Gene 4.3 User Guide

Gene is a shareware Macintosh genealogy database management program, written by Diana and David Eppstein. (Diana did most of the programming, while David contributed to the database design, algorithms, and documentation.) Gene stores genealogical information in cards representing people, places, pictures, and events. You can use Gene to store family data and notes, draw and print family trees and pedigree charts, show how different people are related, create printed reports and web pages, or browse the database by clicking on names in cards and trees.

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 4.3. It includes information on the following topics.

• How to run the Gene program and create a new database
• What each of Gene's menus does
• How to enter and view family information in cards
• How to create and print family trees
• How to add pictures to the database and link them to cards
• How to create printed reports and web pages from your database

1. Running Gene

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.

1.1. What each of Gene's menus does

• The File menu lists commands for opening and closing database files. It also has commands for printing and closing windows.
• The Edit menu includes the standard Macintosh text editing commands. It also includes some special commands used when changing card fields.
• The Cards menu creates new entries in the database in the form of cards, removes entries, or lists all cards of a given type.
• The Pictures menu includes commands for manipulating pictures, and for creating links from pictures to other cards.
• The Trees menu contains commands for drawing trees.
• The Windows menu lists the cards and other windows currently open by Gene, topmost card first. You can switch to another window by selecting its name in this menu.

2. Reading and Writing Files

You can also use Gene to open files created by other programs, as long as they are in Gene's database format or GEDCOM 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.

2.1. File menu commands

Gene's File menu provides the following commands for manipulating files.

• The "New" command creates a new Gene database. Gene can only have one file open at a time, so if you use this command while you are already working on another database, it will close that database first.
• The "Open" command reads in an existing Gene database. It asks for the file name using the same dialog that appears when Gene first starts up. Like the "New" command, any database you already have open will be closed before Gene loads another file.
• The "Merge" command combines the information from two databases, one already in memory and one in a file.
• The "Save" and "Save as..." commands store your database to a file. Whenever you change your database, use these commands to save your changes.
• The "Revert" command restores the database to the last version you saved. Use this command if you make a mistake such as deleting a card that would otherwise be difficult to undo.
• The "Report" command creates a report or web page in one of various formats from some or all of your database.
• The "Import" and "Export" commands exchange data with other programs using the GEDCOM interchange format.
• The "Print" command prints the current window (which may be a card, report, tree drawing, picture, or list of card names).
• The "Quit" command exits Gene after making sure you have saved your file.
• The "Preferences" command tells Gene how you want it to act in certain situations.

2.2. Preferences

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:

• File preferences. These panels tell Gene to show after reading a file, and which of two methods to use when saving files.
• Window preferences. These panels give the default window size and font to use when Gene displays a card or card list.
• Tree preferences. This panel tells Gene what settings should appear by default in the tree drawing dialog.
• Date preferences. These panels tell Gene how it should format dates, and how it should interpret dates with numeric months such as "8/2/1772".
• Name completion. This panel tells Gene whether the tab and escape keys should be used as shortcuts for completing abbreviated names, bypassing the more usual Macintosh behavior of those keys.

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 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.

2.3. Merging pairs of Gene databases

The "Merge Cards" command in the Cards menu can be used to clean up the results of a "Merge" command. If you have two cards representing the same person or place but with different names, use the "Merge Cards" command to combine them into a single card. This command will bring up a dialog specifying the two cards to use (by default, the top two cards). It then moves any links from the card marked "From" in the dialog, to the card marked "To", and deletes the "From" card. If a checkbox in the dialog is selected, it also copies information from the fields of the "From" card before deleting it.

Both types of Merge command are somewhat simpleminded and can easily destroy information or produce incorrect information, so use them with caution; it would be a good idea to make an extra backup copy of your Gene database file before you use the Merge commands. Neither command is able to merge unnamed cards such as marriages.

2.4. Importing and exporting GEDCOM format files

• The "Export" command creates a GEDCOM file from your database.
• The "Export Ancestors" command creates a GEDCOM file from a subset of the database, formed by the ancestors of the person listed in the top card, and of that person's spouse. This command is only available when Gene's top window is a person card.
• The "Import" command reads a GEDCOM file into your 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.

