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V. System Reports
This section discusses the various reports produced by the FAMILY
HISTORY SYSTEM. While these are standard types of reports expected
from a genealogical record system, that is: Ancestor Report, Ancestor
(TREE) Chart, Descendant Report, Relative Report and Individual/Family
Group Information, some of the information displayed or terms used in
describing the reports may be unfamiliar to you. The following para-
graphs describe some of these terms, including those of `ancestor',
`descendant', `lineage number', `generation level', `bloodline' and
`related individuals'.
A.Definitions and Report Descriptions
An `ANCESTOR' of an individual refers to one of the parents, grand-
parents, great-grandparents, etc., of the individual. A `DESCENDANT'
of an individual refers to any one of his or her children, grand-
children, great-grandchildren, etc. The parent-child relationships
described are `blood' relationships and do not refer to `legal' or
adoptive relationships. (Adoptive relationships may be recorded and
distinguished from other parent-child relationships, as described in
Appendix C.) Two individuals are considered to be `RELATED' if they
have a common ancestor. Therefore we would not consider individuals
who are only `inlaws', that is `related' through marriage, to be rela-
tives in the above sense. A `SPOUSE' refers to either partner in a
marital relationship. (One aspect of this system's files and reports
is that they have been designed so as not to give a preferential
status to any individual based upon their sex.)
The `GENERATION LEVEL' of an ancestor or descendant of an individual
refers to the number of `parent-child' relationships that separate the
ancestor or descendant from the individual. For example, with respect
to a selected individual (who is said to have generation level 0), the
generation levels of some relatives are: children (GL=+1), grand-
children (GL=+2), great grandchildren (GL=+3), parents (GL=-1), grand-
parents (GL=-2), great grandparents (GL=-3). Notice that descendants
have positive generation levels and ancestors have negative generation
levels.
The `BLOODLINE' between an ancestor and any of his/her descendants
refers to a sequence of numbers, one for each parent-child relation-
ship that separates the ancestor from the descendant, where the number
for a given parent-child relationship refers to the number of the
child in that generation level who is an ancestor of the descendant.
For example, the bloodline (3,2,4,2) indicates that the descendant is
the 2nd child, of the 4th child of the 2nd child of the 3rd child of
the ancestor in question.
The `LINEAGE NUMBER' of an ancestor refers to a number that is
assigned sequentially to the ancestors of the individual in the
following manner:
the base individual has lineage number 1;
the individual's father has lineage number 2;
the individual's mother has lineage number 3;
the father's father has lineage number 4;
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the father's mother has lineage number 5;
the mother's father has lineage number 6;
the mother's mother has lineage number 7; etc.
In general, if an ancestor has lineage number n, then that ancestor's
father will have lineage number 2n and the ancestor's mother will have
lineage number 2n+1. These are the `counting' numbers that would
naturally be assigned to persons on the traditional `horizontal'
ancestor tree chart. Some relationships to notice: all male ancestors
have "even" lineage numbers and all female ancestors have "odd"
lineage numbers, and for a given ancestor on the chart, the lineage
number of the child which appears on the chart is found by dividing
the parent's lineage number by 2 (and discarding the remainder, if
any...for example, an ancestor with lineage number 127 will have a
child with lineage number 63 appearing on the ancestor tree). Since
beginning to work on these programs I have become aware that the term
"ahnentafel number" is more commonly applied to the lineage number in
genealogical literature, though I have become accustomed to the term
"lineage number" and so will continue to use it in this manual.
While "lineage number" and "bloodline" are convenient "numerical"
concepts for describing "direct" relationships such as exist between
an individual and his/her ancestors or descendants, the problem of
uniquely describing one's non-direct relatives (aunts, uncles,
cousins, etc.) is a bit more complicated. The very definition of
"relative" given above suggests a natural approach which would combine
these concepts to label relatives with a "lineage number"+"bloodline"
where the lineage number is that of the "nearest common ancestor" of
the two individuals (that is the common ancestor with lowest lineage
number) and the "bloodline" is the one that describes the line of
descendancy of the relative from the common ancestor. This is the
approach that is used by this system's relative report for grouping
and listing all recorded relatives of an individual. The family
group report provides an option for showing the relationship and
LINEAGE of the subject of the report. In that case, the LINEAGE
displayed consists of:
a. the LINEAGE Number if it is an ancestor
b. the BLOODLINE, in the format (x,x,x,...,x), if it is a
descendant
or c. the LINEAGE Number + BLOODLINE as described above if it is a
non-direct relative.
