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1993-04-14
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PST
A CHRONOLOGICAL PEDIGREE PROGRAM
This program takes as input either a GEDCOM data base file (".GED") or a
ROOTS III data base file (".EDB") and creates a Pedigree/Surname/Timeline
chart for printing. It is most useful for use with printers which have the
capability of quite a few columns in width, such as the wide-carriage
printers or those which can print in highly compressed type. Typically one
would want to be able to print at least 160 column charts, although, if one
is willing to do a cut and paste operation on the pages one can get along
with less capable printers.
The program creates a chart with time as the horizontal axis and a list of
surnames as the vertical axis. It places the first letter of the first given
name of an individual in the print column corresponding to the year of birth
of the individual and the row corresponding to his or her surname. It
operates in one of two modes, it will either create a chart with time
decreasing from left to right (called "descending", the way one expects a
pedigree chart to look) or the opposite, with the years increasing from left
to right (called "ascending"). Both styles have their advantages in
assisting data analysis.
********* Installation *********
Installation is simple; just copy the file PST.EXE into any directory which
appears in your PATH command list. You may wish to copy the file PSTX.INS
into the directory where you will be using the program so it will be handy
for editing to establish your desired defaults (see Installation File,
below). NOTE: If you do not have DEVICE=ANSI.SYS in your CONFIG.SYS file,
when PST finishes it may leave you with a blank screen. ANSI.SYS only takes
up about 4K of memory and you are encouraged to use it.
********* Running *********
To run the program just key in PST after the DOS prompt, and follow it by an
(optional) list of parameters, each separated from any other by at least one
space.
******** Parameters ********
The program accepts several parameters to accommodate user's wishes. These
parameters may be entered by the user in one of three ways (or a combination
of the three). The user may either provide the parameters in the command line
that is used to call up the program, in an "installation" file in the
"current" directory, or interactively as the program calls for them. The
user may provide some parameters in the installation file, some in the
command line, and be interactively prompted for others. If a given parameter
is provided in both the installation file and the command line, the parameter
in the command line will take precedence. A parameter provided in either the
installation file or the command line will not be interactively requested
from the user at run time. Some parameters may be omitted entirely; there
are some default values built into the program; these parameters are never
requested interactively.
******** Command Line Parameters ********
PST followed by any of several parameters:
m=<mode> where mode may be either A (ascending) or D (descending); the
default value is descending; this is the way most pedigree charts
are presented.
s=<start year> e.g. 1990 if using the descending mode to see years
earlier than 1990 or 1600 if using the ascending mode to see the
years later than 1600.
o=<output> where output is usually a file name for the chart or perhaps
a printer designation such as PRN
d=<database> which is the path\filename to the GEDCOM or ROOTS III file
(you must include the ".GED" or the ".EDB" so the program will
know which type of file to process). A GEDCOM file must be in the
specs of PAF 2.1 or later.
f=<first Person Record number> identifying the root person for the
ancestor chart. This is the record number in ROOTS III, the RIN
in PAF (if PAF created the GEDCOM), and so on. See below for a
special search feature if you don't know the number.
p=<printer max columns> - the maximum number of columns you want the
report to use. Must be less than or equal to the number of print
positions you printer can handle. The default value is 170, which
corresponds to an HP laser printer operating in "wide" mode using
the internal "line printer" font (16.67 cpi). Maximum value is
255.
y=<number of years per print column>; must be an integer - the default
value is 2.
a=<y or n> - indication whenter or not 11 columns on the left edge of
the paper will be devoted to the ahnentafel number of the first
person of that line who entered the family - always a woman except
for the first person. The default is to not present this
information (y is for yes, n is for no).
PST /? provides help on the screen like the above.
******** Installation file ********
You may create an installation file to establish your own personal defaults.
You might do this individually for each directory in which you plan to use
PST. Call that file PST.INS. Create it with a text editor, possibly by
modifying the sample file provided. An example follows:
Mode=A
StartYear=1600
OutFileName=junk.txt
DatabaseName=C:\roots3\ancestor\ancestor.EDB
FirstPerson=2
YearsPerCol=2
MaxCols=170
Ahnentafel=Y
Graphics=║╦╝╚═
PrinterInit=^[&l0O^[(10U^[&l8D^[(s0p16.6h7v0s0T^O
Again, any/all of the entries may be omitted. The items correspond to those
for use in the command line, with the exception of two additional items,
"Graphics" and PrinterInit.
