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II. Getting Started.
A. Creating working copies of the programs
The diskettes on which the Family History Sytem is distributed contain
many files which are not required during the normal operation of the
system. For instructions on creating a working copy of the programs,
place the distribution diskette in drive "A" and enter:
A>GO INSTALL if the diskette has the "interpreted" or non-
compiled version of the programs
or A>TYPE README if the diskette has the "compiled" version of
the programs
Instructions are provided for installing the programs on either floppy
diskettes or a hard disk.
If you have formatted your Family History System program diskette with
the "/s" option, then it is `self starting'; that is, after placing
the diskette in drive A, you may turn the computer on (or press CTRL-
ALT-DEL key combination if the computer is already turned on) and the
system will automatically go through a sequence of operations that
will end with the appearance of the Family History System's introduc-
tory screen and MAIN MENU panel. You may also start the system by
placing the program diskette in drive "A" and entering:
A>family (for the uncompiled version
or: A>fhs (for the compiled version).
If the programs are installed on a hard disk, you will start the
system by entering: C>family (for the uncompiled version)
or: C>fhs (for the compiled version).
On the PCjr, the BASIC language cartridge must be installed in one of
the cartridge slots when using the "interpreted" or uncompiled version
of the programs.
If you receive messages like "Insufficient space on diskette" during
the INSTALL process, then you should try to reinstall the programs on
a blank diskette which has been formatted without the "/s" parameter.
If you are having troubles getting the system started using GWBASIC
the problem may be that only part of the language interpreter has been
copied to the program diskette during the installation procedure.
Frequently GWBASIC is distributed in several parts, such as:
BASIC.COM, BASICA.COM and GWBASIC.EXE or BASICA.EXE
If the .EXE file was not copied to the new program diskette during
the installation, copy it manually and try starting the system again.
If you are running the programs on a hard disk, it may be necessary to
copy each of the above parts of the GWBASIC interpreter into the
\FAMILY sub-directory in order to successfully start the system when
running the uncompiled version.
3
B. Beginning a Family History System work session
When starting the Family History System, the screen will be cleared
and reformatted with the system's `introductory panel'. This panel,
which shows the `update' of the program diskette that you are using
(indicated by the date below the title), will only appear for a few
seconds, after which the MAIN MENU of system options will appear.
1. MAIN MENU Program
Besides being the first functioning panel that you will see when
entering the system, the MAIN MENU provides the only `authorized' and
`safe' means of exiting the system (by pressing F10). You are never
far from the MAIN MENU. It can be reached from any of the programs in
the system by pressing the `F9' key.
The purpose of the MAIN MENU is to permit you to easily select the
system function that you wish to perform. These functions include:
1. F1 - Display/Update/Create Family History System files
2. F2 - Produce Reports
3. F3 - Utility Functions
4. F4 - Set current DATE and TIME
5. F8 - Execute DOS Commands (DOS 3.0 or later)
6. F10- Exit from the system (Return to DOS)
The system functions are selected by pressing the indicated `function
key'. If any other key is pressed, a soft tone is sounded and nothing
else happens. When a `legal' key is pressed, the corresponding func-
tion key designator, next to the function description on the screen,
will be hilited. If you have selected a function (e.g. F2) that has
several options to choose from, you will be prompted to enter the
alphabetic character corresponding to the one you wish to select.
When you have fully described, in the above manner, the system func-
tion you wish to perform, the program which performs that function
will be read from the program diskette and given control. If the
program cannot be read (for example, if the program diskette is not in
the `default' drive or the drive door is open, or the program diskette
is for some other reason unreadable), the message:
"Put Program diskette in default drive..."
will appear on the bottom line of the screen. If you are able to
determine the reason for the problem and correct it (e.g. by putting
the program diskette on the appropriate drive), you may press the
`space bar' and the system will make another attempt to read the
program from the diskette. If for any reason you have decided not to
continue with the selected option, you may press the `ESC' key and you
will be able to reselect any MAIN MENU option. (The ESCape key is
recognised by most programs in the set as an operator request to
terminate a process that has been started.)
The next paragraph discusses the setting of current date and time.
Other system functions are described in later sections of the manual.
If you are a first time user of the Family History System, I recommend
that you continue with the discussion concerning the current date and
time before going into any other area of the system.
4
2. Setting CURRENT DATE and TIME
The setting of the current date and time is the only system function
that is performed within the MAIN MENU program. Unless you have a
`clock calendar' board on your computer or have previously set the
date and time under the control of DOS or another program, the current
DATE will probably be `01-01-1980'. Because the current date is used
to determine the age of living persons that appear on some of the
reports and in the file maintenance program, it is important that it
be properly set if any reports are to be produced. The time is not
used by the system and is only included for your convenience.
