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Gene 4.3 Technical Notes
This HTML file documents the Gene shareware genealogy program for
the Apple Macintosh, including information about its database
storage format and about the resource data used to define new card
types. You do not need to read this file to learn how to use Gene;
instead refer to the Gene User Guide.
This documentation provides information on the following
topics.
Gene's files are stored in a flat-file text format, for ease of
network transmission and use by other applications. You can use
Gene to read any text file on your computer, whether or not that
file was created by Gene, however Gene will complain if the file it
reads does not conform to the format Gene expects. This section
documents that format.
As with any Macintosh file, Gene's database
files have two parts: the resource fork and the data fork. The
resource fork contains pictures as well as descriptions of any
extra nonstandard card types used by the database. The resource
fork format is described later, when we disuss card
type definitions. The data fork is text, organized as a
sequence of cards, separated by blank lines. Some of the
information about pictures is also stored here as a special kind of
card. Each card is stored as a sequence of text lines, one for each
field and a variable number for the card's unstructured text notes.
The first line of a card gives the type and name of the card, and
succeeding lines fill in field values and supply the card's text.
An empty line in the database file signals the end of the card and
a start of a new card.
As written by Gene, cards of the same type will be stored
consecutively in the file, in alphabetical order by the cards'
names. However, this order is not important to Gene when it reads
the file. We describe below the details of the card format, and
provide a short example of database file
text.
1.1. Card Data Format
As discussed above, each card is stored as a sequence of lines in
the database file. Blank lines are used to separate cards from each
other.
Gene's format requires all the different lines describing a card to
include a colon. In the first line, the colon separates the card's
type from its name. In the field lines, it separates the field name
from its value. And in the text lines, the colon appears at the
start of the line.
The first line of a card supplies the card's type and name. The
card type comes first, followed by a colon. If the card has a name,
the card name follows the colon. No two cards of the same type can
have the same name. If the card type does not include a name field,
or if the card can have a name but is unnamed, the first line of
the card ends immediately after the colon.
An unnamed card should always include a link to some other card;
otherwise there would be no way to open the card. However Gene does
not check to make sure that the cards in its files have links or
names.
The card format includes one line for each nonempty field of the
card. Each such line consists of the field's name and a colon,
followed by the field's value. Field values are written the same
way they would be displayed when the card is viewed, and their
format is described in the
Gene User Guide.
A link field may refer to a card appearing later in the
database. If a link refers to a card that does not appear in the
database, a new card will be created with the given name.
Gene represents pictures as a special type of card. Pictures are
distinguished from other cards in Gene by having fields of type
"PictID" and "PictLink".
- A "PictID" is just a number giving the resource IDs of the PICT or alis resources
defining the picture itself. There should be exactly one resource
of either type in the resource fork of the file.
- A "PictLink" is a special type of field that represents the
buttons of the picture. It is stored the database by multiple
lines, one per button, each line starting with the field name and a
colon. The format of the data in each line is six fields, separated
by colons: four numbers for the coordinates of the top right and
bottom left button corners, the type of card the button forms a
link to, and the name of the linked card.
The text area in a Gene card is by definition unformatted. However
there is some minimal amount of formatting needed within the
database file, so that Gene can distinguish between the text of one
card and data from subsequent cards. In particular, we allow the
text area to contain blank lines, and these must not be confused in
the database file with the blank lines used to separate cards.
For this reason, every line of text in the database file begins
with a colon. Text is thus distinguished from the fields in that
the lines for fields begin with the field name (field names are not
allowed to begin with a colon).
When Gene writes a database file it will place the text after
the fields. However it can read files in which text and fields are
mixed. The lines of text will occur in the card in the same order
in which they appear in the database file.
1.5. Picture Format
Gene represents pictures as a special type of card, together with
some extra information stored in the resource
fork of the database file. Pictures are distinguished from
other cards in Gene by having two special fields, of type PictID and PictLink. The PictID
gives the resource IDs of the PICT or alis resources defining the picture itself, and the
PictLink stores the buttons linking the picture to other cards.
Because the fields of a picture can only be manipulated indirectly
with the Edit Picture dialog, a picture card should have at most
one more field, its name.
The following lines are taken from a database file and show three
cards. The first two (a person and a document) have names, while
the third (a marriage) is of an unnamed type. The first card has
five lines of text, while the others have empty text panes. In
addition, the person and marriage cards contain links to two other
person cards, for Hannah Brooks and Thomas Fox (1).