The Graphics entry defines the graphic characters to be used to draw marriage
lines on the charts. They are entered in order after the equals sign as (1)
the character to use to create the line going up, (2) the character to be
used at the top of the line, (3) the character to be used at the bottom of
the line when the mode is descending, (4) the character to be used at the
bottom of the line when the mode is ascending, and (5) the character to be
used for horizontal lines. If you have trouble getting these characters to
print and instead get a series of "foreign" alphabetics, it is likely that
you have not set up your printer to recognize the correct symbol set. For
the graphics used as default and as illustrated above the symbol set should
be PC8. If you fail to get them to work on your printer, investigate your
printer manual for either the initialization string elements to get the
desired symbol set active or to discover the ASCII codes which will print the
desired symbols. HP LJ IIP users may wish to use the printer front panel to
select the PC8 symbol set (see the manual page 4-4). As a last resort, you
may wish to use the "pipe" symbol "|" for the vertical line, and the minus
sign for the horizontal line, ']' for the bottom line when descending, '['
for the bottom line when ascending, and '+' for the top of the line
(GRAPHICS=|+][-). Do NOT use any character which is likely to show up in the
first names of people, do NOT use the same character for more than one
graphic function and do NOT use the space character as a graphic.
The PrinterInit entry defines the string to be sent to the output at the
beginning of the run, normally to establish the "wide" printing conditions.
Control characters are inserted by use of the preceding "^"; for example the
escape character is "^[" and the control-s is entered as "^S". Examples or
strings for some printers follow; be VERY careful if copying these to your
INS file to note the difference between 1 and l and 0 and O. It would be
best to copy them from this documentation file using a text editor.
NEC Pinwriter P2200 : ^[!^E
Star NX10 (160 column compressed elite) : ^[!^E
(160 column compressed elite bold) : ^[!^U
HP LJ II (170 column LinePrinter,PC8)
Landscape, 8.5x11 paper, 170 Cols or
8.5x14 paper, 225 Cols :
^[&l1O^[(10U^[&l8D^[(s0p16.6h7v0s0T^O
Portrait, 8.5x11 or 8.5x14 paper, 133 Cols :
^[&l0O^[(10U^[&l8D^[(s0p16.6h7v0s0T^O
An example of an installation file is included with the distribution as file
PSTX.INS. You may wish to rename it as PST.INS and then edit it to fit your
circumstances.
********** Starting Person Search Feature ***********
If you don't know the identifying number of the individual you wish to use
as the basis of the chart, leave the entry out of the installation file and
the command line call, so you will be prompted for it when the program starts
to run. At that time, if you simply press enter, the screen will shift to
a prompting mode where you will be asked to enter the first name, surname and
year of birth of the individual. You must enter in upper/lower case as it
appears in the source file. You may enter only fragments of the names (e.g.
"ichar" in lieu of "Richard") if you wish, and you may omit any of the
elements asked for. After you have entered these items, the source data file
is searched for possible matches; when one is found it is presented and you
are given an opportunity to accept that entry or to continue or restart the
search. If you continue the search beyond the end of the file the process
will recycle. You may "escape" from the program operation at any time by
pressing CONTROL-BREAK.
******** Program Sequence ********
The progress of the program is shown on the top line of the screen; the
leftmost note on that line indicates the current process.
First the installation file is read, and then the command line parameters,
if any, are used to modify the settings. If a required parameter is not set
in either the PST file or the command line, then either the default value is
used or the user is then interactively prompted for the value. After this the
program collects all information it needs, then sends the chart, line by
line, to the output device. During the time that data is being extracted
from the source file a "thermometer" on the second line indicates the
progress. Surnames that are being inserted in the chart are indicated on the
third line as they are processed.
******** The Output ********
The surnames shown on the left edge are those of the first person of that
surname line to enter the family; invariably a woman except for the
FirstPerson. Variations in spelling of the surname in preceding generations
are ignored. All surname lines are listed even though some lines may not
appear on the chart for the time period covered.
