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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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-
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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
-
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-
-
- 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-
-
-
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-
-
-
- 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
-
-
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-
-
- 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.
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- 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.
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-
- 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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