Gene's clean user interface has drawn critical praise: "The look of this prodigiously likable little shareware item should be the envy of designers of more expensive software" [David Pogue, MacWorld magazine, June 1995, p. 147]. But Gene is also capable of handling very complicated databases with thousands of names, multiple marriages and divorces, adoptions, illegitimate children, and intermarriage between relatives.
This hypertext document provides a guide to using Gene version 4.1. It includes information on the following topics. To select a topic, click the mouse on any section of underlined text.
Throughout this document, you can click any underlined text to move to a section of the document discussing the subject of the text in more detail. Paragraphs marked with a "caution sign", such as this one, contain more detailed descriptions of Gene's behavior that can be skipped by beginning Gene users.
Note: the three-dimensional buttons in this image were produced by
Greg Landweber's shareware software "Aaron"; the file
dialog may appear different on your screen but its general features should be similar.
From the file dialog, you can select a file to open, or press "New" to create a new database. You can also load a file without using the file dialog, by double clicking on the file or by dragging it onto the Gene icon.
Once Gene loads your file, it will display a list of the people in the database, in which you can find and display individual cards. When you start a new database, Gene will create a new card in which you can start recording information.
While working in Gene, you may wish to save your work periodically; use the Save or Save as... commands in the File menu. Exit Gene by using the Quit command in the File menu. If you quit after you change the database, Gene will ask whether to save it.
You can also use Gene to open files created by other programs, as long as they follow Gene's database format; to list such files in Gene's file dialog, uncheck the box labelled "Show Only Gene Files" by clicking on it with the mouse. The detailed format for Gene files is documented in the Gene Technical Notes.
Gene's File menu provides the following commands for manipulating files. Underlined commands are discussed later in more detail; click your mouse on the name to go to that part of this file.
Controls for different parts of Gene are contained in panels of the dialog; the menu at the top of the dialog controls which panel is displayed. The center section of the dialog contains the controls for each panel, and the bottom contains a description of the panel. Different panels are explained more detail elsewhere in this document:
When you are done setting preferences, use the "OK" button
to save them.
If you do not want to make any changes to the current preferences,
abort the preferences dialog with the "Cancel" button.
File preferences
The preferences dialog
includes two panels that control Gene's behavior while reading and writing files.
The first panel, "Opening Files", tells Gene whether to show a status bar while opening the file, and what kind of card to list once the file is open. The same controls apply both when Gene is reading its own files, and also when it is importing GEDCOM files.
The second panel, "Saving Files", controls which of two methods
Gene uses to save your file. The method we recommend involves
creating a temporary file and renaming it.
This uses some extra disk space while the save command is running,
but protects against loss of data from system crashes.
Gene can instead save directly to your original file, which is less safe
but uses less disk space.
If two cards in both databases have the same name,
Gene will assume they
refer to the same person and the information on the two cards will be
merged. If both cards have information in the same field, Gene will
keep only the information from the second card. The text pane of the
merged card will have the concatenation of the texts from the two files.
The Merge command is unable to merge unnamed cards
such as marriages
(it can't tell whether they represent the same event, or whether they
refer to different marriages for the same couple). Such cards
will not be merged and may end up duplicated. After you use the merge command,
you may want to check for such duplicate events and remove them from the database.
2.3. Merging pairs of Gene databases
The "Merge" command in the File menu takes information from two Gene
databases and merges them into a single file. After reading the first
file, use Merge to read the second file. The default file name after
the merge is that of the first file. Merging is somewhat simpleminded
and can easily destroy information or produce incorrect information, so
use it with caution; it would be a good idea to make an extra copy of
your Gene database file before you try merging another file into it.
2.4. Importing and exporting GEDCOM format files
"GEDCOM" is the name of a file format defined by the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) for exchanging genealogy data
between different programs. Like Gene's own database format, GEDCOM is
text-based, which makes it easy to send across computer networks and
between different kinds of computers. Gene supplies two commands for
dealing with GEDCOM format files:
When you use the Import command, Gene will ask for the name of a
GEDCOM file to read. It will then translate the information in the file
into the fields and notes of Gene cards. We recommend that you start a
new Gene database before using the Import command, and then
use the Merge command to combine the
imported data with an existing database, rather than importing the
GEDCOM file directly into your database.