People are shown with their first names (only); the first letter of the first
name appears in the appropriate column to represent the year of birth, or,
if it is mnot in the data base, the year of christening. People without
either birth years or christening years represented in the data base will
have their birth year estimated from the birth year of their in-line
offspring; men are assumed to be born 32 years earlier and women 27 years
earlier. If a birth date is estimated in this way, the person's name will
be preceded by an asterisk; this asterisk appears in the appropriate column
to indicate the birth date estimated. If there is no first name in the data,
a '?' is printed in lieu of it.
Marriages are shown by a line from the wife over and up to the husband's
surname line. The vertical part of this line appears in the print position
representing the year of the marriage. In the descending mode this will
frequently connect in the husbands surname line to the childs first name.
One can visualize that the graphics show the child's connection to the
parents - on the same line for the father and down and over for the mother.
In the ascending mode, since the child's name extends toward later years,
there is less confusion on this part. If there is no marriage date available
for a couple there is no graphic drawn connecting the wife to the husband's
surname line. In some cases in the ascending mode there is too little room
for a graphic to be drawn due to length of names and proximity of surnames.
This should not be interpreted to mean there is no marriage date in the data
base for them.
There is an information file, PST3.TXT, left in the working directory. This
file contains information of use to you if you wish to avoid asterisks and
missing vertical lines; it lists each individual for which an estimate of the
birth date was made and those sets of parents for which no marriage year was
found.
******** Suggestions ********
The ideal way to run this program is to send the output to a file, NOT
including a PrinterInit string, and use your word processor to look at the
output and do additional formatting and printer setup before actually
printing the result. Assuming your word processor (and here I'm assuming
Word Perfect because it's the one I'm familiar with) is set up properly for
your printer, you should get excellent results with just a little
experimenting.
If the entire pedigree won't fit on a single sheet horizontally - and few
will - then you can run the program more than once, picking the StartYear for
each subsequent run to match a year near the end of the previous run, then
cut and tape the sheets together. You could use the Ahnentafel feature on
the first run and omit it from the others. If the chart is several sheets
wide you may wish to print an extra copy of the first column sheet so you can
tape the surname list to the right hand side of the combined set.
If you have a printer with a scalable monospaced font (such as the HP-III
with scalable Courier) you may find it useful to use a 5-point font; printing
in landscape mode with 1/4 inch margins you may be able to get as many as 240
print columns. If you choose YearsPerColumn=3 that would get you a pedigree
chart on one sheet spanning either 650 or 690 years, depending on whether the
ahnentafel feature was on or off.
If you have WINDOWS with the true-type fonts and you select the new courier
font when using WRITE, you will probably find that, when you open the text
file written by PST, the conversion process will alter the symbols used.
MICROSOFT advises that an application note, number GC0651-3LD (for 3.5 inch
disks) or GC-0651-5LD (for 5.25 inch disks) is comprised of a special font
for WINDOWS and this font will preserve the line-draw symbols. I was told
that you may order this font by calling 206-462-9673, or by writing them at
the usual address.
If you do not have ANSI.SYS loaded, and are faced with a blank screen, just
type MODE CO80 (in the blind; you won't see your typing echoed on the
screen), hit enter and your screen should be back to normal.
******** Registration ********
This program is shareware. That means that you are free to experiment with
it and redistribute it as you wish; BUT if you feel the program has
sufficient merit that you would like to use it as part of your processing
capabilities, it would be appropriate for you to register with the author and
pay the $5 fee the author requests for registration. For this program this
provides you with free updates of the program if such updates are created
within a year of your registration; they will be mailed to you on 5.25 or 3.5
inch disks, whichever you indicate you prefer at registration time.
The author's name and address:
Richard G. Cleaveland Please specify disk size
2373 N. Fillmore St., desired when registering.
Arlington, VA 22207-4953 *** FEE $5 ***
The author may be contacted for information and for purposes of reporting
apparent bugs through either direct mail at the address above or through
Compuserve (72077,357) or Prodigy (PTGW13A).
A sample of the program output in the ascending mode and for a narrow printer
is shown on the next page. The repeated surnames (Fox, for example) appear
because the data base has "Wife-Of <husband's name>" as the name of a woman
with an unknown surname (in some cases; in others the surname "Unknown" was
used). This illustration will probably seem odd to most readers; the
ascending mode is unconventional.
