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DESCEND - An Expanded Descendant Chart for PAF by John C. Barron 510 E. Braker Lane Austin, TX 78753 Version 2.3 23 Apr 1992 Abstract This program reads Personal Ancestral File (PAF) 2.x data files and produces an expanded descendant chart. The chart can include up to 16 generations, any person can have up to 5 mar- riages, and any couple can have up to 20 children. There is a limit of 5,000 selected marriages. An individual entry consists of a descendant with birth, death, and (optional) notes followed by a spouse with birth, marriage, death, (optional) parent data, and notes. This pattern is then repeated for their children. An index is generated after the chart. Up to 5,200 index entries can be expected and the user is warned if the index cannot be completed. The chart can be routed to three output sources: printer, screen, or disk file. Printer drivers for about 40 printers can be selected and drivers can also constructed for a specific printer. DESCEND require a 16 pitch font to operate correctly since it indents for each generation. Several new options are supplied with this version. Introduction The Personal Ancestral File Genealogy System produced and sold by the Church of the Latter Day Saints (LDS) is an extremely good, inexpensive way for genealogists to organize their data. For storage and searches it is hard to beat, but its output is very generic and is often not optimal for certain uses. Along with the usual pedigree charts and family group sheets, PAF produces a descendant chart. It is limited in nature and outputs just the generation number, name, date of birth, and RIN of the descendants. You can route it to screen, disk, or printer but you have no control over the contents. Development History The program was begun in March, 1988, but little progress was made until the end of the year when Bourland Corp. released Turbo Pascal 5.0 and its interactive debugger. By the use of this powerful product, I was able to solve some very tricky problems and complete the project. The following table lists the released versions of the program and the principle modifications of each. Vs. Date Modification 1.0 20 Jan 1989 Completed using Turbo Debug. 1.1 11 Feb 1989 Added search window. 1.2 10 Mar 1989 Fixed dual date problem. 1.3 18 Mar 1989 Used paf unit for path. 1.4 4 Aug 1989 Limit no. generations. 1.5 13 Sep 1989 Increase no. persons input. 1.6 7 Oct 1989 Fix LF on null note problem. 1.7 24 Nov 1989 Fix note line length overflow. 1.8 18 Jan 1990 Use christening & burial if birth or death dates missing. 1.9 23 Feb 1990 Set maximum marriages to 5000. 2.0 10 Oct 1990 Revised marriage array, added PAF name/address to output, added command line path input, more bullet proof input, revised mar array, indicate spouse with sp-, added option for printing notes, add name & rin of selected person, added chart title option, checked index memory usage. 2.1 22 Nov 1990 Fixed bug with MaxSpo, fixed problem when person had blank surname, fixed problem with it not running in current directory. 2.1a 11 Mar 1991 Released as shareware version. 2.1b 24 Mar 1991 Increased marriage arrays back from 1,000 to 5,000. 2.1c 5 Apr 1991 Fixed problem with note printing. 2.1d 31 May 1991 Revised final page output. 2.2 4 Jan 1992 Isolated output, added options screen, added margin, printer options screen, added config file, overlayed files, fixed note overflow, added burial usage, tagged note option, uppercase surname option, spouse's parents, select up to 30 RINS. 2.3 23 Apr 1992 increased mrin display length, restore orig. video settings, replaced all integer type with word, added pafhalt standard procedure, fixed spouse parent addition bug. Usage The program can be started in two ways from the DOS prompt: 1) by entering the name (DESCEND), or 2) by entering the name and a path to the directory where the PAF files are located. The following examples illustrate the methods: D:\>DESCEND D:\>DESCEND D:\PAF\ If a valid path to the PAF files is given, DESCEND goes directly into operation. If no path is given and if no PAF.CFG file is present (more on this later), an introductory screen describing the program is shown followed by another screen re- questing the path. If the PAF data files are in the current directory, DESCEND begins running. If you are confused about directories and paths to them, then it would be advisable to read your DOS manual, especially the chapter about tree-structured directories. If no path to PAF files is given on startup, DESCEND prompts the user for this information with the path screen. At this point, and at almost any other input option, the user can halt the program. If the user chooses, however, a path can be given and the program will continue to cycle in this screen until a valid path is input or until the user decides to quit. Once a valid path to PAF files is given, DESCEND prompts the user for some additional information. At this point you can still (Q)uit, or you can (C)hange the path once more, or you can (S)ave the path in the PAF.CFG file for later usage, or you can (U)se the path. If you save it, it automatically uses it too. The file PAF.CFG is written on the current directory when you save it and is also used the next time DESCEND is started. It is simply an ASCII file containing the path to PAF files. Using the path gets you started with the rest of the pro- gram. The next step displays a window which gives the user a number of options which can be selected by the user to customize the chart as desired. The options available at this point are as follows: A. How many descendant generations do you want? (maximum is 16) B. How many spaces on the left margin? (maximum is 20) C. What output mode do you want? (Screen/Print/File) D. Do you want printer commands in file output? (Y/N) E. Do you want to change the default chart title? (Y/N) DESCENDANT CHART - Version 2.2 F. Do you want to include RINs & MRINs in the chart? (Y/N) G. What notes do you want to include? (All/Tagged/None) H. What tag do you use in your notes? I. Do you want the make surnames upper case? (Y/N) J. Do you want "son/dau of" in spouse data? (Y/N) S. Do you want to save these settings for future charts? (Y/N) Option A - Prompts the user to enter the number of genera- tions to use in the chart. The maximum (and