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Text File | 1995-03-18 | 28KB | 656 lines

****************************************************************** * NOTE: THIS DEMONSTRATION VERSION OF A-GENE IS IDENTICAL TO * * THE FULL VERSION BUT IS LIMITED TO 200 PERSONS AND 70 * * MARRIAGES. IT IS A FULLY USABLE VERSION OF A-GENE AND * * WILL BE ADEQUATE FOR MOST CASUAL USERS. ALL FACETS OF * * THE FULL PROGRAM EXCEPT SCREEN DUMP, OPERATION FROM THE * * RAM DISK AND ONLINE HELP FILES ARE IMPLEMENTED. * * * * THE FULL VERSION OF THIS PROGRAM (2 DISKS AND PRINTED * * MANUAL) IS OBTAINABLE FROM:- * * T.M. SIMPSON, 11 MERAUKE ST, WHALAN, N.S.W. 2770, AUSTRALIA * * FOR $30-00 INCLUDING POSTAGE (PERSONAL CHEQUES IN ANY * * CURRENCY ARE ACCEPTABLE BUT NO EURO-CHEQUES!!) * * * * IN EUROPE, A-GENE MAY BE OBTAINED (WITHOUT PRINTED MANUAL) * * FROM:- * * AMIGANUTS UNITED, 169 DALE VALLEY ROAD, HOLLYBROOK, * * SOUTHAMPTON ENGLAND FOR 15 POUNDS STERLING. * ****************************************************************** A-GENE INSTRUCTIONS - (by Mike Simpson) A-GENE V4.18 IS COPYRIGHT (c) 1992 Mike Simpson and licenced to Amiganuts United of Southampton, England who are the European distributors. It may not be further distributed in any form. The only freely distributable versions of A-Gene are those entitled "A- Gene Demo" and so described on the startup screen. A-Gene Overview (All following remarks refer to the full version) A-Gene V4.18 is a genealogical data-base program capable of maintaining files on approximately 1500 persons and 500 marriages on a single floppy data disk. The program is written in GFA-Basic v3.5 and compiled with the GFA-Basic compiler V3. Both PAL and NTSC versions are available. Larger data-bases can be constructed if you have a hard-drive. A-Gene logs details of a Person's birth/death/burial/marriage(s) along with baptism/confirmation/immigration dates, occupation etc. A-Gene also includes a built in text editor which is used to append "Free-form" notes/comments to any person's record in the Data-Base. A further feature is the ability to view digitised photos of persons/weddings etc. from within the program. Persons and marriage records can be searched for Surname, Christian Name, Full Name, Birth Date, City and Country (or any combination thereof) as well as on the user definable codes.. This latest version also includes Ordinances for members of the Church of Latter Day Saints. (Of interest to LDS members, I am working on a utility program to convert A-Gene files to the LDS GEDCOM standard (and vice versa) to enable them to transfer files to IBM PCs running genealogy programs such as P.A.F.) All text and menues in the program are held in ASCII text files and as such may be modified by the user to reflect their own requirements or may be translated into other languages without difficulty. Reports, which may be output to screen, printer or disk file in most cases, include Pedigree Charts of any person, Family Group sheets, Descendants charts for up to 50 generations and various lists of persons, marriages etc. sorted in various orders. DETAILS: A-Gene comes on 2 disks. The main disk is auto-bootable and contains the necessary 'C' directory entries, the text editor and the A-Gene main program. The second disk is a pre-formatted data disk already set up for 600 persons and 300 marriages and ready for input of your data. (The demo version includes the program and files on the one disk) V4.18 will now run on both N.T.S.C. or P.A.L. Amigas. There is no longer a separate version for each machine. The only changes necessary to run on a N.T.S.C. machine are that the font "agene" size 15 - must be in your "FONTS:" directory. The font is included on this disk. The configuration program "A-geneCFG" must be run first to enable you to correctly configure the program to your equipment. The program disk holds besides the main program, the files "A-Gene.txt" and "A-Genemenues" which contain the text strings from the program and the menues respectively. These 2 files may be edited with any text-editor or word-processor which can output ASCII text files. Also on the program disk are 2 drawers containing documentation files and utilities. The utilities are a script file for loading A-Gene on a hard-disk, a short program which allows you to copy files from earlier versions of A-Gene (including the demonstration version) into your new data-base and lastly a short routine named SexChange which is used to alter the letters used for a persons sex (M/F in English versions) to other letters if necessary for foreign language versions. (This routine would only be necessary if a person had entered his/her family's data using the English version and subsequently upgraded to say a Swedish version of the program). However please note that data files from very old versions of A-Gene prior to V3.00 e.g. v1.01 and v1.3 are not compatible with this version and the only way they can be input into the new version is to send me a copy of your old data disk along with sufficient blank disks to cover the cost of postage and I will run a conversion program which will produce suitable files. This conversion only works if the data has been entered in a sequential manner starting at record no. 1. i.e. there are no blocks of blank records in the data base. The data disk holds 4 random-access