There is another method for describing relatives which, though it
assigns a non-numeric and non-unique label to relatives, gives a more
generally understood idea of the relationship between individuals.
These labels are ones such as: mother, father, cousin, aunt, grand-
mother, great-great-grand-uncle, etc. The set of rules used to assign
such labels in the relative report (and the relative report index of
the extended system) is the one which describes the child of a First-
Cousin as a First-Cousin-once-Removed, rather than as a Second Cousin.
These are sometimes called the "Common" rules for relationships.
1. ANCESTOR Report
The `Ancestor REPORT' produced by the system groups ancestors by
generation level and shows the lineage numbers of the ancestors
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listed. Because no lines are printed for `missing' lineage numbers,
(for ancestors not yet recorded in the files), this report is much
more concise than the traditional ancestor chart. The lineage numbers
may be used to follow lines of ancestry on the ancestor report using
the relationships described in the previous discussion concerning
lineage numbers. (The term `Ahnentafel list' is also used for reports
of this type.)
Before printing an ancestor report (or any of the other "relationship"
reports described in this section) you must identify which individuals
are to be listed. This is done by entering a "Base ID" for the
individual whose ancestors are to be listed and the number of genera-
tions of ancestors that are to be included in the report, and letting
the program create an Ancestor WORK dataset in which the ID#'s of the
ancestors are recorded. This "work" dataset does not have to be
recreated each time an ancestor report is printed if there is no
change to the family file that would change the relationships recorded
in it.
If the ancestor report is printed with a "margin" of 4 or more, line
number indicators will be printed in the margin. These are useful
when locating an individual by references in an ancestor report index.
(Printing an ancestor report index is one of the extended options
available to registered users.)
If you have decided to identify adoptive relationships as indicated
in Appendix C, the adoptive parent will be noted by an "*" to the
right of the lineage number in this report.
If a child is born to related individuals, the common ancestor of
those individuals will appear twice on an ancestor report for that
child. In the ancestor reports produced by this system, such common
ancestors will be noted and the lineage of the ancestor will be
continued only for the ancestor's occurrence with the smallest lineage
number.
If you have elected to show marriage dates in this report, the date of
marriage will only be shown on the line for female ancestors. The
number of years married is computed from the dates in the marriage
record, the death dates of the spouses and/or the current date at the
time the report is produced. If the death date of one of the spouses
is used to determine the number of years married, then an "*" will
appear to the right of that number in the report.
2. DESCENDANT Report
The Descendant Report may be produced in several formats. Individuals
may be grouped either by "generations" or by "families". The genera-
tion grouping uses the `bloodline' to group and `label' the indivi-
duals listed. In so doing, individuals in the same generation who are
`closely related' appear near one another in the report. Brothers and
sisters appear in succession in birth date sequence, with 1st cousins,
2nd cousins, etc. grouped around them. It is also easy to locate, in
previous generations, the ancestor which an individual has on that
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generation level by locating the individual on that level whose blood-
line forms the initial sequence of numbers in the bloodline of the
descendant in question. The "family" grouping will have children
located closer to their parents, though brothers and sisters will be
more widely separated in the report. The report for "family" grouping
is printed in a "chart" or "outline" format with each individual's
name offset according to the generation in which he/she belongs. This
outline format will probably be easier for most people to use.
Before printing a descendant report (or any of the other "relation-
ship" reports described in this section) you must identify which
individuals are to be listed. This is done by entering a "Base ID"
for the individual whose descendants are to be listed and the number
of generations of descendants that are to be included in the report
and letting the program create a Descendant WORK dataset in which the
ID#'s of the descendants are recorded. This "work" dataset does not
have to be recreated each time a descendant report is printed if there
is no change to the family file that would change the relationships
recorded in it.
If the descendant report is printed with a "margin" of 4 or more, line
number indicators will be printed in the margin. These are useful
when locating an individual by references in a descendant report
index. (Printing a descendant report index is one of the extended
options available to registered users.)