Document: Descendants of Thomas Fox
Author: Henry Fox
:Full title:
:Descendants of Thomas Fox, circa 1620, of Concord, Massachusetts
:
:Lots of information on the Fox family.
:The NYPL copy is in pretty bad condition, and some pages are missing.
Person: Thomas Fox (2)
Birthday: 26 February 1650
Mother: Hannah Brooks
Father: Thomas Fox (1)
Sex: male
Marriage:
Wife: Hannah Brooks
Husband: Thomas Fox (1)
Date: 13 December 1647
All the cards used by Gene were defined by including certain
resources (a form of structured information used in all
Macintosh files) as part of the Gene application. By including
similar resources in a Gene database file, you can define
additional card types that can be used in that file. For instance,
in a database of royalty and nobility, it might make sense to have
cards describing the titles and heraldry of each person. Here we
define the format of those resources; Gene also allows some other
resources, described later, to
appear in database files.
2.1. Creating and Saving Files with Resource Definitions
Gene does not provide an interface for editing file resources;
instead you must use a general purpose resource editor such as
ResEdit (available from Apple). Always make a backup copy of your
file before using ResEdit. As a convenience for ResEdit users, Gene
includes a TMPL resource in its database files,
which ResEdit uses to describe the format of Gene's card definition
resources.
If Gene reads a database file that contains definitions of new
card types, it will remember those definitions and write them out
again when it saves the file. If a Gene database includes resources
that are not meaningful to Gene, those resources may be lost when
the file is saved.
When you use the Merge command to combine two Gene databases,
and the second file contains definitions of new card types,
something mysterious happens that is likely to produce a bogus
file. It should probably be ok if the first file is the only one
with new card type definitions.
2.2. Specific Resource Types
The resources used to define card types are the following; the most
important of these for new card definitions are "Card", "Link", and
"Lnk#".
- The "Card" resource contains the actual
card definitions.
- The "Enum" resource lists the possible
values of enumerated fields.
- The "Link" resource gives a mechanism for
construction of formatted strings, used in link panes, verbose
trees, and GEDCOM output.
- The "Lnk#" resource selects which Link
resource to apply in each situation.
- The "Redr" resource "redirects" card links
through a field on the card; e.g. adoptions are redirected to make
adopted children show up in trees.
The "Card" resource contains the actual definition of each new card
type. All other resources are less important (although some such as
Link resources are necessary for certain types
of cards). For each new card type, there should be a "Card"
resource, having the card type name as the resource name. The
resource ID is unimportant.
Card resources have four values that are part of the overall
definition, and a sequence of values defining each field of the
card. The four values are:
- Named Field. This is the number of the name field (counting
from zero, i.e. the third field would be 2). For unnamed cards it
is -1.
- Sort Field. This gives a date field for positioning the card in
other cards' link panes. The field number is given with the same
zero-based convention used for Named Field, or -1 if there is no
date.
- Link String. This is the ID of the card's Lnk# resource. For
backward compatibility with older versions of Gene, if there is no
Lnk# resource Gene will look for a Link resource with the same
ID.
- Name Sort. This describes how card names should be sorted in
the Names window. The possible choices are "Alphabetical", "Case
Sensitive", "Person", or "Place". The last two invoke code in Gene
which attempts to find surnames of people, and which breaks place
names into components separated by commas.
After the four general values in a card definition, the Card
resource includes a sequence of two values for each field: the
field name (any string not including a colon) and a string
describing the field type. The possible field types are:
- "Name X" where X is the name of the card type
being defined. There can be at most one name, which should also be
specified by Named Field.
- "Date". If the card has date fields, one should be specified by
Sort Field.
- "Link X" where X is a card type. This creates a
link to cards of type X, which must have a name field. Cards
with link fields should have a Lnk# resource
describing how they should be shown in the links pane of the target
of the link.
- "ListLink X" where X is a card type. This creates
a field containing a list of links to cards of type X,
separated by semicolons.
- "Enum X" where X is an enumerated type defined in
an Enum resource.
- "String". A field of this type is treated as unformatted
text.
- "Number". A field of this type contains a sequence of decimal
digits.
- "PictID". This is just a number
representing a picture's resource ID.
- "PictLink". This is used to represent the
buttons in a picture.
