Gene 4.1 User Guide
Gene 4.1 User GuideGene'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The following sections describe the format to use in filling in fields of different types.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Below we show a descendant tree, drawn in the "verbose" style.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Copyright 1995, David and Diana Eppstein.