If you have decided to identify adoptive relationships within the
system as described in Appendix C, you may optionally include or
exclude the adoptees and their descendants in this report. When
included, the bloodline will have an "*" next to an entry resulting
from an adoptive parent-child relationship.
If you have elected to show spouse information in this report, the
number of years married is computed from the dates in the marriage
record, the death dates of the spouses and/or the current date at the
time the report is produced. If the death date of one of the spouses
is used to determine the number of years married then an "*" will
appear to the right of that number in the report.
It should be noted that an individual may have more than one bloodline
to an ancestor in the case that a child has been born to cousins or
other related individuals, and that such persons would appear more
than once on the `descendant tree' of such an ancestor. The children
of such unions are noted on the descendant report produced by the
system and their descendants will be continued only under the first
listed bloodline.
3. RELATIVE Report
This report includes entries for all relatives of an individual found
during a search of the files which:
a. First locates all ancestors of the individual going back a user
specified number of generations, and
b. then finds all descendants of the individual and all located
ancestors, going forward a user specified number of generations.
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The limits on numbers of generations searched allow some control over
the maximum "distance" located relatives will be from the individual
used to start the search. For example, if you are only interested in
"offline" relations to the 1st cousin level, you would set the number
of descendant generations searched to 2.
Before printing a relative report (or any of the other "relationship"
reports described in this section) you must identify which individuals
are to be listed by first entering the "Base ID" for the individual
whose relatives are to be listed and the numbers of generations of
ancestors and descendants that are to be included in the report, and
then letting the program create a Relative WORK dataset in which the
ID#'s of the relatives are recorded. This "work" dataset does not
have to be recreated each time a relative report is printed if there
is no change to the family file that would change the relationships
recorded in it.
The report produced is a combination of the ancestor and descendant
reports which have been described above. In fact the ancestor and
descendant reports are "special cases" of the relative report as
follows:
a. the Ancestor report is a relative report in which the number of
"descendant" generations searched is 0, and
b. the Descendant report is a relative report in which the number
of "ancestor" generations located is 0.
All three types of reports are produced by the same program.
Prior to the introduction of the relative report, the ancestor and
descendant reports were produced by separate programs so, for the
sake of continuity, the separate MainMenu entries are retained for
producing ancestor and descendant reports and the format of the
displays produced by these options reproduce those of the previous
programs. To avoid making the user have to unnecessarily go back to
the MainMenu program to return to a different one of the three func-
tions of this program, a method of directly switching between these
options is provided as follows:
a. pressing ALT+A selects the Ancestor report function (while in
the descendant or relative report portions of the program)
b. pressing ALT+D selects the Descendant report function (while in
the ancestor or relative report portions of the program) and
c. pressing ALT+R selects the Relative report function (while in
the ancestor or descendant report portions of the program).
The relative report is like a combination of the descendant reports of
the "base" individual and all the located ancestors. These individual
descendant reports are presented in the lineage number sequence of the
ancestors. If an individual occurs in more than one descendant report
(for example the father will appear as a child in the descendant
report of each paternal grand-parent) then the descendants of the
individual will only appear within the descendant report for the
ancestor of lowest lineage number. In subsequent "descendant"
reports, only a single line of information will appear for the indivi-
dual with a reference to the page and line number of the next previous
reference to the individual in the relative report. This has the
effect of eliminating much of the redundancy that results when pro-
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ducing separate and complete descendant reports for each of your
ancestors.
There is an additional piece of information that can be shown for each
entry on the relative reports. It is a literal describing the
"common" relationship between the relative and the individual on whom
the report is based. Some of these relationship labels are:
Child, gChild, ggChild, g2gChild (great,great grandchild) etc;
Father, Mother, ggFather, ggMother, g3gFather (great,great,great
grandfather) etc;
Brother, Sister, Niece, Nephew, gNiece, g2gNephew, etc;
Aunt, Uncle, ggAunt, g4gUncle, etc;
Cousin, 2Cousin, 3Cousin (third cousin), 4Cousin, etc;
1C1R (1st cousin, once removed), 2C3R, 4C11R, etc.