files containing details of the Persons, Marriages and Miscellaneous information. Once run, there will also be a Parent/Child index file and a Marriages Index file on your data disk. Environment: A-Gene as supplied will run on any Amiga, with a minimum of 1meg of RAM, a printer (80 column) is really a necessity for the program to be of much use. Two disk drives also make it easier to use. A-Gene may be run from the CLI or it may be loaded from workbench by clicking on the A-Gene.Boot Icon. The two disks supplied with this package are a bootable program disk and a data disk set up and ready to use. A-Gene may also be installed on a hard-drive. It is recommended that until you have used the program to test its capabilities, you run it from copies of the two disks supplied. PROJECT MENU The first menu holds several items which are self explanatory:- CHANGE COLORS Accesses the color requester to change the screens colours if you do not like the ones I have chosen. (At the present time the new colours are saved in the S: directory in a file called MYCOLS and are reset each time you use A-Gene). If you wish to use the screen dump facility which is available on many screens to copy the screen to a printer. Then you should go to the change color requester, click on Default, this turns the background screen color to white and gives better printouts - even better results are gained if all three colors (black, red and blue) are changed to black. To return to the saved colors, click on load. It is recommended you keep the colors of gray background, with black text as on the original as these give best results with the 3D gadgets now used. The lime green can be changed to whatever you like. NOTE: This colour requester works fine in the interpreted version but there appears to be a problem in reproducing red shades correctly when compiled. However it does allow you to change and save the colors which is what it was designed for. RESET DATE AND TIME The date and time can be set from the Project Menu, this will be necessary if you have not got a built-in clock as some of the printed output from A-Gene does bear the date and time of preparation. CHECK FREE MEMORY Memory can be checked to see how much free memory you have. COPY RRD: TO FLOPPY Can be used to copy files from the ram disk to the floppy to enable you to back-up your files as you go. You can even keep 2 sets of data disks as a safeguard against lost data. QUIT exits the program cleanly. UPDATE MENU NOTE: The following keys can be used when in the Update Items. 1. Both update items can be selected using hot keys i.e. Amiga p and Amiga m for update persons/marriages. 2. You can move around the update screens using the arrow keys as necessary. 3. You may enter a ? instead of a Father's/Mother's record no.This will take you to the search option and allow you to locate the appropriate record number. 4. A ? entered for a persons/marriage code will take you to the Edit Codes module. 5. A ? for the Edit Record No. will take you to the next blank record. 6. Pressing the Escape (Esc) key when entering dates/towns etc. will blank the field. 7. Records must be entered sequentially beginning from Record #1. You must not enter say records 1 - 15 for the first family, then 30 - 45 for the second and so forth. A-Gene searches for blank records during the sort process and on finding 10 consecutive blank records assumes no more data and stops looking. Thus you will get incorrect printouts if you do not follow this instruction!! UPDATE PERSONS FILE This is the main input screen for the program, selecting the item brings up a screen for the first record. Along the bottom of which are the gadgets "EDIT, SAVE, MORE, NEXT, PREVIOUS,DUMP,TEXT ED, GOTO and QUIT". Any of these selections can be picked by clicking on the gadget, or by typing the INITIAL letter of the word. Selecting EDIT allows you to input a record number (if you are using a new data base,the record number at the top is -1 so enter 1 to select the new record number 1.) You are then asked to type the persons name, sex, birth/date/burial information, along with the record number of their father and mother. If their father/ mother are not already in the data- base, just leave the numbers blank, they can be entered later once you have the necessary information. The instructions for each entry are selfexplanatory, when you have finished entering data just type "/" at any prompt, and you will be returned to the gadgets asking if you wish to SAVE the data. You may click on SAVE at this point to save the record, or EDIT to enter some more data on the person. To move around any of the Update screens, you can use the arrow keys to move up and down between records, and sideways between the columns of the Update Persons screen. When editing an existing record, each existing field appears in the input box with the cursor positioned at the end of the box. You may use the backspace key to position the cursor within the edit box. The arrow keys DO NOT work in this box as they are already used as above to move around the update screen. If you select Edit and enter ? as the record number, the program will search for the next blank record sheet. Also if you wish to delete a record, after selecting Edit, when asked to input the record no. enter it as a negative number e.g. -83 and this will delete