2.5. What to do when Gene won't read your file

• Make sure your file is a Gene database. Gene stores files in text format, and the dialog of files to open may list other text-format files (such as the Gene documentation) but since they are not Gene databases they can not be opened by Gene.
• If you load or import a very large file, you may get a message that Gene is running low on memory, or Gene may misbehave unpredictably. Exit Gene, select the Gene application file in the Finder, and use the "Get Info" command in the Finder's File menu. If the window that opens has a menu labeled "Show: General Information" change it to "Show: Memory". Change the "Preferred size" in the file information window to a larger number and try running Gene again.
• If you modified a Gene database using a program other than Gene, you might not have used the correct file format. Gene will tell you the line number at which it found a problem; open the file with a text editor and examine that line. Do not attempt to use programs other than Gene to edit your database unless you are sure you understand Gene's file format. See the Gene Technical Notes for detailed documentation of Gene's file format.
• If you have used ResEdit to add new card definitions to the file, some definitions may be incorrectly formatted, and Gene will complain about being unable to read the definitions. Check your definitions and change or remove the invalid ones. The format for card definitions is documented in the Gene Technical Notes.

3. Cards

3.1. The three panes of a card

• The fields contain the information in the card itself.
• The links form a list of all other cards that refer to this card.
• The text can be used for notes or other unstructured information.

Fields

• The name of the person, which is also used as the name of the card.
• The birthday, structured as a date.
• The birthplace and parents. These are links to other cards. Gene draws a triangle next to these fields to indicate that you can follow the link and view the card on the other end, by clicking on the field name.
• The sex. This is an enumerated type, which can take on one of three values: male, female, or blank (unknown).
• The source (not shown). This is similar to the birthplace and parents, in that it links to other cards, but it can link to several cards at once, with names separated by semicolons. Clicking on the field name opens a pop-up menu in which you can select which link to follow.

Links

Text

3.2. Card types

• Person cards record the birth, parents, and gender of a person.
• Place cards record a place name and the events occurring at that place.
• Adoption cards document a child's adoption by new parents.
• Name Change cards list an alternative name for a person.
• Death cards list the date, place, and other particulars of a person's death.
• Marriage cards record the spousesÕ names and the date of the wedding.
• Divorce cards are used to mark those marriages ending in divorce.
• Event and Family Event cards are used to record events other than those above.
• Document cards record names of books and other information sources.
• Citation cards link a person with a reference to the person in a document.

Person cards

The source contains one or more document titles for the sources of information used to fill in this person card, such as birth certificates, books or other records, or interviews with surviving relatives. It is very important to record sources so that you or other genealogists can assess the reliability of the information you have recorded. If there is more than one source, their titles should be separated by semicolons. More detailed source information can also be recorded using citation cards

Place cards

Adoption cards

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.

Name Change cards

Death cards

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

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

Event and Family Event cards

Each event has six fields: the person to whom the event occurs, the date and place of the event, a brief description of the event, a four-letter codeword used when exporting to a GEDCOM file, and the source of information. For the common events listed above, a single word such as "Baptized" should suffice in the event description field. More than one person can be included in the "Person" field; multiple names in this field should be separated by semicolons. For a menu of possible codewords, click on the "GEDCOM" field name. A description of the meaning of these codewords can be found in the GEDCOM standard, Appendix A.

The Family Event card differs from the event card in having separate links to two 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

Citation cards

3.3. Menus

The Cards menu

• The "New Card" and "Templates" submenus, and "New of Same Type" command add cards to the database.
• The "Delete Card" command removes a card from the database.
• The "List Cards" submenu and "List This Card" command construct lists of the names of all cards having a particular card type.
• The "Follow Link" command opens a card named in a link field.
• The "Merge Cards" command combines the information from two different cards representing the same person or place.
• The "Find Unlinked" command opens all cards that do not have a connection (via a link or a link field) to the rest of the database. These cards likely should have been previously deleted or indicate some problem area to be cleaned up.

The Edit menu

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 or place'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 of person names works in either last name first or first name first ordering (regardless of how the name is actually stored in your database), 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.

3.4. Creating new cards

• To create a new card automatically linked to the currently open card, use a command from the Templates submenu.
• To create a new card with a link from the currently open card, type the new name into a link field of the card. Gene will bring up a dialog asking whether to create the new card, and if so whether to open it on the screen.
• To create a new card without any automatically filled in fields, use a command from the New Cards submenu.
• To create a new card of the same type as the currently displayed card, use the "New of Same Type" command, which functions as a shortcut to the New Cards submenu.

Creating New Cards from Templates

Creating New Empty Cards

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.

3.5. Removing cards from the database

3.6. Following Links from Card to Card

3.7. Adding Information to Card Fields

The following sections describe the format to use in filling in fields of different types.

Card Names

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 the same 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

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

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

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

Strings and Numbers

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

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. Shift-arrow keys lengthen the selection, and delete shortens it.

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 Descendants command draws a tree of the descendants of some person.
• The Ancestors and Ancestor Grid commands draw the ancestors of some person.
• The Relations command depicts the way or ways two people are related.

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.