These relationships are particularly useful for getting over that
"bloodline barrier" that sometimes makes relatives seem more distant
than they really are.
The options for formatting each of the "descendant" reports within the
relative report are the same as previously described for the full
descendant reports. They may be produced with descendants grouped by
generations or by families, and when grouped by families they will
appear in a "chart" or "outline" format with names offset according to
the generation level within the descendant report.
If you have elected to show spouse information in this report, the
number of years married is computed from the dates in the marriage
record, the death dates of the spouses and/or the current date at the
time the report is produced. If the death date of one of the spouses
is used to determine the number of years married then an "*" will
appear to the right of that number in the report.
Another type of information that can be included in the relative
report (and after Sept 86 also the Ancestor and Descendant reports) is
the "COMments" that you have recorded under the name and spouse
records in your family files. Prior to the introduction of this
report, comment information was only printable in the Family Group
Reports. Being able to include these notes in the lists produced by
the system, should make them more accessible and useful in your
continuing research efforts.
The COMment information appears on separate lines following the line
of standard information for a relative or spouse. It is preceded by a
"COM:" literal, and individual comment lines in the family files are
joined together to form longer lines whose length is determined by the
length of the standard data line for the types of information you have
chosen to include in the report.
Beginning in Sept 1988, it became possible to isolate parts of the
comment information for optional exclusion from the printed comments.
This is done by enclosing the text of those comments within "braces"
or "curly brackets" ("{" and "}"). If you choose to print comments,
then you will be asked if you want to"
Print Bracketed Comments? (Y/N/S)
If you respond "Y", the "bracketed" comments will be included in the
32
report, though the braces will be replaced with spaces. If you reply
"N", then the bracketed comments and the enclosing braces will be
replaced by a single space in the formatted comments. (If the entire
comment area is enclosed in braces, then no comment area will be
printed.) Finally, if you respond with an "S" then the bracketed
comments will be printed along with the enclosing braces. (The "S"
stands for "S"how braces.)
Note: This joining of comment lines may have an adverse effect on the
appearance of your reference material if you have made any attempt
to "prettily" format the information in the "view" for entering
comments in the file maintenance program. Any "vertical alignment"
of information will be lost, and imbedded strings of three or more
successive blanks (in the middle of a file comment line) will result
in the loss of text on that line that follows the blank interval.
My suggestion for entering comment information is that you use a
"free form" format, typing everything as one continuous line. Do
not use hyphens at the end of lines in the entered text. The
routines for printing comments will rejoin words which span two
comment lines. Words which would extend beyond the end of a printed
comment line are moved to the beginning of the next line (wordwrap).
After Dec 1986, a backslash "\" character in a comment line will be
treated as a request to begin a new line in the formatted comment
text. You may use this to keep the comment lines from all being
combined into a single block of text.
4. ANCESTOR CHARTs and MAPs
The system also produces ANCESTOR CHARTS for an individual in the
traditional `horizontal tree' format, with an individual appearing on
the left (center) of the page and the parents appearing to the right
above (father) and below (mother) the line on which the individual is
identified. Because only 4 generations of ancestors (comprising 15
individuals) may appear on a single chart, several charts may be
required to show all ancestors on file for an individual. The Family
History System has been designed to produce as many `subcharts' as are
required to show all recorded ancestors. In doing so, it is necessary
to employ some scheme to show how to proceed from one chart to the
next in a set. I have chosen to assign a `chart-ID' to each of the
charts produced. This chart-ID consists of the generation level of
the ancestor appearing to the left on the chart, and the number of
that ancestor within that generation level. Some chart-ID's would be
0-1 (the first chart of a set), 4-1, 4-2, 4-3,...,4-16,8-1,8-2,...,8-
256, etc. Charts will be printed only if an ancestor has been
recorded on the chart. If an ancestral line may be continued beyond
one of the charts in the series, then the chart-ID for the appropriate
continuation chart will be shown on the right side of the chart to be
continued.
Individual entries on the chart may be numbered from 1 to 16 on each
chart, or you may choose to label each entry with the lineage number
of the ancestor recorded on the line.
If you have decided to identify adoptive relationships as indicated in
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Appendix C, the adopted parent will be noted on the ancestor chart
with an "*" in the first position of the NAME field.