Gene understands most of the GEDCOM standard, but
some other genealogy programs export GEDCOM data in nonstandard formats.
If Gene encounters any information it can't understand, it will place it
in the text pane of the corresponding card so that
you can translate it more intelligently by hand. Unlike Gene, GEDCOM
does not require that each person have a unique name, so Gene's Import
command automatically adds a number when necessary to the ends of names
to make them unique. Because GEDCOM names can not be used to identify
people uniquely, the Import command will create a new card for each
person in the GEDCOM file, even when Gene already has information about
people with the same name. This behavior differs from Gene's
Merge command, which combines two files' information
on the same people.
Note that some genealogy programs have a subtle bug in the
way they export GEDCOM files, that can cause Gene some trouble when
importing the files. GEDCOM files contain information in individual and
family records; the family records typically contain marriage subrecords
corresponding to the information stored in a
marriage card in Gene.
However some programs can only produce GEDCOM marriage subrecords when
they know a date or place for the marriage; other families are left without
this information. Gene can not automatically assume that every family is married,
because one must also use GEDCOM family records for children born out of wedlock.
However if Gene's Import command sees a family with no children, and no
marriage information, it will create a
family event card to note this problem
so that there is some record that the people in the family are connected with each other.
It is possible that the same programs may lose information about marriages
without dates and places if they import GEDCOM files produced by Gene.
2.5. What to do when Gene won't read your file
It is unlikely that you will ever have a problem reading a Gene database,
but if you do, here are some hints that could help you solve the problem.
Fields
The fields of a card consist of a sequence of lines, each with a field
name and a box containing structured or unstructured data. Different
fields structure their data in different ways. On a person
card, like the one
depicted above, there are four different kinds of fields:
If a person's sex is unknown, Gene guesses it automatically from the roles the person plays in other events: the mother of a child, or the wife in a marriage, is assumed to be female, and similarly the father of a child or the husband in a marriage is assumed to be male. But Gene allows people to have a different gender than the one it expects, so it is possible to represent same-sex marriages in Gene. If a person is unmarried and has no children, Gene can't guess the person's sex, so you must set it yourself.
Adopted children will be included in descendant trees drawn by Gene, but the parents shown in an ancestor tree will be the birth parents rather than the adoptive parents. If you want to have the mother and father on a person's card refer to the person's adopted parents, you can do so, but you will not then be able to record the person's birth parents.
Even if nothing is known about the date, place, or cause of death,
you might still want to create a death card, simply to record the fact
of the person's death. This would be particularly useful for family
members born recently enough that someone might otherwise think they
might still be alive.
Marriage cards
The connection between a husband and wife should
be recorded in a marriage card. This card has fields for the names of
the married husband and wife, the date and place of their wedding, and
the minister or judge who married them. This last field is a string
rather than a link, since usually the minister or judge will not be a
family member. Even if you do not know the spouse or wedding date, you
can make a marriage card for one person to show that he or she did not
die unmarried.
If a marriage ends in divorce, this should be recorded in a
divorce card;
If one spouse predeceases the other, this should be noted in a
death card.
In either case, the information will be listed in the spouse's
link pane, so that you
can see it in context with any subsequent remarriage of that spouse.
Gene does not automatically make marriage cards for the parents
of a child, since it can't know whether the parents are married.
However the "Marry Parents" template provides
a convenient way of creating a marriage card for a person's parents.
Divorce cards
If a marriage ends in divorce, this fact should be recorded in a divorce
card. Divorce cards have fields to record the husband's name, the
wife's name, and the date of divorce. Since divorce proceedings generally happen
over a period of time, the date will typically be approximate, and there
is no place field.
Gene does not check whether there is a marriage card with the same husband and wife as the divorce card.
Event and Family Event cards
Event cards can be used to record occurrences not fitting into the other
predetermined card types. Common life events might include baptism,
confirmation, bar mitzvah, graduation, engagement, and
burial, but these cards can also be used for more specialized situations
such as buying a house or starting a new job.