default) number of generations that DESCEND can process is 16. Entering 2 genera- tions would produce a chart similar to a family group sheet. If the number of generations desired is exceeded during the process of producing a chart, DESCEND ignores them and prints a message indicating that more information is available. Option B - Allows the user to set the number of spaces on the left hand margin of the chart. This has no affect for charts sent to the screen however. The default margin is 0 (none). Option C - Concerns the output destination for the chart. Three modes are available: screen, print, or file. Screen output shows the chart to the user on the terminal and does not produce printed output. This is recommended for checking a chart before printing a lot of pages. The default is to send the output to the printer. The third option is to send the output to a disk file named DESCEND.TXT which you can edit and print with a word processor or print with the DOS print command, PRINT.COM. Option D - This options allows the user to insert printer control (escape sequence) codes into the optional DESCEND disk file. These are normally wanted to print the file with the DOS print command, but not wanted for a file that will be subsequent- ly edited before printing. Option E - Here you can personalize the output by using the next option which asks if the user desires a title for the chart. If you select yes, then an input area is opened which will allow you to enter a 55-character chart title which will be printed at the top of each page. If no special title is requested, then the name and version of the program is used in its place. I recom- mend that you use a chart title listing the first person in the chart. Option F - The next option for the chart concerns the list- ing of RINs and MRINs in the output. The user is asked if these reference numbers are desired. If the chart is to be sent to others, these numbers make no sense to them and should be left off which is the chart default. On the other hand if the chart is for your own use as a reference for additional work, you can nearly always find good use for the RIN and MRIN numbers. The MRINs are shown in parentheses after the RIN of a spouse entry. Option G - This option asks the user about including notes from the PAF files in the chart. Three options are available: all notes, tagged notes, or no notes. If "all" notes (the de- fault) is selected then the PAF notes are included along with the birth, marriage, and death entries. Only regular notes created by PAF are included; those created by a word processor and linked to a PAF entry are not included. Perhaps inclusion of these notes can be implemented by a future update of DESCEND. If the "tagged" notes option is selected then only those note entries starting with your personal tag are included. Obviously, the "none" selection will include no notes in the output. Option H - This option allows you to enter your own personal one-character tag. The default is ! which is what is recommended by PAF. Option I - With this option the user can instruct DESCEND to make all surnames uppercase regardless of how they were recorded in the PAF database files. The default is no which will use the names as they are in the database. Option J - The is a much requested new option which allows the user to include information about a spouse's parents in a chart entry, provided, of course, they are in the PAF file. If the default value (yes) is selected, then male spouses will have "son of" [his parents names] included before his notes section while for a female spouse "dau of" will appear. These parent names are also included in the index and I recommend that the option be used for a more complete chart. Additionally, its use also shows the user where "holes" exist in a PAF database. Option S - This option allows the user to save most of the above selected options in a disk file named DESCEND.CFG which is saved in the default directory. This provides a way to customize and optimize your chart settings for future use without resetting the options every time. You can use this to your advantage by setting the no saving switch when you make a special chart having options for a specific reason. The default is to save the se- lected option settings. If the chart is to be sent to the printer, then additional options can be set. These printer options are displayed by an additional menu which looks something like the following. ======================== Printer Setup Screen =================== Printer Selected 1..Select Another Printer 2..Show Code Details 3..Change Printer Codes Initialization Code 4..Abort This Chart 0..Continue With Chart Pitch Code Enter choice - 8 Lines/Inch Code (blank for 6 l/i) Port ================================================================ The options addressed in the printer menu work as follows: 1) select your specific printer from a list of some 40 provided in the program, 2) show the details of the escape codes of your selected printer, 3) change or customize your printer codes to what better suits your needs, 4) abort or abandon the chart, and finally, 0) continue with creating your chart. 1..AT&T (DM) 17..HP Deskjet 33..Qume Sprint 2..AT&T 457/458 18..HP LaserJet 34..Silver Reed 3..AT&T 473/474 19..IBM ProPrint. (New) 35..Star 4..Brothers (DM) 20..IBM ProPrint. (Old) 36..Star NX-1000 5..Brothers (DW) 21..IBM Quietwriter III 37..Tandy DMP 6..C-Itoh F10-40/55 22..Juki 6100/6300 38..TI 855 7..C-Itoh Prowriter 23..Microline IDS 39..TI 865 8..Citizen 24..MPI 50 G 40..Toshiba P351/P1340 9..DEC LA 50/100 25..NEC 8000 41..Transtar 10..Diablo 1620/30 26..NEC Spinwriter 42..Default Printer 11..Diablo 620/30 27..Okidata 43..Other 12..DOS Text Printer 28..Okidata (Epson) 13..Epson EX/LQ 29..Okidata (IBM Comp.) 14..Epson FX/LX/RX 30..Oliveti Ink Jet 15..Epson MX 31..Olympia Compact 16..Gemini 32..Panasonic The above printers are currently supported. For the most part, these are the printers supported by the 2.2 version of PAF. If you have a dot matrix printer that is not listed, try using the 1st menu option and selecting either the default printer (#42) or the Epson FX/LX/RX (#14). If you have a laser printer that is not listed, try selection 18, the HP LaserJet. If your printer still doesn't work properly, then you may have to build your own printer