, and
FAMC/FAMS pointers.  Family records include HUSB, WIFE, CHIL pointers, MARR
data and DIV data.  Tags are only output when some data is present.