The "Spouse of Entry #1" appearing in the lower left corner of each
chart is the most recent spouse of the individual listed in entry #1
and may not be the "paired" ancestor on the chart.
Blank ancestral charts may be produced for recording ancestral infor-
mation prior to entering the information into the system's files.
(New in Sept 1988) You may also print an ALL GENERATION Chart which,
though not as formally presentable as the 4 Generation Charts, has the
advantage of providing a complete overview or MAP of ALL (up to 50
generations) of the recorded ancestors for an individual in a single
report. The format of this report is such that:
the information for each ancestor occupies a single line
no lines are produced for "missing" ancestors
the line for the father of an individual on the report is above
the line of information for the individual
the line for the mother of an individual on the report is below
the line of information for the individual
the information for ancestors is offset 4 spaces to the right for
each generation level
all parent-child relationships are graphically represented by
lines connecting the child to the parent(s).
The information shown for each ancestor includes:
The lineage number of the ancestor
(Optionally) the ID # of the ancestor, within parentheses
The ancestor's NAME, in "Given-Name Surname" format
(Optionally) the birth/death dates and age, in the format
b. 7 Apr 1863,d.10 Feb 1937 at age 73
(the age is shown only if both birth and death years are known
and if either date's month and day are unknown an "?" will
appear to the right of the age)
This ALL GENERATION Ancestor Chart or MAP is printed continuously
in a single long report with no breaks at page boundaries. Up to 20
generations of ancestors may be printed using compressed print on
8 1/2" wide paper. Reports which exceed the width of the available
paper can be printed out in 2 or more strips using the OFFSET Printer
parameter. For example, suppose you wish to print a report that would
require a 150 character print line but you are using a font and form
which only allow 80 printed characters. You can then print the report
once with a Form Width of 80 and OFFSET=0 to get the left most 80
characters of each print line and then print it again with an OFFSET
of 80 to get the right most 70 characters of each print line. The two
strips can then be joined together along the side to produce a
complete ancestor Map.
5. Family Group Report
The FAMILY GROUP REPORT produced by the system is intended to provide
a complete listing of information on record for an individual. Infor-
34
mation that may be printed includes: personal information (name,
birth/death dates and places), parents, spouse(s), spouse's parents,
children, child's (latest) spouse, and all residence information for
the individual. The report may also show the "other" types of infor-
mation from Medical, Educational, Work and Military records. In
addition, all addresses and comments relating to the above information
can be included in the report. Beginning in Sept 1988 it is also
possible to include a line which shows the Relationship and Lineage of
the subject of the report based upon a supplied relationship work
file (i.e. an Ancestor/Descendant/Relative work file).
The `viewing area' in the lower right corner of the screen lists the
types of family file information that you may optionally include in
the family group report. Using program option F6, you may specify
whether or not a category of information is to be INCluded and the
MINimum number of entries of that type that are to be shown. If a
category is to be included but the minimum number of entries is set to
0, then a section for that type of information will appear in the
report only if there is information of that type recorded in the
family file. A section will appear in a blank family group report
form only if the MINimum number of entries for that section is not 0.
There are two entries for comments in the list of information types.
The first controls the printing of NAME and SPOUSE record comments;
the last entry in the list controls all other comments. Several
people have requested being able to print both the SPOUSE record
comments and the spouse's NAME record comments under the spouse entry
in this report. This is allowed by the INClude parameter for the 4th
item in the list. If it has a value of "A" (for ALL), then both the
spouse record comments and the spouse's name record comments will be
printed (with a blank line separating them if they are both present);
if the INC parameter has a value of "Y" then just the spouse record
comments will be printed.
You will probably want to produce a Family Group report for each of
your ancestors (male and female) and any descendants who have main-
tained separate households. To help simplify the task of printing the
many Family Group reports that you will want to be saving, you are
given several options for BATCH printing of family group reports. You
may enter a list of ID #'s for reports that you want printed, or you
can instruct the program to read a relationship file (Ancestor/
Descendant/ Relative Work file) or a SELECT.WRK file to determine
which reports are to be printed. It is therefore relatively easy to
print reports for all ancestors of an individual or for all descen-
dants or relatives of a given individual. When printing reports using
one of these lists of ID#'s, you may also request to BYPASS the
printing of reports for children whose own group report contains no
information that is not found on the one being printed for a parent or
for wives whose own family group report contains no information that
is not found on the one being printed for the husband. (The last
option may sound a bit sexist, but I believe it probably conforms to a
common procedure for maintaining files of family group reports.)