the record. Maximum surname length is 20 characters and maximum given names 30 characters. The program has been altered so that if the total length of a name is over 30 characters then on some displays/printouts it is truncated to the Surname plus the first given name and the initial of the second. i.e. Jean Dorothy Margaret Marjorie Simpson-Smythe would appear as:- SIMPSON-SMYTHE, Jean D. on some printouts, although it is shown and stored in full in most items. This change was necessary to avoid spoiling the layout of some screens. All fields for input have a fixed length, earlier versions allowed you to type in items longer than the field which were later truncated by the program. The latest version only allows input of the maximum number of characters in any one field. Once you have saved the data, clicking on MORE will pass you to a second screen of supplementary data for the person, e.g. baptism date, wife's record number, (up to 3 wives) immigration and occupation details. Most of this data such as details of the Persons Mother, Father and Spouses are filled in automatically, however you can enter the persons baptism and confirmation dates on this screen. You can therefore enter these and click on save, and click on RETURN to return to the first screen. However also on the "More" screen there is now a button entitled LDS, clicking on this button or pressing L will take you to a screen on which you can enter various LDS Ordinance dates. A-Gene now has a screen allowing Latter Day Saints (Mormon) users to include their Ordinance information for each person. The following dates may be included:- Christening Blessing Sealed to Parents Patriarchial Blessing Endowment Sealed to Spouse. To input this information, from the main menu select Update Person, go to the persons record and select "More" - This takes you to the additional information screen of the person. A new gadget labelled LDS appears on this screen - selecting it will enable you to enter the dates for the above events for the person. Dates must be entered in the standard format as listed in the instruction pamphlet. (Please note I am not a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, therefore I have added this feature at the request of some program users - I would be interested to hear from Church members who find this feature of use to them (the dates are also printed out in the persons record). I would also appreciate any other comments regarding requirements from LDS members. Clicking on the TEXT ED button will take you to the built-in text editor to allow you to add extra free form information about the person. You should note that the built in editor is a simple editor only allowing 1 page of text. If you require something more sophisticated, then you must elect on the Preferences screen to use the text editor of your choice "C:ED" and that is the one you will be presented with). Clicking on NEXT will take you to the next record, PREV will take you backwards and GOTO to a numbered record. DUMP will use the program graphdump to dump the screen to a graphics printer, useful if you just want to print a single screen. The quality of this printout will depend on your printer and the screen colours in use. It is just intended as a quick way of obtaining a rough record of a particular screen. QUIT will exit the Update mode (If you have made changes and not saved a record you will now be advised). UPDATE MARRIAGE FILE Allows you to update the marriages file, (Note: Persons in the marriages file must already appear in the Persons file). You will be prompted to enter the Husband, Wife, Code, Place and Date of marriage etc. in a similar manner to the Update Persons item above. CREATE MENU PARENT/CHILD INDEX Creates an index file linking all the Parents/Children in the persons file. MARRIAGES INDEX Creates an index file linking all marriages in the marriages file to the respective persons in the persons file. NOTE: The PARENT/CHILD and MARRIAGE options are included for compatability with old versions of A-Gene,these files are automatically updated as required in this version of the program each time you add information to the Persons and Marriages files so that the index is up to date at all times. However if a file becomes damaged due to equipment faults/power failures etc, this option may be used to reconstruct the Index files. (You should also take these options if you find Descendants charts are out of order). LIST MENU PERSON'S RECORDS Outputs a list in record number order of all the persons in the persons file in the form of an ASCII text file to Screen, File or Printer. If you choose file, you will get a file-selector asking you where you wish to save this list, and under what name. The text file can then be input by any word-processor or text-editor which can handle plain ASCII text. The file can then be reformatted to your own requirements for later printing. (Useful for when you have a large file, and you need to know the record number of say a persons father or mother who you had entered in an earlier session.) MARRIAGE RECORDS Outputs a list of all the marriages in the marriages file, in record number order. PARENT/CHILD INDEX Outputs a list of the records in the Parents/Child index. ALPHA PERSONS Outputs an alphabetical List of Persons which can be sorted on either Surname or Year of