driver. To do this select printer menu option 2 (Show Code Details). You will see a screen that shows the presently selected codes for printer initialization, pitch, and lines per inch. The table looks as follows: ================================================================ Printer Name: HP Deskjet Port: LPT1: LPT2: COM1: COM2: COM3: Initialization: ^E 27 69 ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Pitch: ^(s16H 27 40 115 49 54 72 ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ 8 Lines per Inch: ^&l8D 27 38 108 56 68 ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ================================================================ After viewing the selections, return to the printer menu and select option 3 (Change Printer Codes). The numbers shown are the decimal equivalents of the escape sequences of the selected printer. For instance to initialize an HP Deskjet printer, you send an escape E sequence while escape @ initializes Epson com- patibles. Check your printer manual for your particular initial- ization code. The pitch code is special for DESCEND. Your printer must be set to a non-proportional, compressed pitch of 17 characters per inch or more. Since each generation of a chart is indented 4 spaces, without a compressed pitch or font you will quickly have lines longer than can be properly printed. This will usually result in a margin overflow situation and some of the line will be printed along the left margin jumbling the indentation. The next thing that can be addressed in the print change menu is the 8 lines per inch (lpi) vertical option. The standard printer setting is to print 6 lines per inch and DESCEND comes equipped to do this. However, more information can be presented by using 8 lpi and most printers can do this. If your selected printer does not show a code in this slot, check your manual and change the settings. The default output port is set to LPT1:, but with the print- er change menu this too can be changed to whatever parallel or serial port you use. If your printer doesn't work with the default, keep changing the port until you select the right one. If your printer still does not work properly with the print- er selected, then you should set the file output mode to send the output to a disk file. The resulting file is named DESCEND.TXT and is written to the current directory. The names of the indi- viduals in the chart are listed and scroll by to merely show the user that something is taking place. Birth and death dates, notes, etc., do not appear on the screen, but are actually in the file. You should rename the disk file if you wish to keep it permanently; otherwise, it will be overwritten the next time you choose this selection. You can edit this file with a word pro- cessor and make whatever changes are desired. Care should be taken, however, not to make changes that affect the page numbers or else the index will no longer be correct. You should be able to print the file either with your word processor or with the PRINT command from the DOS prompt. This is done as follows: >PRINT DESCEND.TXT At this point, you are ready to tell the program which persons to include in the descendant chart. You can enter up to 30 individuals for a run, all of whom will be included in the order given and separated by a message indicating the beginning each new line. Only a very small amount of information will be duplicated in a chart with common lines. At the prompt, you can either enter a RIN if you know it, search for a particular per- son, or, as usual, quit. If you enter a RIN number, DESCEND accesses the PAF files and displays the person, along with parents and spouse. The user is then asked to verify the selection and a message asks if this is the correct person. The user can answer (Y)es, (N)o continue search, or (Q)uit search. Quitting returns to the enter RIN prompt as does selecting no. Choosing yes selects the displayed individual as part of the descendant chart run. The name of this selected person replaces the enter RIN prompt line and the pro- cess is repeated. Most of the time RINs are not remembered and you will need to choose the search selection at the enter RIN prompt. You can search for as many as three names of a person's names. If fewer than three names are input, you must still press the enter key for each of the name fields on the screen. If the search finds no such combination of names, it will inform you and return to the current enter RIN prompt. If the search finds an individual with the entered combination of names, it will display the person along with parents and spouse. Once more it will ask if this is the correct person. If you select no, the program will continue to search for additional persons of the entered name combination. Quitting, of course, returns you to the current enter RIN prompt and choosing yes selects the displayed person for the descendant chart. You can continue the selection of RINs for inclusion in the chart until reaching the limit of 30 or stop at any amount fewer. This limit is imposed at this time as a safety feature to try to prevent the overflow of index entries which are presently kept in memory as a linked list. If a memory overflow occurs, the index cannot be completed and the program will halt and ask the user whether to continue. At the end of the run the memory used by the index is reported. Discussion Well, that's about it. The program is pretty simple and hopefully user friendly. I have been pleased and surprised by the reception it has received by PAF users in many parts of the country. Users of the NGC echo have been especially helpful in giving me suggestions for improvements as well as pointing out bugs and shortcomings. Thank you all and keep the comments coming. I release the program under the shareware concept which essentially provides you a trial use period. Try the program out; check all the options. If you find it helps you in your research, please fill out the included registration form and send me a fee of $20.00 toward its future development. You may enthu- siastically provide copies to your friends and acquaintances for their use, upload it to your local computer bulletin boards, and call it to the attention of your computer and genealogical groups. You may pass it around and distribute it in any manner except for sale. Thank you, John.