Program option F4 requests the printing of reports for the selected
individuals. When printing reports for ID's in a list (either entered
35
individually or read from a file) you may specify whether to print the
reports in ID# sequence or in the order specified by an INDEX file.
(Creating an INDEX file is one of the extended options for the system.
It may be either a SORTED Index or one which sequences a group of
ancestors, descendants or relatives in the order that they would
appear in one of the relationship reports.) Further, you may request
that the reports be printed separately or that they be merged into a
single report with a line of asterisks separating individual reports.
In the merged report, pages are numbered sequentially and line number
indicators are placed in the margins (when the margin is >3) to assist
in locating the source of references in the report indexes produced by
one of the system's extended options. The merged family group report
is intended to simplify the task of producing booklets of family
information.
a. Identifying Group Reports to be Printed
Group reports that are to be printed are identified by giving the
program the ID # of the primary subject of the report. Program
option: "F3 Change SELECT Type or ID's" allows you three ways
of entering these ID's. When you press the F3 key you will be
asked to:
Select: 1)Single ID 2)List of ID's 3)Select File 4)Relative File
If you choose "1", you will be asked to enter a single ID (in the
middle of the screen where it says: "Processing ID #:"
The Name record corresponding to the ID # will be retrieved and
the name found there will be displayed to confirm your selection.
This option was the only one provided prior to Oct 87. When using
this mode of selection, the printing of the reports is handled just
the same as it was prior to Oct 87.
If you choose SELECT option "2) List of ID's", the bottom line of
the screen will be formatted with an "option line", and the
blinking cursor will appear near the middle of the screen to the
right of the label "Processing ID #:". You can enter a list of
individual ID numbers by typing each one on the screen and pressing
the enter key. After entering an ID#, the corresponding name
record will be retrieved and the name found in the record will be
displayed to the right of the ID#. You can enter a range of ID #'s
by pressing the F2 key and following the prompts that appear on the
bottom line of the screen. Pressing the F3 key will delete the
currently displayed ID from the list. All ID #'s entered are kept
in a list in ID# sequence and you may use the PGUP and PGDN keys to
move up and down the list to review previously entered ID's. The
CTRL+PGUP and CTRL+PGDN key combinations will move you respectively
to the lowest and highest ID #'s in the list. Near the right
center portion of the screen the number of ID #'s currently in the
list and the total number of name records in the file are
displayed. You may press the F10 key to SAVE the list in a SELECT
Work file for later reuse. After you have finished adding all the
ID #'s to the list that you want, press the F1 key to terminate the
process. You can return to change a previously entered list of ID
#'s by pressing the F3 key and then the SPACE bar.
36
If you choose SELECT options "3" or "4" then the SELECT work file
or the relationship work file, respectively, (identified in the
File name section of the screen display) will be used to determine
the ID #'s for which family group reports are to be printed. The
name record for the first ID in the resulting list will be
retrieved and the individual's NAME displayed. The number of
reports selected for printing and the total number of name records
in the file will be displayed at the right center part of the
screen. You may then proceed to change the list just as described
in the previous paragraph.
b. Printing Family Group Reports
When you use function F4 to print family group reports for a list
of ID#'s or for ID #'s in a work file, you will be given the
choice of printing the reports in ID # sequence or in INDEXed
sequence (described by the INDEX File in the File name section).
Creation of an INDEX file is one of the functions provided by the
extended protion of the system.
You will be asked whether you want to:
Show Relationship and LINEAGE? (Y/N)
If you reply "Y", then the file described by the RELATIVE file
description among the FILE NAMES will be used to create a relative
table. While the group reports are being printed, the relative
table will be used to determine the RELATIONSHIP (g3gFather, 3C4R,
etc.) and LINEAGE (lineage number+bloodline) of the subject of the
report, if the subject is among the individuals included in the
table.