Each event has four fields: the person to whom the event occurs, the date and place of the event, and a brief description of the event. For the common events listed above, a single word such as "Baptized" should suffice. Since a link to the event appears in the corresponding person and place cards, the description should start with a capital letter.
The Family Event card differs from the event card in having two links
to people, a husband and wife. It can be used for events such as
engagements, banns, separations, or anything else that happens to a
couple rather than to an individual. Gene does not check whether there
is a marriage card with the same husband and wife as the family event
card.
Document cards
A document card is used to record the name of a source of information,
such as a book on early settlers of the country, that mentions the
family you are researching. The document card has fields for the title
of the document (also used as the name of the card), the date the
document was published, its author (a string, rather than a link), and
its publisher. If you wish to record information about where the
document can be found, or other notes about the document, these can go
in the text pane of the document card. References within the document
to a particular member of the family can be recorded using a citation card.
Citation cards
You should use citation cards to record a passage within a document that
refers to a specific family member. Citation cards have three fields:
the name of the document containing the citation, the name of the person
referred to in the citation, and a "reference" field which should be
used to record page numbers or other information used to find the
citation in the document. If the relevant passage in the document is
sufficiently short, it may make sense to include it in the text pane of
the citation card.
3.3. Menus
The Cards menu
Gene provides a menu in the menu bar, labeled "Cards", that provides a
variety of commands for adding and removing cards from the database or
viewing lists of cards.
The Edit menu also contains three commands that are specific to cards and their fields: Enter, Cancel, and Complete. To make changes to a card field, edit it like any other piece of text. Gene does not actually store the information you have typed until you are done changing it. The signal that you are done is normally that you are moving to a different field by clicking the mouse, using the return key, or using the arrow keys. The Enter command provides a way of telling Gene that you are done editing a field, without moving to a different one. Since Gene does not actually store any changes until you are done with a field, you can also restore the field to the value it had before you started changing it, using the Cancel command.
The Complete command provides a way of abbreviating names
and other information. If you type part of a person's name, the
Complete command will replace what you've typed by the longest match it
can find to a name already in the database. The completion command can
be shorcut using the escape key; the tab key also performs completion if
it can't perform its more normal function of moving to another field.
Completion works best for names written last name first, so for instance
in a field linking a card to a person you could type "Ep" and partially
complete the field to "Eppstein," then type "Da" and complete it again
to "David Arthur Eppstein" using only six keystrokes instead of as many
as twenty. Note that Gene can start with a name specified last name
first, and complete it to a name in the more common first name first
order if that's the way the name is stored in the database.
3.4. Creating new cards
There are three methods of adding cards to a Gene database, two of
which involve commands in submenus of the Cards menu.
The New of Same Type command acts as a shortcut to the New Cards submenu,
and creates a new empty card of the same type as the currently displayed
card or card list.
If the topmost window is a picture, a new empty picture will be created.
If you create a new card
but do not add a name or any links, there would be no way for you to
find and re-open the card after you close it.
Therefore, if you try to close the card's window or save the database,
Gene will ask whether to
delete the card; the best response would usually be to cancel
the operation and add a name or link to the card.
When you delete a card, it will be removed from the
links panes of any cards it had links to, and any cards having links to
it will in turn have those link fields changed to be blank. If this
causes a card with no name to also have no links, you will no longer
have any way to open or delete that card (unless it is already open), so
you should be careful of the order in which you delete a sequence of cards.
3.5. Removing cards from the database
If you want to remove a card from the database, open a window for that
card so that it is the topmost window visible in Gene, and use the
"Delete Card" command in the Cards menu.
Since this action is permanent and irrevocable, Gene will bring up a dialog asking you whether you really want to delete that card.
3.6. Following Links from Card to Card
When you are viewing any card in the Gene database, you can open other
cards related to it by following links. Many cards have
link fields giving the names of other related
cards; in addition, a card with a name will have a
links pane listing the cards with its name in their
link fields. All of these links are indicated by small triangles in
Gene. You can click your mouse on a triangle (or on the name of the
corresponding field) to open the card on the other end of the link. If
you hold down the option key while clicking on a link, the card you were
previously viewing will be replaced by the other card; otherwise, the
other card will be displayed in a new window. Alternately, Gene
provides a "Follow Link" command in the Cards menu; position the cursor
in a link field and use this command.