We now go through an example of a card definition for the Person
card in Gene. The four general values of the "Person" card resource
are:
Named Field: 0
Sort Field: 1
Link String: 128
Name Sort: Person
The six fields of a person have as names and field descriptors:
Name Name Person
Birthday Date
Birthplace Link Place
Mother Link Person
Father Link Person
Sex Enum Sex
Each enumerated type (such as the sex of a person) is specified
using an "Enum" resource. The ID is unimportant, but the name of
the resource is used for the name of the corresponding field type
(e.g. the Enum resource named "Sex" corresponds to fields with type
"Enum Sex").
The values of an Enum resource are simply a sequence of strings
specifying the values the corresponding fields can have. Any field
of the given type must either have one of the given strings as its
value, or may be blank. For the "Sex" Enum resource in Gene, these
strings are "male" and "female".
The "Link" resource is used by Gene to turn information from cards
into text strings, in several situations: when generating the
information about the card in the link pane of another card, when
drawing verbose trees, and when exporting Gene data to a GEDCOM
file. A given Link resource will handle one of these situations,
for one specific type of card; Lnk# resources
are used to tell which Link resource to use.
Each Link resource consists of a sequence of operations, and
should be thought of as a small computer program consisting of a
sequence of simple operations that translate the information on a
card's fields into a text string. When a Link resource is used, the
operations are performed one at a time, starting from the first
one. The order in which operations are defined in the Link resource
is largely irrelevant; after each operation is performed,
information in that operation tells Gene the next operation to
perform. Six fields appear in an individual operation, although
most operations will leave one or more of these fields blank.
- The "Type" should be a letter telling which of various types of
operation to perform.
- The "Fld Num" contains the number of a field on the given card
(fields are numbered starting from zero).
- The "Next" field points to the operation to perform after the
current one.
- The "Yes" and "No" fields also give numbers of other operations
in this Link resource, and are used by conditional operations.
- The "String" resource is a text string used by the
ÔSÕ operation.
The operations in a Link resource can be broadly classed into two
types. Some operations output a string from information on the
given card, and then always perform the next operation according to
their "Next" field, which should give the number of another
operation in the Link resource. The Next field of the last
operation in the sequence should be set to zero.
Other link operations are "conditional" operations that do not
output anything, but instead control the order in which other
operations are performed. Each such operation tests a condition
(such as whether some field of the card is empty), and depending on
whether the answer is yes or no, performs next the operation with
the number in the "Yes" or "No" field of the conditional. If this
number is zero, no operation is performed. A conditional operation
may still have a nonzero "Next" field, just like an output
operation; in this case the operation at that number is performed
after the operations from the "Yes" or "No" field.
The following Link operation types are currently available:
- The "C" operation is a conditional used when we are creating a
string for a link pane, and tests whether the "Fld Num" number of
the operation points to the field of the card that used to make the
link.
- The "E" operation is a conditional that tests whether the field
given by the field number is empty.
- The "F" operation outputs the information in a field of the
card specified by "Fld Num".
- The "G" operation is like the "F" operation, but modifies the
field for GEDCOM export. Dates are output according to the GEDCOM
specification, and card names are modified to put slashes around
the surname.
- The "I" operation is also used for GEDCOM export. It outputs a
number, the unique ID of the card pointed to by the link field
given by "Fld Num", computed as part of Gene's GEDCOM export code.
If the Field number points to the card's name, or is negative, the
ID of the card itself will be output.
- The "S" operation outputs a fixed string given in the "String"
field of the Link operation.
- The "T" operation is obsolete (its functionality has been
replaced by Lnk# resources) but is retained for
backward compatibility with older Gene databases; it is a
conditional for testing what situation is causing us to use this
Link resource.
We give as an example a link resource used to create the link pane
text for "Death" cards. We show side by side the actual sequence of
operations, and a version of the same program expressed in slightly
more intelligable pseudocode.
1. C Fld:0 Next:5 Y:2 N:3 If link pane is for person who died
2. S Str:"Died " output "Died "
3. F Fld:0 Next:4 else output name of person who died
4. S Str:" died " output " died "
5. F Fld:1 Next:6 Output date of death
6. C Fld:2 No:7 If link pane isn't for place of death
7. E Fld:2 No:8 and place of death isn't empty
8. S Next:9 Str:" at " output " at "
9. F Fld:2 output place of death
The "LnkN" resource provides a mechanism for applying different
Link resources to produce strings for a given card type in
different contexts. Contexts such as creating link panes, tree
drawings, and GEDCOM output, are represented in Gene simply as
small numbers, starting from zero. Each Lnk# resource is simply an
array of Link resource IDs. The first ID in the list is used to
create strings for context zero, the second for context one, and so
on. If there is no need to create a string in a certain context,
the ID in that position of the array should be zero. The Lnk#
resource also supplies a "default" Link resource id to be used when
no context-specific resource is available.