• A tree of descendants, drawn in the horizontal style and including verbose information about births, deaths, and marriages.
• A tree of ancestors, drawn vertically with terse birth and death dates.
• An "ancestor grid" drawn horizontally with names only.
• A display of the (multiple) relations between a pair of people.

4.1. Tree drawing options

• The font and font size to use, and the width of the drawing.
• A menu for the type of tree to be drawn.
• Buttons and menus for "horizontal", "vertical", "names only", "terse", and "verbose" drawing styles.
• A selection of different output file formats.

Font, font size, and width

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

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.

4.2. Descendant trees

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.

4.3. Ancestor trees and grids

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

4.5. Printing and saving trees

• The "Print" command sends a tree directly to the printer.
• The "Copy" command saves the tree so it can be pasted into another application.
• The "Save PICT file" command copies a tree you have already written directly to a file, stored in the Macintosh PICT format.
• The "Make Picture Card" command turns a tree drawing into a permanent part of your Gene database.
• Trees can be drawn directly to files by selecting the output format in the tree dialog.

Printing trees

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). If your tree extends over multiple printed pages, Gene will slightly overlap the portions of the tree printed on each page, to make it easier for you to join the result into one big tree.

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

Converting trees into picture cards

Drawing directly to files

• PICT. This standard Macintosh image format can be created by drawing a tree to the screen, then using the "Save PICT file" command in the tree drawing menu.
• Text. To create tree drawings as text files, select "Text" in the output style menu in the tree drawing dialog. This format is suitable for electronic transmission or storage on non-Macintosh computers. However since all graphics are simulated using text characters, it is not very pretty. Width in this format refers to the number of characters allowed on a single line; the default width is 80 characters.
• Hewlett-Packard plotter format. This format can also be selected in the output style menu in the tree drawing dialog. As with text, width is measured in characters. If you specify a large width, the plotter will print your file using small characters, so that the tree exactly fits the size of the paper in the plotter.
• Postscript. This is accepted by most modern printers and can be understood by many drawing programs. Gene can not directly output postscript files, but you can create them by selecting the "Laserwriter" printer driver for your Macintosh, using the Print command to print your tree, and selecting the button in the print dialog marked "Destination: File". This should work even if you don't have a laserwriter attached to your Macintosh. The "PDFWriter" printer driver from Adobe can similarly be used to produce "pdf" files.

5. Pictures

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.

Displaying pictures (stored either way) can cause Gene to use large amounts of memory. To avoid running out, you may wish to increase the total memory allocated to Gene, by using the Macintosh "File->Get Info" command on the Gene application and changing the numbers in the application's information window.

Gene provides the following commands in the Pictures menu for dealing with pictures.

• The "New Picture" and "Paste From File" commands (along with "Paste" in the Edit menu) should be used in combination to add new pictures to your database.
• The "List Pictures" command creates a list of all names of pictures, similar to the lists of cards created by Gene's "List Cards" command.
• The "Edit Picture" command displays a dialog that can be used to name a picture, change the way it is stored, or create buttons linking the picture to other cards.
• The "Delete Picture" command removes a picture from the database.
• The "Show Links" command displays a list of any other pictures that have buttons connecting to this one.
• The "Show Caption" command allows you to include with a picture some text describing its contents.
• The "Fit Window" command tells Gene to resize the window a picture is displayed in to match the image's size.

5.1. Image formats

JPEG pictures must be stored in a separate file from your database; PICT pictures can either be separate or stored as a "resource" as part of your database.

Once you have a picture in your database in any one of these formats, you can convert it to another format by using the "storage type" menu on the "Edit Picture" dialog. If appropriate, Gene will ask for a file name to store the converted image.

5.2. Creating new 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 or JPEG format, containing an image. Once you specify a 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 file, since then Gene may be unable to find the image stored in it.

5.3. Naming pictures and adding buttons

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.

5.4. Captions and Links

6. Reports

The following report formats are available:

• Ancestor Families gives detailed information on the ancestors of an individual or couple.
• Ancestors lists the names or brief summaries of the ancestors of an individual or couple.
• Calendar shows the database events occurring on each day of the year.
• Descendant Families gives detailed information on the descendants of an individual or couple.
• Descendants lists the names or brief summaries of the descendants of an individual or couple.
• Family Group gives detailed information on a single family (parent or parents and their children).
• File Summary shows how many cards of each type are in the database.
• Single Card creates a report showing the fields, links, and text of the topmost card window.
• Whole Database makes a listing of all the cards in the database, as they would be displayed by Gene.