3.7. Adding Information to Card Fields
You can change any field of a card by clicking the mouse in a field to
position the cursor there, typing the new value of the field, and
pressing the return key (or using Enter from the Edit menu). Return differs from Enter in that it will move to
the next field. If you make a mistake typing, use Cancel to return to
the original field value. For certain field types, you can use
Complete
(or the tab key) to save typing: type enough of the field to specify it
unambiguously, and tab will fill in the rest.
The following sections
describe the format to use in filling in fields of different types.
Card Names
Certain cards, such as those for people and places, have a field
designated as the card's name and used in links from other cards. You
can change the name simply by typing and entering the new name in the
field; all links will automatically be changed to the new name. No two
cards can have the same name. The name of the card is used to refer to
it in many other parts of Gene, so it is important to select it
carefully.
Gene can handle people's names either
last name first ("Fox, Daniel") or first name first ("Daniel Fox"). These
two formats are considered equivalent, so you can refer to the same card by
either ordering, but the first name first order may look better in trees
and printouts. Names are alphabetized by surname, then by the rest of
the name, so all cards with surnames of "Fox" would be placed together.
Since names are used to identify cards, each card must have a unique
name. However in typical databases, some people will have
indistinguishable names. We recommend that you add a number at the end
of the name, such as "Daniel Fox (1)", when people have the same
name, in order to tell them apart. If you try to use the same name for
two different cards, Gene will ask whether to automatically add such
numbers for you to make the names unique.
If the first name is first, Gene takes the surname to
be the last word of the name (not counting "Jr.", "Sr.", or Roman
numerals). If someone has a name involving several words, that you wish
to write in first name first order, use the option-space character
instead of the usual kind of space to separate the words in the last
name. The option-space is sometimes known as a "no-break space", and
usually looks a little wider than a normal space; type it by holding
down the option key while you press the space bar. For instance, Gene
would normally alphabetize the name "Peter van Emde Boaz" under "Boaz".
To make Gene alphabetize this name under "Emde", use an option-space
between "Emde" and "Boaz" in place of the normal space there. To make
Gene alphabetize it under "van", use another option-space between "van"
and "Emde".
Gene expects place names to be typed as a list of strings separated
by commas, in order of greater
generality from left to right, as "Tisbury, Martha's Vinyard,
Massachusetts". Place names are alphabetized by the most general name
first, so all cards with the final string equal to "Massachusetts" would
be alphabetized together, and within that group all cards with the next
string equal to "Martha's Vinyard" would be alphabetized together.
Gene's requirement that names be unique is not such a problem for place
names as it is for person names, as e.g. the Tisbury above and Tisbury,
Wiltshire, England obviously have different names.
Dates
Dates in Gene are formed by a month, day, and year or year range.
Any of these fields can be omitted, but it is only possible
to have a day of the month if the month is known. To represent an
unknown date, simply leave it blank.
The month can either be written by
its name or by number, and month names can be abbreviated.
Year numbers should include the century; do not abbreviate the year. Years should normally have three or four digits; if you wish to refer to a really early year, precede it with some zeros, as "007" so Gene can tell that you mean a year number and not a month number. You can specify a range of years by separating the start and end of the range by a slash or a dash, such as "1995-2001" or "1783/1784". You can also abbreviate any such range by including only as many digits as are different in the second number, so the second range above could be abbreviated "1783/4".
Any date may be preceded by one of three modifier words "before",
"after", or "circa". These may be abbreviated by the characters "<",
">", and "~" respectively. It is also possible to include a question
mark at the end of any date, to indicate that you are unsure of its
accuracy.
Date preferences
Gene's preferences dialog provides several panels controlling
the way Gene formats dates in card fields, card links, and trees.
(Gene does not allow you to change the date formats for its databases
and for the Export command.)
Each of these panels provides menus that let you select whether
modifiers and months should be abbreviated, how year ranges should be indicated,
and what punctuation to use between the parts of a date.
The "Date Input" panel
controls how Gene interprets numeric months.
If you write a month and date both as numbers,
you must be consistent about which order you write them.