The following contexts are currently in use by Gene.
| 0: |
Link pane text. |
| 1-2: |
Verbose tree person and links. |
| 3-4: |
GEDCOM output (controlled by gOut
resources). |
| 5: |
Window name (for window menu, also used by some tree output
formats). |
| 6-8: |
Terse tree birth date, death date, close paren. |
| 9-10: |
Name&Date tree birth date, death date. |
| 11: |
Additional events for All Events tree format. |
For backward compatibility with older versions of Gene, if no Lnk#
resource has the resource number specified in the card definition,
Gene will instead look for a Link resource with that number, and
use it in all contexts.
The "Redr" resource is used to "redirect" one card to point to
another, so that a reference to the first type of card becomes an
indirect reference to the second type of card. The resource has two
fields: the name of a card type, and the number of the field on
that card that should be used as the indirect reference. There can
be at most one Redr resource per card type.
For tree drawings, a Redr resource is used on adoption cards,
pointing to the person card of the adoptee. The tree drawing
commands use this information to include adopted children in
trees.
It is intended that Redr resources can be used on named cards,
causing any links to those cards to automatically become links to
the indirect reference. This could only happen if both cards had
names in the same card name list, which is not yet possible.
3. Other Resources
Along with the resources used to define card types, a Gene database
file can contain the following other types of resource.
The "alis" resource is a Macintosh-standard way of storing aliases
to files. (An alias contains not only the file name but also some
other information that helps the Macintosh system to make sure that
it is pointing to the correct file and to find the file if it has
moved.) Gene uses aliases for storing pointers to PICT and JPEG
files, containing pictures that are stored externally to the Gene
database itself. Each alis resource should correspond to a number
in the PictID field of a picture card. Since
pictures can also be stored as PICT resources
within the database, the alis and PICT resource ID's should be
chosen to be distinct from each other. This numbering is done
automatically by Gene when a user creates a picture.
The "Dflt" resource lets Gene automatically fill in certain enum
fields when links are made. For instance, when the "Wife" field of
a marriage card is set, the sex of the wife is set to female if it
was blank. The name and ID of Dflt resources are unimportant. Each
Dflt resource has four values:
- "Link Field" is the field which when changed causes a default.
In the example above, this value is 0 ("Wife" is the first field of
a marriage card).
- "Enum Field" is the field to be filled by default (5, for a
person's "Sex" field).
- "Card Type" is the name of the card type containing the link
field ("Marriage"). The type of the enum field's card is determined
by looking at the definition of the link field.
- "Value" specifies the default value ("female").
The "gOut" resource controls the translation of the Gene database
to a GEDCOM file in Gene's Export command.
A GEDCOM file consists of a sequence of lines. Each line
consists of a "level number", an optional name, a four-letter
"tag", and then some data which may be the name of another line or
unstructured text. In Gene, names of GEDCOM lines have the form
"@Xid@" or "@Xid1:id2@" where X is a letter and id, id1, and id2
are numbers formed using the 'I' operation in a
Link resource.
The level numbers represent a tree: the root of the tree is not
specified and should be thought of as being at level -1; lines with
a level number of zero are children of the root; lines with level
number one are children of the previous level-zero line; and so on.
Gene's output consists of some preamble lines, the data itself, and
some postamble lines. The data lines are structured as a sequence
of level-0 subtrees, each of which corresponds to either a single
Gene card or a pair of cards. Each subtree can contain lines from
the corresponding card(s), and also from the cards with links to
those cards.
One particular type of GEDCOM line that needs to be dealt with
specially in Gene is the "NOTE" (the word "NOTE" appears as the tag
of such lines). NOTEs have a function analogous to the text fields
of Gene's cards. Text in note lines is limited to 80 characters,
but notes can be extended by two kinds of lines, each of which must
have a level number one greater than the "NOTE" line: "CONC" adds
more text to the previous NOTE line itself, and "CONT" continues
the note on a new line. As we discuss below, gOut resources provide
a mechanism for translating text into NOTE lines and their
continuations. Gene automatically breaks the note into shorter
chunks using CONC and CONT lines.
Each gOut resource controls the lines output by some card type
in one of these subtrees. A gOut has five components:
- The "Link Type" gives a context number to be used by the card's
Lnk# resource to determine which Link resource to use to output the card's GEDCOM
lines.