PST Beta 1 \ROOTS3\CLEAV.GED Starting with Richard Cleaveland
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 7 7
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Cleaveland . . . Moses───────┬───────Josiah──────┬────Henry────┬
Winn . . . Ann────────┘. . . . │. . . │
Bates . . . . . . . Mary───────┘. . . │
Fitch s────┬─────James────────James──────────────┬─────Lucy─────┘
Humphrey . │ . . . │. . . . │ . . .
Thurgood . │ . . . │. . . . │ . . .
Reeve ─────┘ . . . │. . . . │ . . .
Brock . . . . . │. . . . │ . . .
Whifield enry─────┬─Abigail──────┘. . . . │ . . .
Atwood . . │. . . . . . . │ . . .
Manning ─────────│. . . . . . . │ . . .
Kirkener . . │. . . . . . . │ . . .
Sheafe Dorothy──┘. . . . . . . │ . . .
Harmon . . . . . . . . . │ . . .
Sheafe ───────────────────────────────────────────│ . . .
Harmon . . . . . . . . . │ . . .
Bradford am─────────┬William──────┬────Alice────────┘ . . .
Bradfuth . . .│ . . │ . . . . . .
Bradfuth . . .│ . . │ . . . . . .
Turvin . . .│ . . │ . . . . . .
Fox ───────────│ . . │ . . . . . .
Fox . . .│ . . │ . . . . . .
Hanson ───────────│ . . │ . . . . . .
Gresham . . .│ . . │ . . . . . .
Carpenter ce─────────┘ . . │ . . . . . .
Carpenter . . . . . │ . . . . . .
Carpenter . . . . . │ . . . . . .
Dillen . . . . . │ . . . . . .
Richards omas─────────Alice───────┘ . . . . . .
Loring Welthian . . . . . . . . . .
Brown . . . . . . . . . . . .
Warner . . . . . . . . . . . .
Hawkes . . . . . . . . . . . .
Littlefieldd──────┬──Anthony─────────Edmund─────────────Nathaniel─────
Austin nis────┘ . . . .│ . . . │ . .
Page . . . . Mary────┘ . . . │ . .
Mott . . . . . . . . Elizabeth . .
Thayer . . . . . . . . . . *Deborah
Caswell . . . . . . . . . . . .
Brown . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . .
Kirkland . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lang . . . . . . . . . . . .
Parcher . . . . . . . . . . . .
Pease ───Robert───┬──John───────────────┬─Issac─────┬──────────Cu
Unknown . . . │ . . . . │. . .│ . .
Unknown . Marie──┘ . . . . │. . .│ . .
Cummings . . . . . Ann─────────┘. . .│ . .
Osborn . . John────────John────────┬─Mindwell──┘ . .
Oldage . . . Ann───────┘ . . │. . . . .
Eggleston . . . Begat─────┬─Abigail───┘. . . . .
Talcott . . . Sarah─────┘ . . . . . . .
Pease ───Robert───┬──John───────┬John───────┬John──────────────┬E
Unknown . . . │ . . .│ . . │ . . . . │
Unknown . Marie──┘ . . .│ . . │ . . . . │
Goodell . Robert─────Mary────────┘ . . │ . . . . │
Unknown . Catharine─┘. . . . . │ . . . . │
Adams . . . . . . Margaret───┘ . . . . │
Spencer . . . . . . . . . Elizabeth─────┘
Hill . . . . . . . . . . . John───
Craw . . . . . . . . . . . . De
Laughlin . . . . . . . . . . . .
Adams . . . . . . . . . . . .
Streeter . Stephen─────────Stephen──────────Samuel──────Stephen───
Adams ────┬────Ursula─────┘ . . . . . . .
Unknown . │. . . . . . . . . . .
Stone . │. . . . . . . . . . .
Squire ────┘. . . . . . . . . . .
Adams . . . . . . . . . . . *Kather
Hemingway . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alderman . . . . . . . . . . . .
Calligan . . . . . . . . . . . .
Helsom . . . . . . . . . . . .
Helsom . . . . . . . . . . . .
Slettevold . . . . . . . . . . . .
Unknown . . . . . . . . . . . .
Beil . . . . . . . . . . . .
Seehofer . . . . . . . . . . . .
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 7 7
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
=======================[End of sample chart]===========================