Birth. ALPHA MARRIAGES Outputs an alphabetical List of Marriages PRINT MENU The items on this menu allow you to print details as follows:- PERSON'S DATA This item prints out information about any person or persons in the Persons file. You will be asked which are the first and last records to print (If only one record is required, enter the same number for both). A printout of all the persons details is produced, followed by any supplementary text file for that person. MARRIAGE DATA Prints information regarding a marriage in the Marriages file. (As for the Persons data above). PEDIGREE CHART Prints or saves to file Pedigree charts (Family Trees) for anyone in the Persons file. The program automatically sizes the chart in accordance with paper size being used. Blocks of pedigree charts can also be printed say by entering Person 1 as the first chart and Person 5 as the last, then charts 1 thru 5 will be produced. Pedigree Charts have been altered to include room for you to write in the chart number, and also to indicate that person no.1 of this chart is the same person as person no. ___ on chart no. ___. If you use a text editor to type a short file consisting of 6 lines or less containing your name, address and phonenumber. Then save this as "SUBMITTER" on your data disk, this information will be displayed on your pedigree chart along with the comments: "Person Submitting Pedigree Chart:-". This complies with the requirements of the Mormon Church. FAMILY GROUP SHEET Prints Family group sheets giving information on various members of the family. DESCENDENT'S CHARTS Outputs to the screen/printer or file Descendents Charts for up to 50 generations. DISPLAY MENU Displays genealogical information on the screen in various formats including a family tree. The display option has several gadgets at the foot of each screen allowing you to display data about a person, his family members, and his wedding. It is also possible to call up data about anyone else in the data base. All screens can be dumped to a printer for hard-copy filing. In the PAL version only, when a family is displayed, the marriage number may be followed by (See Also nn) where nn is another marriage record number for one of the partners, indicating one or more of the partners has been married more than once. DISPLAY OF PICTURE FILES: It is possible to show pictures of each person, family group or wedding in the file. To use this facility, it will be necessary to digitise the photographs using a program such as Digi-View, and to store them as IFF files on your pictures disk. Picture files should be stored using the following filenames:- PERPIXnnn For individuals picture, where nnn is the persons record number in the persons file. e.g. PERPIX20 MARPIXnnn For marriage picture, where nnn is the marriage record number in the marriages file. e.g. MARPIX25 FAMPIXnnn For family group picture, where nnn is the FATHER's record number in the persons file. e.g. FAMPIX237 Note: As picture files take up huge hunks of disk space, it is recommended that you save your pictures on disks named A-Genepix and note on the label the record numbers of the persons included on the disk. Then when you wish to view the pictures of person #25, you would load the appropriate disk when the requester asked you to insert volume "A- Genepix". SEARCH MENU SEARCH FOR PERSON Allows you to search through all records for particular criteria, e.g. after SURNAME you may enter sim as the surname to search for, you will then receive on your screen a list of all the SIMMS, SIMMONS, SIMPSONS etc in the file. The record number of each person is also included so you can then find a particular person and look up their details. Searching is allowed on Surname, Christian Names, Birth Date, City and Country. Furthermore you can search on the user definable Persons Code, this code can be used for any purpose you require, and records with a code of say "6" can be searched for and listed. The Birth Date may be preceded by < for prior to or by > for following, i.e. <1940 will list births prior to 1940. Multiple searches are allowed, just press enter on any line you do not wish to search on, i.e. press enter enter enter england enter enter and all persons born in England will be listed, whereas if you had also entered a date of >1899 and a sex of M then only males born in England since 1900 would be listed. Searching is not dependant on case, i.e. SIm is the same as siM for search purposes. SEARCH FOR MARRIAGE allows you a similar search capability on the marriage files. EDIT CODES allows you to edit the user definable codes. (This may also be entered by typing ? instead of a code number from the update screens). USING THE USER DEFINABLE CODES: Both the update persons and marriages screens have user definable code fields. A short file "A-Genecodes" on the data disk stores these codes. I have set up the system so that a code of 0 defaults to a normal person and a marriage code of 0 is a normal marriage. Persons code of 1 = Adopted Person and Marriage codes of 1 = De-facto, 2 = Divorced and 3 = Ended in Death of a partner. These codes can be used in searches and the file A-Genecodes can be edited as above to add your own definitions. PRINTING You can print out the various lists directly, or to a disk file, so as well as printing directly to the printer, these files can