If you have requested to reset the DATE and TIME by pressing the F4
key from the MAIN MENU, you will be prompted to:
Enter the current DATE and TIME
and the cursor will appear at the left most character of the displayed
date. You must enter the date in the form MM-DD-YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY.
Further, it must be a valid date and not be before 01-01-1980. After
entering the date, the cursor will automatically advance to the first
character of the time. The time must be entered in the form HH:MM:SS.
If you wish to go back to reenter the date, press the SHIFT+TAB keys.
After you have keyed in the date and time to your liking, you may
indicate to the program that you wish to reset the current values by
pressing the RETURN or ENTER key. If an error is found in either the
date or time, a tone will be sounded and you may correct the error.
If for any reason you wish to terminate the option, you may press the
ESC key and you will then be able to reselect any of the MAIN MENU
options.
3. Setting DEFAULT System Parameters
One thing you may wish to do when you first enter the system is to
examine the system defaults for the file names, screen attribute
table, and printer setup table used by the system. This will be
particularly true if you are using a color monitor. Although the
system, upon first entry, checks to see whether the IBM monochrome or
a graphics display adapter is being used and selects a "screen attri-
bute table" accordingly, if you are using a color monitor you may find
the colors used to be unappealing or difficult to read. The choice of
colors used in the displays may be changed by selecting MAIN MENU
option F3-B (see Section III-H). (Incidentally, a system set up to
use BLUE for displayed text will show horizontal lines, or under-
scores, across the screen on IBM's monochrome monitor; again, the
table can be easily changed using MAIN MENU option F3-B.) Other
system defaults may be examined using MAIN MENU options F3-A,C (see
Sections III-I,J for more complete discussions of these options).
4. Creating a set of Family files
Data files for the Family History System are initialized and updated
in the system's file maintenance program which is selected by MAIN
MENU option F1. This program is distinguished by its use of `seg-
mented' displays. You may refer to Sections III.G and III.F to find
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out more about the design of these displays and the updating of infor-
mation on them.
The first `view' you are presented shows the Menu of options available
in the File Maintenance program. This view provides the only `legal'
means for exiting the file maintenance program (by pressing `F9' to
request a return to the system's MAIN MENU display). If the program
diskette has been removed from the default drive (for example if a
separate data diskette has been placed in that drive) you will be
prompted to replace the program diskette at the appropriate time.
(You are never `far' from this list of primary options while in the
file maintenance program. It can be reached from just about any part
of the program by pressing the ESCape key enough times.)
The first option selected whenever this program is being used is `F1',
Open/Close/Create Family Files. (It is automatically selected for you
when you enter this program.) When a program `opens' a file, it is
requesting the operating system to permit it to read information from
or write information to the file. Ordinarily this is done automa-
tically by a program without the user's having to do anything. In
this program however, because the files remain open for long periods
of time to process multiple user requests, and because a file could
potentially become `damaged' if the user were to change data diskettes
or `illegally' exit from the system (e.g. by turning the machine off)
while the file is open, I have chosen to require you to explicitly
request that the files be opened at the beginning of the program as a
reminder of the situation that prevails. All open files will automa-
tically be closed when you return to the MAIN MENU program. (See
section II.C for a discussion about protecting yourself from loss of
information in damaged files.)
When the "Open/Close/Create" option is selected, you will see dis-
played in the upper right viewing area a list of the "datasets" used
to store your family information as well as the options that may be
`function key' selected from this view. You should also note that the
`hilited' border moves from the upper left to the upper right viewing
area. While in this program, the `active' view (the one from which
program options may be selected) is enclosed by a `hilited' border.
(Note: The term "dataset" is used here to refer to a named area on a
diskette or hard disk which contains a program or data. I am told
that this term is peculiar to an IBM environment, but it is one that I
find natural and will use frequently in this document. Many people
will use the term "file" for what I am calling a dataset, however I
usually think of a "file" as a collection of logically related infor-
mation and as such it may consist of several datasets. When I speak
of a "Family File" I will mean all the information that is stored in
the three datasets described here.)
Three datasets are used by the system to store your family history
information. You might think of these as three card files used to
store different types of information. The first dataset, the NAME
dataset, is used to store basic information concerning an individual,
including the name, sex, birth and death dates of the individual. The
second dataset is used to store the various types of ADDRESSes that
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are permitted in the system. The third dataset of OTHER data
contains: birth, death and marriage places; marriage records; health,
education, military and work information; and notes or comments.