The usual American practice writes the month first,
so "8/2/1722" would mean August 2, 1722.
However the European convention is that the same
date would be interpreted date first, as 8 February 1722.
Gene will output numeric months consistently with the input
ordering selected in this panel.
Links
You can make a link from one card to another by typing the second card's
name in the appropriate field of the first card; you can then follow the link by clicking the mouse on the field
name or using the "Follow Link" command. Each link field has a
specified type of card to which it makes links, so you can not link the
mother field of a person to a place, or the birthplace to a person. If
the name you type is not in use, Gene will ask whether to create a new
card. For most links, you need only type enough to unambiguously
specify a unique card, then press tab or use
"Complete" from the Edit menu; Gene will fill in
the rest of the name. However, place name completion is not currently
implemented.
If you change a link field, the link will point to a different card.
If instead you want to keep the link to the same card, but change that
card's name, you must open the window for that card and change the name
field there. If you change the name of a card, any links to it will
automatically change to match the new name. If you delete a card, any
links to it will automatically be made blank.
Enumerated values
The sex field of a person's card is of a special type that can only hold
a finite number of different values; in the case of the sex field the
possible values are male, female, or blank (unknown). The sex field is
set automatically by Gene whenever a link is made in a way that will
identify a person's gender (as a mother, husband, etc.) but if no such
link exists you will need to set the sex by hand. To change the sex,
simply type the new value or an unambiguous abbreviation. The sex is
used by Gene to control how it uses certain
templates to create new cards.
Strings and Numbers
Some cards have a field that can contain a single line of text.
For instance this sort of field is used in Death cards
to record the cause of the death. You can put whatever information you
like in this sort of field.
It is also possible to have a field that can only contain a number.
This is not currently used in any of the cards defined in Gene, but is available
for user-defined card types.
3.8. Making lists of cards
To list all cards of a given type, select a card
type from the List Cards submenu in the Cards menu, or use the "List
This Card" command to list cards of the current card's type.
Gene will then open a new window displaying an alphabetized list of card names.
To open a card in the list, click on the triangle icon next to its name, or
press return after selecting a name (with the mouse or by searching).
You can scroll the list using the arrow keys. Shifted arrow keys scroll
a window at a time instead of a line at a time. The Print command
prints the list.
You can select and copy text from the names window, but to change a
name you must open that card and change it there. The names window is
automatically updated to reflect changes made in other windows.
When the active window is a list of card names, you can search for a
part of any name just by typing that string. Gene will begin
searching at the current selection point in the window, then wrap the
search around to the beginning of the window if necessary. If a search
fails, Gene will beep and the currently selected text will remain
unchanged. You can search for substrings anywhere in names, so for instance
"ana" would be found as a match in "Diana Eppstein". Upper and lower
case letters are treated as equivalent, so the same matches would be
found for "Ana". If a string in the name list window is already
selected, each new character you type will be added to the end of the
selection and Gene will search for the new longer string. The tab key
searches again for the currently selected text.
A list of person cards is automatically displayed by Gene when it starts up;
the choice of which card to list can be changed in the
preferences dialog.
4. Trees
The Trees menu bar provides commands for drawing trees that show the
ancestors or descendants of a given person, or the relation between a
pair of people. Trees can be viewed on the screen, sent to a printer or
saved as a file. While viewing any tree, you
can click on a name in a tree to brings up the corresponding card.
To draw a tree, use one of the following tree-drawing commands in the Trees menu:
In most cases you need merely fill out the name of a person and press "Ok". If you use a tree-drawing command when a person card is already open, you don't even need to do that much; the card's name will be filled into the dialog by default. Trees of relations require two names; if the other trees are given two names they will form a connected pair of trees starting with those names. To re-open the dialog used for a previous drawing, use the "Redo Tree" command.
We include below the following examples of trees drawn by Gene.
The dialog also provides a space for a number limiting the width of
the tree. The meaning of this number varies according to the output
format: on-screen drawings and postscript allow pixels, inches, or
centimeters, while text and plotter output can measure only width in
numbers of characters. You can convert from one unit to another by
selecting the new unit in the pull-down menu on the dialog. This menu
also has commands to set the width to the width of the screen (in
pixels) or the current printer's page width (in inches). The default is
to make tree drawings the width of the screen.