Each report can be output in any of several different styles:

• View on Screen produces the report in a window on the computer screen. This option can also be used in combination with the Print command to print out reports directly from Gene. (MacOS version 7 is required for this output style to work best. Users of earlier system software will see views without some of the detailed formatting available in other output styles.)
• HTML File and HTML Multiple Files output the reports in a format suitable for publication on the world-wide web. They differ in that for some formats such as whole file, HTML Multiple Files will split the report into many small interlinked web pages, while HTML File will produce one large page.
• LaTeX produces a file to be input to the LaTeX document processing system.
• Rich Text produces a file that can be imported by Microsoft Word and many other word processing programs.
• Simple Text produces the report as a plain text file, suitable for emailing or viewing in the SimpleText program.

6.1. Ancestor Families Report

The most important parts of this dialog are the Father and Mother fields, the number of generations, and the checkbox "Only expand same gender lines", since these are the parts that control which families are listed in the report. If only a Father or Mother is specified, the report will start with that person's family: any spouses or children he or she may have. If both are specified, the report will start with only the events and children shared by the two specified individuals. The report describes these two people, shows the events they have in common, and lists their children. Then, it similarly includes the families of the father and mother's parents, grandparents, and so on, to the limit of the number of generations specified in the report. If no limit is specified, all ancestor families will be included. If "Only expand same gender lines is checked, only the direct father-to-father or mother-to-mother line will be followed, depending on whether the Father or Mother fields in the dialog are filled in. (So for instance you can trace the male ancestors of a female individual by putting the individual's name in the Father field, even though that individual is not herself a father.)

The three style menus control the way Gene lists each person mentioned in a family. The styles available are the same as those in tree drawings. However, unlike trees, individuals' names are reported in boldface to make them stand out from the rest of the information in the report.

Most of the other options on this dialog control various formatting options: whether to assign individuals numbers (according to the order they are output), include counts of the number of children of each child in the family, include names of grandparents, and include the text panes of the parent cards.

6.2. Ancestors Report

The Ancestors report is similar to the Ancestor Families report in listing the ancestors of a specified individual or couple. However, unlike the Ancestor Families report, the ancestors are listed by individual rather than by family, without the notes and lists of children included in the Ancestor Families report. Numbering of individuals in this report is done according to the so-called "Ahnentafel" scheme, in which the father of a person with number n has number 2n, and the mother has number 2n+1. If two individuals are specified for the start of the report, we instead use a modified Ahnentafel numbering scheme in which the father has number 2n+1 and the mother has number 2n+2, so that all individuals in the report have distinct numbers.

6.3. Calendar Report

This report produces a list of all births, marriages, and deaths for which an exact date is listed in the database, broken down by month and sorted by which day of the year each event occurred.

6.4. Descendant Families Report

The Descendant Families report gives detailed information on the descendants of an individual or couple. It begins by displaying a dialog similar to the one used by the Ancestor Families report, asking for formatting options and the names of one or two individuals to start the report.

If only a Father or Mother is specified, the report will start with that person's family: any spouses or children he or she may have. If both are specified, the report will start with only the events and children shared by the two specified individuals. The report describes these two people, shows the events they have in common, and lists their children. Then, it similarly includes the families of the children, grandchildren, and so on, to the limit of the number of generations specified in the report. If no limit is specified, all descendant families will be included. If "Only expand same gender lines is checked, this report only expands children having the same gender as the parent being listed. (Note that this is subtly different from the "expand same gender lines" option in Ancestor Families, and unlike that report is unable to trace the male-line descendants of a female ancestor or vice versa.)

6.5. Descendants Report

The Descendants report is similar to the Descendant Families report in listing the descendants of a specified individual or couple. However, unlike the Descendant Families report, the ancestors are listed by individual rather than by family, without the notes and lists of children included in the Ancestor Families report. If numbering is turned on, the children within any family are numbered in order.

6.6. Family Group Report

This report starts by bringing up a dialog asking for the names of a mother and/or father, along with some formatting options, similar to the dialog in the Ancestor Families report. If only a Father or Mother is specified, the report will start with that person's family: any spouses or children he or she may have. If both are specified, the report will start with only the events and children shared by the two specified individuals. The report describes these two people, shows the events they have in common, and lists their children.

6.7. File Summary Report

This report produces a listing of how many cards there are in the current database, separated by type and by whether each card has a name or is unnamed. It replaces a similar top-level command in earlier versions of Gene.

6.8. Single Card Report

6.9. Whole File Report

The "Whole File" report produces a listing of all cards in the database, in roughly the same format as they would be displayed on the screen. Although this report can be viewed on screen like any other report, it is intended primarily for printing out one's database or creating a web site based on it. Large databases may cause Gene to spend a long time making this report, so Gene uses a status bar to display its progress.

Copyright 1995-2000 David and Diana Eppstein.