- The "Note Number" controls translation of the card's text into
note lines, after the lines created by the "Link" resource. This
number gives the level which the NOTE line should use; successive
CONC and CONT lines use a number one greater than this. If the
given number is -1, no NOTE is created.
- "ID1" and "ID2" control which subtree of the GEDCOM file the
output should be included in. These give field numbers for the
given card type, which are typically link fields pointing to the
card or pair of cards corresponding to the subtree the output
should be created. If the field number is a name field, the card
itself is used; if the number is -1, no card is used (so in gOut's
for subtrees corresponding to a single card, ID2 should be
-1).
- The "Card Type" specifies the type of card supplying the data
to be output.
For example, Gene has two gOut resources with card type "Person".
The first is used to create a subtree containing most of the
information about the person, which in Gene is stored in several
different cards; this first gOut has link type 3, ID1=0 and ID2=-1
(specifying that the information is to be put in a subtree
corresponding to the given person), and note number 1. The second
gOut is used to put a pointer to the person in a subtree
corresponding to a "family". Gene itself has no concept of
families, so it creates families in the GEDCOM file for any two
people involved in a birth or marriage. The second gOut has link
type 4, ID1=2 and ID2=1, telling Gene to put the GEDCOM text in a
subtree indexed by the father and mother; it has note number -1
since the person's text pane is handled by the other gOut.
The "PICT" resource is a Macintosh-standard way of storing bitmap
images. Gene uses PICTS for storing pictures internally to the Gene
database. Each PICT resource should correspond to a number in the
PictID field of a picture card. Since
pictures can also be stored as alis resources
within the database, the alis and PICT resource ID's should be
chosen to be distinct from each other.
The "TMPL" resource is used to describe the format of the other
resources, so that they can be edited easily within ResEdit. When
you save a database file, Gene will automatically create a set of
TMPL resources in that file, describing the other possible types of
resource. Even if a file uses only the standard types of cards, the
TMPL resources will still be created, so that you can use ResEdit
to define new card types. These TMPL resources are not used by
Gene, but they should not be changed.
The Tplt resource is used to define ways of creating new cards
using information from existing cards. Tplt resources consist of
some general values specifying what kind of card the template
creates and when it applies, followed by a list of fields to copy
from the old card to the new one.
Each Tplt resource corresponds to an entry in the Templates
menu. The name of the menu entry is taken from the name of the
resource. Each menu entry may come from several Tplt resources, for
instance if the template depends on the gender of a person. If no
Tplt resource with a given name applies, the menu entry will be
inactive.
Each Tplt resource contains the following values:
- Command Key. This is a character used to abbreviate the
template command, or blank for templates with no abbreviation. the
command keys cmd-B, cmd-D, and cmd-M are reserved in Gene for use
as templates, so this key may consist of letters B, D, or M, or
punctuation other than the period.
- From Card. This specifies the type of card to which the
template applies.
- To Card. This specifies the type of new card the template
creates.
- Enum Value and Enum Field. If the template works for any card
of the From Card type, Enum Field should be -1. Otherwise, if the
template applies e.g. only to male people, Enum Field specify the
field of the From Card used to tell whether it applies (5, for Sex)
and Enum Value should be the value for which it applies
("male").
After the general values specified above, each Tplt resource
contains a list of the fields to copy from the previously existing
card to the new card created by the template. Each entry in the
list consists of two numbers, the first one specifying a number of
a field in the existing card, and the second one specifying the
number of the field in the new card to which the information should
be copied. When Gene performs a template command, it goes through
this list and copies the field values as strings. It is not
necessary for the fields on the existing card and the newly created
card to have the same types; Gene will create a string for the
copied value and attempt to set the new card's field value to that
string, as if you had typed that string directly into the new card.
The following example gives the values describing the "Child"
template, active when the currently open card refers to a male
person.
Command Key B Cmd-B is a shortcut for this template.
From Card Person It copies information from a person card
To Card Person to a new person card.
Enum Value male It is only active when the person is male
Enum Field 5 (there is a similar Tplt for female people).
From Field 0 The template copies the person's name
To Field 4 to the Father field of the new card
A template that copies more than one field (such as the Divorce
template for Marriage cards, which copies both the Husband and Wife
fields) would have more than one From Field and To Field pair, one
for each piece of information that is copied.
Tree resources describe commands in the Tree menu. The name of each
command is taken from the corresponding resource name. Each Tree
resource consists of the following values.