Tree drawing styles
The tree dialog includes a menu below the tree drawing type,
listing options "Names Only", "Terse", and "Verbose".
This menu allows you to
select between different styles of tree drawing. In verbose style,
the tree will include abbreviated information from the cards, detailing
the births, deaths, and marriages of the people in the tree.
In terse style, only birth and death years are listed.
And in names only style, no dates are shown.
The example of an ancestor grid in this file is
drawn in names only style, the ancestor tree
is drawn in terse style, and the descendant
tree is drawn in verbose style.
In ancestor trees and grids, you can also choose whether to draw the
tree vertically (as in the example) or horizontally (similar to
descendant trees), using another pair of buttons in the tree dialog.
If the same descendant appears in multiple positions in the tree
(because of intermarriage), that person's name will appear in each
place, but any further descendants in that line will be included only
once; their absence in other places will be marked by ellipses as above.
If an adopted child appears in a descendant tree drawn in the
"Names Only" style, the name of the child will be
put in parentheses to denote a non-blood relation.
4.2. Descendant trees
The "Descendants" tree drawing command draws trees of the descendants of
a specified person (or pair of people). As many generations of
descendants are included as will fit within the specified width. If
descendants are omitted their absence will be indicated by an ellipsis
("..."). Descendant trees can only be drawn horizontally.
Below we show a descendant tree, drawn in the "verbose" style.
4.3. Ancestor trees and grids
The "Ancestors" tree drawing command draws trees of the ancestors of a
specified person. Two styles are available: vertical and horizontal. We
include an example of the vertical style; horizontal trees are similar to
descendant trees.
As the example shows, vertical trees can merge ancestral
lines together when the tree involves marriages between cousins.
A horizontal tree for the same person would list some ancestors twice.
A different type of ancestor tree drawing, the "Ancestor Grid", connects generations alternately left-right and up-down, so that ancestors are spread in a grid around their common descendant. The horizontal or vertical style determines which direction is used first. The tree structure of these drawings is less clear than in the "Ancestors" tree but the grid can sometimes fit more names in the given space. Unlike the other tree drawings, when the ancestor grid runs out of room to add more generations it simply cuts the tree off, without adding any ellipses. Below we show a horizontal ancestor grid.
4.4. Relation drawings
The "Relations" tree drawing command takes the names of two people in
the database, and depicts any blood relationship between those people as
a form of vertical tree (similar to the vertical ancestor tree style).
If the two specified people are not known to be related, Gene will
display a message explaining that it could not find a relationship. If
the two people belong to a highly intermarried family, such as the
British royal family (shown in the example), they may have more
relations than will fit in the specified width; in this case Gene
displays a warning message and shows as many relations as will fit,
keeping those involving the fewest generations.
4.5. Printing and saving trees
Gene provides several methods for printing the trees it draws,
or for storing them in files.
You may need to draw your tree with a narrower width than the default, in order to get it to fit on a page; the "page width" command in the width menu of the tree dialog causes the tree to be drawn just wide enough to fit on a page (as determined by the printer settings from the last time Page Setup was used).
Some printer drivers have an option for sending their output to a
file instead of a printer, so it may be possible for you to use the
Print command to save your tree as a postscript file, portable document
file, or other format file depending on what printer drivers you have
installed.
Copying trees
The "Copy" command in the Edit menu allows
trees to be copied from Gene to the Macintosh clipboard, and pasted from there
(using the "Paste" command) into documents managed by programs other
than Gene. The tree will be
copied as a "Pict" format object, which is a Macintosh standard that is
understood by most word processors and drawing programs; programs also
exist for converting drawings in this format into other
standard formats such as GIF and JPEG. The "Show Clipboard" command in
the Edit menu views whatever you have most recently copied.
Drawing directly to files
Gene can create files containing tree drawings, in several formats:
Gene stores pictures in either of two ways. The picture data can be stored directly in your file, or instead the database can store an alias to a separate picture file. Storing a picture directly may be more convenient in terms of using and sharing your data, since you only need to keep track of a single file; however if you have many pictures in your database, all stored directly, your file may grow very large and unwieldy. Therefore Gene also allows you to store pictures in separate files, with the database storing only an alias to the file (essentially this is just the file name together with some extra information to help find the file if you move it to a different location). The Edit Picture dialog displays the storage type in a menu that can also be used to change this type.