Because you may wish to maintain multiple family files, with different
names, or you may wish to place the datasets on one or more separate
data diskettes located on a different drive from the program diskette,
you are permitted to change the file `specifications' displayed before
opening or creating the files. I refer you to your DOS manual for a
description of file naming conventions which you should use. (Please
note that the "A:" before the dataset name describes the drive on
which the program is to look for the dataset. You may change this to
"B:", "C:", etc. if you want the program to look for the datasets on a
drive other than the "A" drive.)
If this is your first time using the system you will want to `create'
or initialize the file by selecting option F3. (If the datasets
already exist, you will be asked to confirm that you wish to re-
initialize. Be WARNED that reinitializing a set of family datasets
will result in the loss of all data currently stored in them.) After
the file has been CREATEd, in future executions of this program you
will use F1 to simply OPEN the files. When the datasets are open you
may return to the view of main options of the file maintenance program
by pressing the ESCape key.
(Before continuing with this section, you may want to read Appendix B
concerning the recording of information on Family Group Worksheets
prior to entry in the system.)
In what follows, I will not attempt to fully describe all the options
available in the file maintenance program, however I will try to
describe the following:
a) ADDING a NAME record to the file;
b) Recording MARRIAGE information;
c) Maintaining ADDRESS information;
d) Listing CHILDREN of an individual or `marriage';
e) `Climbing' the ancestor tree through PARENT relationships;
f) SEARCHing name records.
I hope that you will experiment to become familiar with these and
other parts of the file maintenance program so that you may determine
which options of the program are appropriate for recording the histor-
ical information of your family.
a) ADDING a NAME RECORD to the File
If you are just beginning to enter data into your family file then
after opening the files and returning to the primary menu of file
maintenance options you will select option "F2 ADD a Name Record".
The `current viewing area' will move to the upper right corner of
the screen which will be formatted with labels describing the
information that you may enter in the name record for the first
individual to be added to the system. You will note that the
assigned record ID (on the first line of the screen) is `1'. The
blinking cursor appears in the 1st position of the SURNAME field.
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Pressing the "TAB" key causes the cursor to advance successively to
other updatable fields on the screen. Section III.F.1 describes
other rules for entering information into the formatted displays
used in this program. (Note: Pressing the ENTER or RETURN key will
move the cursor to the first position of the first updatable field
on the NEXT line. You must use the TAB key to move to other fields
which are to the right of the cursor on the SAME line.)
Of course the ID # of a parent cannot be entered into a child's
record unless a record has previously been created for the parent.
If the parent's record is added after the child's, then you may go
back and update the child's record with the correct ID number for
the parent to establish the parent-child relationship.
Although the Birth and Death places appear in this view, they are
not stored in the Name record for the individual. Because this
information is not generally known for distant ancestors or rela-
tives, I have made this part of a separate record. If neither
location is known, leave the fields blank and no space will be used
on the data diskette. Entry of anything in either field will
result in the creation of a single 50 character record for storing
the information.
I have allowed for recording the times of birth and death in the
record. Although this is also information which is not generally
known about distant ancestors or relatives, in this case a total of
only 4 `characters' are required to store the information so rela-
tively little space is lost if these times are unknown or you
decide not to maintain a record of them.
You will note four unlabeled single-character fields to the right
of the birth/death dates and father/mother ID's. These are
"status" fields whose use is described in Appendix C. Among other
things, these may be used to distinguish adoptive parent/child
relationships.
The "Use:" field to the right of the Surname field was added in
February 1987 to handle a "problem" that arises when creating
indexes or printing indexed reports using some of the extended
options of the system. There you are permitted to request that a
woman's surname be replaced with that of her (most recent) husband,
which seems more appropriate for things like Birthday or Anniver-
sary lists. However this didn't take into account the situation in
which a woman chooses to continue using her own surname after
marriage. A value of "Y" entered in the "Surname...Use:" field of
a married woman tells those programs that her own surname is always
to be used when building indexes or printing reports.
After all information has been correctly entered, press F1 to
cause a record to be created in the file. The bottom line of the
viewing area will then be replaced with a list of standard
options available when displaying an individual's information.
The displayed information may be modified by pressing function key
F1 twice, and making changes as above. Another record may be
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added by pressing the F1 key, then the F2 key and proceeding as
above. Other options will be discussed in the following
sections.