You will also be asked whether you want to:
Print Bracketed Comments? (Y/N/S)
Beginning with the Sept 1988 update, you were given the option of
enclosing the text of certain comments with braces or "curly
brackets" ("{" and "}"), for instance to isolate sensitive or
conjectural remarks that you might not want to make generally
available. If you reply "Y" to the above query, then bracketed
comments will be printed along with the rest and the brackets will
be replaced with spaces. If you reply "N", the bracketed comments
(including the brackets) will be replaced by a single space. If
you reply "S" then the bracketed comments will be printed along
with the brackets.
When printing family group reports from a list of ID's, you are
given an opportunity to eliminate the printing of certain reports
whose information duplicates that found on another report that is
being printed. In particular, you will be asked:
Bypass Blank reports for 1)Children 2)Wives 3)Both 4)Neither
Bypassing "Blank reports for Children", means to eliminate the
printing of a report for an individual whose parent's group report
is being printed and for whom there is no information being printed
in the child's report beyond that which appears in that of the
parent(s). For instance, if you are printing family group reports
for all descendants of an ancestor this option would allow you to
skip printing Family Group Reports for the many persons (including
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minor children) who have simply been listed as a child on one
Family Group Worksheet but for whom you have never received or had
need to create a separate Family Group Worksheet of their own.
Similarly, bypassing "Blank reports for Wives" means to eliminate
the printing of a report for a wife if the husband's report is to
be printed and her own group report would have no information on it
beyond that that appears on the group report of her husband.
You are given two format options for printing family group reports
from a list of ID's. In particular, you will be asked to:
Select: 1)Separate Reports 2)Merged Reports
If you enter "1" then separate Family Group Reports will be printed
for each ID in the ID List that has been created (who is not
Bypassed as described in the preceding paragraph) just as if you
had printed them separately and individually. Any other response
will result in all family group reports being printed continuously
with a line of "* * * *" separating them. The pages in the
resulting report will also be sequentially numbered. In effect,
this provides you with still another type of report...one which can
show ALL information in the file for each individual. The MINimum
counts of the types of information to be included will be assumed
to be zero (sections will be shown for information of a given type
only if it is to be INCluded and there actually is information in
the file for the individual whose family group report is being
printed). One of the options in the extended part of the system
allows you to produce a printed index for this report with the page
and line numbers for each reference to each individual in any of
the family group reports printed.
When printing batches of family group reports, you will be asked
whether to: Start at Beginning of LIST? (Y/N)
If you reply "N" then if you are printing separate group reports,
you will be asked to:
Enter Starting ID=xxxx
or if you are printing a merged family group report, you will be
asked to: Enter Starting Page=xxxx
This allows you to restart the printing of a batch of family group
reports without having to reprint those that have already been
successfully processed.
Finally, when printing batches of family group reports, you will be
asked before printing each report:
Print Report for ID=xxxx (Y/N/A)
If you reply "N" then the next ID to be printed will be looked up
and a similar message will be shown for it. If you reply "A" then
this report and all succeeding ones will be printed until you
terminate a report by pressing the SPACE key to pause it, and then
the ESCape key to cancel it. If you cancel a report, then you will
again be asked whether you want to print a report for the next ID.
If you press the ESCape key when this prompt is displayed, then the
entire print process will be terminated.
Note: The batch printing of family group reports was added in Oct 87.
Although I had previously tried to keep all references to extended
options out of the basic set of programs, at that time I was forced
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to either leave the references to the INDEX file in the family group
report program distributed with the basic set of programs or
maintain two separate group report programs (one of which would
probably not have any "batch" print option in it). I decided that
it would be better that the users of the basic set of programs have
to put up with these extraneous (to them) references rather than
limit them to having to print group reports one at a time. In fact,
the Merged Family Group report adds an ID sequenced list feature
that has previously been missing from the public version of the
programs.
B. Report Program Parameters
Each report program permits the operator to change several 'para-
meters' that control the information going into a report as well as
the format of the output. This includes the names of system input and
work files as well as printer destination and `setup', and form size.
Changes to the report parameters are made by selecting the type infor-
mation to be changed using the appropriate function key, changing the
information on the screen (using TAB and SHIFT+TAB to move between
updatable fields just as in the file maintenance program) and pressing
the ENTER or RETURN key when all desired changes have been made.