Gene provides the following commands in the Pictures menu for dealing with pictures.
Adding a picture to Gene is a three step process. First you must create a place to store the picture, using the "New Picture" command. Gene will create a picture card, but will not have any image to display for it. Second, use either the "Paste" command (in the Edit menu) or the "Paste From File" command (in the Pictures menu) to paste an image into the picture you have created. Third, after either type of paste command, you should use the "Edit Picture" command to give your picture a name, so that when you close the picture or run Gene at a later time you can use the "List Pictures" command to find the picture again.
The Paste command copies an image from the Macintosh clipboard to the currently open picture. Most Macintosh programs that create or manipulate images will have a Copy command that places an image onto the clipboard, from which it can be pasted into Gene. Images added to Gene with the Paste command are stored directly in the Gene database.
The Paste From File command will put up a dialog asking for a file,
in PICT format, containing an image.
(Gene can not presently handle other formats of image files, such as photo-CD format;
it is possible that other formats will be added to future versions of Gene.)
Once you specify a PICT file, Gene will display that image,
and store an alias pointing to the file. Once you have pasted a picture
this way, you should not move or delete the PICT file, since then Gene
may be unable to find the image stored in it.
5.2. Naming pictures and adding buttons
The "Edit Picture" command displays a dialog like the following one.
The top part of this dialog deals with the picture as a whole. Every picture should be given a name, using the space provided here; without a name it would be difficult for you to find the picture and display it again. The "Done" button tells Gene to stop displaying the Edit Picture dialog and return to viewing the picture. The "Find Picture" button leaves the dialog displayed, but selects the picture itself as the active window.
The larger region in the lower part of the dialog is used to create buttons. A button is a rectangular region of the picture, having the property that if you click your mouse in it, Gene will automatically display some other card or picture. Buttons in pictures are therefore similar to links in cards, and in fact any buttons connecting a picture to a card will be listed in the card's links pane. However, unlike links, buttons can connect pictures to cards of different types, and even to other pictures. The only requirement is that the card or picture to be displayed must have a name. A picture may have many buttons (for instance a scanned image of a group portrait might have a separate button on each of the faces in the portrait).
To create a button, open the Edit Picture dialog, use the "Find
Window" command to go back to the picture's window, and use your mouse
to select a rectangular region. Gene will create a button corresponding
to that region and put you back in the Edit Picture dialog so you can
type the name of the card to be opened by that button. By default, Gene
makes buttons connecting to person cards; to make a button to a
different type of card use the "Card Type" menu before you can set the
card name. To make a link to another picture, simply choose "Picture"
as the card type. To create a button covering most of the picture,
without having to select the whole picture using your mouse, select the
New Button command in the Edit Picture dialog.
Once you have created a button, Gene will display
its boundary as a rectangle on the picture. You can change the size and
shape of the button to fit the desired region of the picture either by
clicking and dragging the rectangle boundaries in the picture, or by
changing the numbers controlling the button's boundaries in the Edit
Picture dialog. If two buttons overlap, only the first one of them will
be activated by a mouse click in the region of overlap; use the "Move To
Front" and "Move To End" commands in the Edit Picture dialog to control
the ordering among the buttons.5.3. Captions and Links
Pictures in Gene are treated in many ways like cards; in particular they
have a links pane and a text
pane, just like cards. However by default Gene only displays these
panes if they are non-empty. Normally, the only links shown in a
picture's links pane will be buttons in other pictures. The text pane
of a card is more useful; it can be used to record a brief caption
describing the contents of the picture, the source and date of the
picture, or any other information you want. To add text to a picture,
use the "Show Text" command to make the text pane visible, use the mouse
to select the text pane, and type the text. Once you have added text to
a picture, the text pane will be displayed by default whenever you open
the picture again. To hide the text pane leaving more room on the
screen for the picture itself, use the "Show Text" command again.
Copyright 1995, David and Diana Eppstein.