A "hidden" option, available when displaying Name record informa-
tion, marriage info, etc. is the use of the F8 key to invoke a
routine which will determine the day of the week upon which a given
date occurred. The routine observes all standard conventions for
leap years. Termination of the routine is accomplished by pressing
the ESCape key. This routine may prove useful for determining
accurate dates for events whose approximate date is known and which
are known to have occurred on a given day of the week. This is the
same routine that is called by function key F5 from the view of
primary options of this program. (A memory resident date calcu-
lator utility is now provide with these programs. It provides many
more functions than this simple routine and can be called up at
just about any time. See Appendix D for more information.)
b) Creating a MARRIAGE or FAMILY record.
After name records have been created for each of the participants
in a marriage, the marriage or family record may be created by
pressing the F4 (SPOUSE) key in the view of name record informa-
tion for either spouse (a single marriage record is maintained
for both spouses). The `current viewing area' will shift to the
upper left corner of the screen, which will be formatted with
descriptions of the information stored in a marriage record. If
a marriage has previously been recorded for the spouse displayed,
information from the most recent record will be shown. A new
record may be created by pressing the F1 key, then the F2 key.
If no previous marriage record exists for the displayed spouse,
the view will be ready for information to be entered.
To describe the other partner in the marriage, press the F2 key,
enter the record ID for that individual and press the RETURN key.
The individual's NAME record will be retrieved and descriptive
information displayed to confirm that the correct ID # has been
entered.
To update the marriage STATUS and Date fields, press the F3 key and
use the TAB key to move to the fields that need to be updated.
Although the beginning status field will normally indicate that a
marriage was performed, other types of arrangements may be indi-
cated such as common-law (marriage), communal (living arrangement),
etc; the partners in the relationship will still be identified as
spouse's in all reports. The termination status field may indi-
cate: wife died, husband died, divorced, annulled, agreement, etc.
If a relationship is known to have terminated but the date is
unknown, the year of the ending date should be 9999. (Please note
that it is necessary for you to manually enter this termination
date even when one or both spouses are recorded as deceased.
Although the ancestor/descendant/relative report program will take
the death dates of the spouses into consideration when computing
the number of years married, an "*" will appear to the right of
that number if a death date was used to determine it.)
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The PLACE fields that appear after the STATUS/DATE fields are
handled similarly to BIRTH/DEATH place fields. If nothing is
entered in either of the fields, then no space is taken in the file
for them. If any text is entered in either field, then a single 50
character record is created to hold both 22 character fields.
Press the F1 key when all status information has been correctly
entered.
After both spouse ID and status information have been satisfac-
torily entered, pressing the F1 key will cause the record to be
written to the family file. If either spouse has other spouse
records on file, the record being added will be merged with the
others in reverse order of the beginning dates (so that the most
recent record occurs first).
Please note that there are three separate steps to creating a
marriage record:
a. Update the ID for spouse
b. Update the status fields, dates and places
c. Save the information in a file record
No information is placed in the file until the last step is
performed.
Options available to you after the marriage record has been added
are shown on the bottom line of the viewing area and include:
F1 UPDATE (Change, Add or Delete);
F2 SELECT (the spouse to be displayed in Name record viewing
area);
F3 List CHILDren having both spouses as parents;
F4 List RESidence information;
F5 Display/Enter COMments about the family relationship.
Pressing the ESCape key returns you to the Name record viewing
area.
c) Maintaining ADDRESS information.
Address information may be recorded in a number of places within an
individual's total information record. It may indicate the indivi-
dual's residence, a family residence (under the spouse record), or
an address related to one of the additional records for education,
health, work or military information. The information which is
stored in an address record includes:
Beginning and ending dates during which the address
information was current;
Address (two 30 character lines);
City (15 character field);
State (4 character abbreviation);
Zip or country (5 character field);
Telephone (3 numeric fields; early phone numbers using
alphabetic prefixes cannot be recorded here.)
Comments may subsequently be recorded concerning information that
is particularly relevant to the address record. (This might include
a physical description of a home.)
10
Multiple addresses may be recorded of each of the above types.
All addresses under a given type record (name, spouse, health,
etc.) will be `chained' together in reverse order of beginning date
so that the most recent address occurs first. The extended system
offers options for producing lists of latest (residence) addresses
and for creating a MailMerge format file of address information.
The MailMerge file can be used with database managers such as PC-
FILE for printing mailing labels. It may also be used with many
word processors for producing form letters.
d) Listing CHILDREN of an individual or marriage
Pressing the F3 key in the display for the individual's Name
record or for a SPOUSE record results in the listing of children
parented by the individual or by both spouses. The list appears
in a viewing area occupying the bottom half of the screen. Up to
9 children may be listed; if there are more, you may continue the
list by pressing the PGDN key.