Printer destination can be LPT1: or LPT2: (parallel printers), COM1:
or COM2: (serial printers), or SCRN:. In the case that the destina-
tion is set for SCRN:, you will not be prompted to identify whether a
report is to be sent to the screen or printer. The printer setups
selected must previously have been created (using MAIN MENU option
F3-C). The report programs will issue a form feed and print new
header lines when the number of lines printed on a page exceeds .9 of
the form length.
The report programs will also permit you to route your printer output
to a file. Some users have taken advantage of this feature to print
reports with a longer print line than is normally allowed for their
printer and then using a sideways printing utility to process the
report output file. You may want to create a separate printer table
just for this process.
The `MARGIN' parameter allows you to indicate the left margin offset
in numbers of blank characters. This is to allow room for binding or
punching holes for inserting the report in a notebook. (Note that
when printing the Ancestor, Descendant, Relative or "batched" Family
Group reports, use of a margin >3 will result in the placement of
"line number" indicators in the margin area. These are useful when
locating a reference from the report index, which may be produced as
an option of the extended system.
The `Form OFFSET' parameter may be used to print a report (in more
than one pass) when a selected printer or printer font is unable to
print an entire report line. For example, if you are using a font
which allows only 80 characters across a page but the report line
requires 132 characters, you could print the first eighty characters
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of the line with an OFFSET=0 and print the report again with OFFSET=80
to pick up the last 52 characters of the report line.
The ancestor/descendant/relative report program will print each indi-
vidual's information on two lines in the case that birth and death
places are to be shown and the form size is too narrow to put all
information on a single line. When individual record ID's are also
being printed, these may appear on a 2nd line if the form is too
narrow to include the information on a single line.
While producing any of the reports, the program may be temporarily
interrupted by pressing the `space bar' or any of the `character
keys'. The report may then be continued by again pressing the space
bar (or one of the character keys) or may be terminated by pressing
the ESC key. If you use the PGDN key to continue a report, then the
program will pause at the top of the next page of output. This may
prove convenient for pausing a printer that is running low on forms.
You can continue the printing by pressing any key.
C. Report Program WORK FILES
There are several types of "work" datasets that are used in the Family
History System. These are semi-temporary files that are used to
store information derived from certain processes so that those
sometimes lengthy processes do not have to be repeated too frequently.
Among these work datasets are the RELATIONSHIP Work Files, the SELECT
Work file and the INDEX File.
A RELATIONSHIP WORK FILE must be created prior to producing the
ancestor, descendant or relative reports or the ancestor charts.
Although there appear to be three types of relationship files:
ancestor, descendant and relative, in fact these all share a common
format...the only differences being in the number of generations of
ancestors or descendants that are to be searched in order to build the
work file. In building an Ancestor work file, no search is performed
for descendants at all. In building a descendant work file, no search
is performed for ancestors. While in creating a relative work file,
the program first searches for all ancestors and then all descendants
of the ancestors. Actually, you are asked to specify the maximum
number of generations that are to be included in the work dataset.
This is done to permit you to exercise some control over the extent to
which lines of ancestry or descendancy will be followed in producing
the report. A work dataset may be reused (without recreating it) if
no new or changed relationships have been recorded in the family file
used to create it.
Another type of work file is the SELECT file used by the Family Group
Report program and the export/import program. (Among the file
extensions, this work file is also used in the Search/Select/LIST
program and in the Report Indexing program.) This file is essentially
an ID sequenced "check list" of individuals that have been chosen for
processing. It permits the system to isolate the sometimes complex
process of selecting ID #'s to certain programs but to pass the
results of the selection process to other programs in the system.
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Still another type work file used by programs in the public portion of
the Family History System is the INDEX File. This is a file which
contains a complete but re-ordered sequence of ID #'s. The reordering
could be accomplished by SORTing the ID#'s based upon the contents of
certain fields, for instance in Surname, Given Name sequence or in
birthdate sequence. The reordering could also represent the sequence
that individuals identified in a relationship work file would be
listed in an ancestor, descendant or relative report. This last type
index is most likely to be used for printing family group reports in
"relationship sequence". The option for creating an INDEX file is one
of the extended options provided to registered users of the system.
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