- "Tree Type" can be one of "F", "G", "L", or "R", corresponding
to Ancestor, Ancestor Grid, Descendant, and Relation tree drawing
styles respectively.
- The "Card Name" is the type of card appearing in the trees
("Person" for the trees built in to Gene). The card must have a
name field.
- After these two values, the resource contains a list of field
numbers. These numbers specify the fields by which connections can
be found (the Mother and Father fields for all the built in trees).
These fields must be links to cards of the same type specified in
Card Name.
We divide the history of Gene's development into three parts:
- The past. We describe the previous versions
of Gene, and explain why Gene's present version number is 4.
- The present. We list some of the more
important recent changes to Gene.
- The future. We outline some features that
we plan to eventually add to Gene (perhaps not in exactly the same
form as described).
Gene 4.x is the fourth incarnation of a program that has been
rewritten in several languages, on several platforms, with several
database formats.
David Eppstein wrote Gene 1.0 in Pascal on a DECsystem-20 at
Stanford University. It used a standard DEC-20 command line
interface and its data format resembled the fields of the present
person cards. He later rewrote Gene 2.0 using Prof. Don Knuth's WEB
system of "literate programming".
David then moved to Columbia University, and rewrote Gene 3.0 in
C++ for Unix, keeping a similar command-line interface. To make up
for the lack of a text pane or other cards than people, he added
complex user-defined fields to the file format (making it more
similar to GEDCOM than Gene's present format).
After David and Diana married, moved to Irvine, and started
using the Macintosh, Diana rewrote Gene 4.0, with design input from
David. The tree drawing code was adapted from the previous version
of Gene, and we re-used some basic data structures such as the
splay trees used to look up people's names, but the data storage
and user interface code is completely new. Gene is now written in
Symantec C++ for Macintosh, and uses a simple but flexible
card-based format (documented in this file) and a point-and-click
user interface (documented in the Gene
User Guide).
After the original release of Gene 4.0 in June 1994, three minor
releases 4.0.1, 4.0.2, and 4.0.3 were made. These mostly contained
bugfixes, but Gene 4.0.3 also included some changes of
functionality: a better user interface for setting tree drawing
widths, templates for children from marriage cards, and backward
compatibility with 68000 machines and system 6. Along with more
bugfixes, our next major release, 4.1, added the following features
to Gene 4.0:
- Pictures, stored either within the Gene database or as links to
external files.
- Buttons linking pictures to other cards.
- Import and export of GEDCOM data.
- Preference dialogs including control of date formatting.
- Ranges of years in dates.
- Improved tree drawings including more font sizes, more styles,
new ancestor grid layout, menu to switch layout type within the
tree dialog, and ability to save PICT files.
- New card types: Event and Family Event.
- Better alphabetization of people without surnames. (Previously
Gene mixed their names among the surnames; now they are grouped at
the start of the name list.)
Another minor release, Gene 4.1.1, did not add any new features,
but removed a number of bugs in Gene 4.1.
Major release 4.2 added the following new features:
- Report and web page generation.
- Menu of all open windows.
- Merge Cards command.
- Picture support for JPEG format files.
- Conversion of tree drawing into picture cards.
- Event and Citation cards now handle lists of people.
It also made some minor user interface improvements, such as
pop-up menus to set sex fields and allowing a small margin of
overlap when printing multi-page tree drawings. Another minor
release, Gene 4.2.1, did not add any new features, but removed a
number of bugs in Gene 4.2.
This document describes Gene 4.3. It adds the following new
features:
- "Export Ancestors" command.
- "Find Unlinked" command.
- "Name Change" card and template.
- "Source" field on many card types.
- "GEDCOM" field on Event and Family Event card types.
We are continuing to maintain and improve Gene. Our top priorities
for new features are
- A more general search command for finding cards with fields
matching user-defined patterns.
- Trees that show the whole network of relatives of a person,
rather than being limited to ancestors or descendants only.
Other possible future features include
- Macintosh drag-and-drop support for cards and name lists.
(Report views already support drag-and-drop.)
- More pop-up menus to set fields (currently, this only works for
sex).
- More control of the text displayed in tree drawings.
- A smarter merge command including automatic detection of
duplicate information.
- Searching the database for incomplete or inconsistent
information.
- The ability to create and manipulate subsets of the
database.
- A user interface for defining new card types.
- Scripting including scriptable actions when opening a
file.
Copyright 1995-2000 David and Diana Eppstein.
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Gene
4.2 Technical Notes