You may request to select one of the children for display in the
Name record viewing area by pressing the F1 key and using the UP
and DOWN cursor control keys to select the ID number of the desired
child. Another child may be selected by returning to the child
list (as a result of pressing the ESCape key in the view of Name
record information) or by pressing the CTRL+PGDN or CTRL+PGUP key
combinations in the view of Name record information for the pre-
viously selected child.
e) Climbing Ancestor Trees through PARENT relationships.
The file maintenance program was designed so that the user could
easily follow lines of ancestry (or descendancy) from one gene-
ration to another. The previous section described how you might
start with an individual, list his/her children, select one of the
children for display, after which the grandchildren parented by
that child may be listed, a grandchild selected for display, etc.
The family tree may be examined in the `reverse' direction also.
From the display of an individual's Name record information,
pressing the F2 key moves the current viewing area to the upper
left corner of the screen where information about the parents is
displayed. From that view, the parents' children may be displayed
(the full brothers and sisters of the original individual) by
pressing the F3 key, or the Father or Mother may be selected for
display in the Name record viewing area by pressing the F1 or F2
function keys respectively. If a parent is selected for display,
then their parents (one set of grandparents of the original indivi-
dual) may be displayed using the F2 key. Continuing in this way, a
single chain of ancestor relationships may be examined to exhaus-
tion.
To help you remember how far the ancestor chain has been examined,
the `relative generation level' of the displayed individual(s) is
shown in the upper right corner of the Name record, parent, spouse
and child displays. The generation level is reset to 0 whenever an
11
individual is selected for viewing for some reason other than a
parent, child or spouse relationship (for example, by selecting
from a `search list'...see below).
f) SEARCHing the Name Records on file.
The file maintenance program contains a procedure for making
(limited) searches of the Name records on file. This would ordi-
narily be used to determine the record ID for some individual whose
information or family relationships were to be examined or modi-
fied.
The view for initiating searches is displayed by pressing the F4
function key from the view of primary options for the file mainte-
nance program. The viewing area in the upper left corner of the
screen will be cleared and reformatted with fields describing the
criteria for limiting the search. These include:
limits on record ID;
Surname (or portion of a surname...e.g. the first 2 char);
Given name (or portion of a Given name);
Range of Birth dates;
Range of Death dates.
The searches on Surname and Given name are sensitive to upper and
lower cases; i.e. neither `brown' nor `BROWN' will match a record
with Surname `Brown' (but a search for `Brown' will match). Also
the range comparisons on dates make the month-day and Year checks
independently. Therefore a search with:
02/00/1930 <= Birth Date <= 02/99/1940
will locate name records with birth dates in the month of February
and between the years 1930, 1940 inclusive.
After the search criteria have been satisfactorily entered, the
search is started by pressing the F1 key. The current viewing area
moves to the lower half of the screen and the search begins. A
reverse-video display in the lower left corner of the screen shows
the record ID for the name record currently being examined. The
search process can be interrupted by pressing the space bar, then
the search may be continued by pressing the PGDN key or you may
select for display one of the record ID's already found by pressing
the F1 key and using the UP and DOWN cursor controls to move the
reverse-video `box' to the correct ID #, and then pressing the
ENTER or RETURN key.
After displaying a name record located through a search, other
members in the `active search list' may be selected for display
by either pressing the ESCape key from the name record viewing
area to return to the search list (if it has not been overlain)
or by pressing the PGDN or PGUP keys in the Name record viewing
area.
A search list becomes inactive when another search begins or when
the ESCape key is pressed in the search list viewing area.
12
C. Importance of `backing up' system files
As with all `dynamic' files whose creation and maintenance represents
a considerable investment of time, the importance of keeping multiple
backup copies of the files cannot be overemphasized.
The standard DOS COPY utility should be adequate for most users to
create these `backup' files. I would recommend always creating a
backup copy of the data files before each extended file maintenance
session, especially if your area is subject to power fluctuations. I
would also recommend that you not reuse a backup diskette until at
least two subsequent backups have been taken.
If portions of a data file do become unreadable, you are cautioned not
to use disk utilities to remove the damaged sections. Direct file
pointers become unusable if such utilites are used. It is essential
in this case to return to a backup copy of the files.
If it is necessary to restore your family file from a backup copy, you
should always restore all three datasets from the same backup copy.
Attempting to restore just part of a family file will likely result in
some system maintained pointer fields becoming invalid. This can
cause abnormal program termination, spurious messages, or "garbage" or
invalid information in reports.
13