be input by most word processors and printed in any format you like. CUSTOMISATION All the menues of A-Gene are now held in a file called A-Genemenues on your program disk, likewise all text strings in the program (apart from the opening screen with copyright notices) are held in A-Gene.txt. These 2 text files may be edited with a suitable text editor (or wordprocessor capable of producing plain ASCII text files). Thus allowing you to alter the wording of a particular screen, for the very ambitious allowing you to produce a foreign language version. The menu files are in the format:- 1,"PROJECT" 2,"Reset Colours" etc. The numbers must be unchanged, however you can alter the text to anything you like as long as the text length is not much longer than the original phrase, otherwise printouts will be out of alignment. The text files are in a similar format although of course the phrases can be much longer. In a few cases where the words are the text of gadgets, e.g. 502,"EDIT SAVE RETURN DUMP" If you change one of these words, then the associated initial letter, e.g. 500,"E" must also be changed to allow the hot-keys to work. Care must also be taken if for instance you change Y/N to Ja/Nein then Y must be changed to J. If anyone translates both the text files into any foreign language, I would greatly appreciate a copy of the files on a disk, thus allowing A- Gene to be spread to even more countries than it all ready is. I have a partial Danish translation, plus full Swedish and Finnish versions which are available on request (please include postage and a blank disk for foreign language versions) but would appreciate full versions from anyone who manages this task. ENTERING DATES Dates may now have the format a.1902, b.1902 or c.1902 as well as the acceptable formats dd mmm yyyy, mmm yyyy or yyyy. These abbreviations meaning After 1902, Before 1902 or Circa 1902. The date formatting has had to be fairly rigid as the last four characters of the date are used in sorting family members into date-of-birth order on some screens. MULTI TASKING Depth gadgets now appear at all times, and the program multi-tasks nicely, it is simple to click screen to back to use the CLI etc if necessary. THANKS A-Gene like most programs could not have been written without the help of numerous other people in the Amiga field who have either directly helped with suggestions, utilities, bug reports and suggestions. The list is getting longer each day, but the following have to be included as without them, A-Gene in its present form would not exist:- Tomas Rokicki for placing DFC in the public domain. The Other Guys for the recoverable ram disk, RRD:. Richard Barrows of King Island for sending me his complete data base of 1100 family members which allowed me to test the program to its limits. GFA Data Media UK for their help in providing updated versions of their basic interpreter and compiler. Fred Fish/Tony Thompson and Amiganuts for distributing my demo disks. Ray Burt-Frost of Amiganuts, Southampton, England for distributing A-Gene as licenceware worldwide. Anders Wilfors of Vasa, Finland for the great work he has done in providing Swedish and Finnish language text files. And last but by no means least, thanks to Tim Strachan of Megadisc to whom the Amiga community in Australia owes so much, for his help in promoting the program. BUGS: Sometimes the window title "GFA-Basic" appears when a requester is shown, this appears to be a bug in GFA which has been fixed in v3.5, unfortunately they introduced a new bug in that release which precludes its use. Please advise if any other problems are found. I hope this program will enable you to carry out interesting research into your own family background. I should like to hear from anyone who finds this program useful. Any suggestions for improvements, additions, changes in format etc will be greatly appreciated. A contribution towards return postage (blank disks are fine) is also greatly welcomed. Future enhancements will all depend on feed-back from users. Mike Simpson, 11 Merauke Street, Whalan, N.S.W. 2770 Australia. Phone (02)-6254096 Fax (02)-2290545 Overseas Callers - Please check the time before phoning. My wife does not like being called from her bed at 01:30 to answer queries!!! 21st July 1992. OTHER PRODUCTS -------------- I currently have 2 other similar data-base programs ready for early release:- A-VIAN - A data base intended for Pigeon breeders. A-Vian is similar in layout to A-Gene, but allows breeders to save details of around 200 breeding pairs and 1000 sale birds on a data disk. Files on the program disk hold details of Customers name and address files along with their purchases. Each birds pedigree can have the breeders loft included in the heading and prints out full details including race results of all the birds ancestors. A-LOG - A similar product but designed for cat (CAT-A-LOG) and dog (DOG-A-LOG) breeders. This produces similar sales and pedigree forms to A-Vian as well as show results and includes champion classifications, kennel club registration numbers etc etc. Anyone interested in either of the above products can obtain a demonstration disk from me by sending a blank disk and $5 (or equivalent in blank disks, gold bars, etc.) to the above address. The final price has not been fixed but will be approx 20 pounds/40 dollars.