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pug-l:2001

Pugglers Off-Line 2001

Note that the formatting of this page is 'in progress', don't report errors on it for the moment!

Having taken up the challenge of Colin Liebenrood in the PUG Newsletter Volume 10 Number 4 to produce a summary of the PUG-L on-line forum for the benefit of those who do not subscribe to PUG-L for one reason or another.

We would appreciate knowing if this is proving beneficial to members, please inform the editor.

Here is a summary of messages on the PUG-L on-line forum during the year 2001. Filtered with Colin’s assistance and laid out to his methodology, I have omitted items that have already appeared in the Newsletter, were ephemeral, are probably only of interest to the on-line community, were unanswered questions or are covered in the list of Frequently Asked Questions that appeared in the Newsletter and is on PUGWeb.

Contributors to the original discussion are named after each item, although not all their comments may appear here. One or two suggestions were too lengthy properly to summarise, but deserve articles in their own right.

Participation in PUG-L continues to grow. Looking back through the years we had: Year 2000 – 259 messages; 2001 – 340; 2002 – 370; 2003 up to the PUG Newsletter deadline date of 1st December 2003, we have 525messages. Why don’t you join us?

Pedigree and PediTree Operation

Illegitimate children

When a woman who has had illegitimate children marries; is there any way of distinguishing them on the family tree, apart from giving them the mother's surname? - I've always taken the view that 'marriage' records should really be called 'union' or 'partnership' records. As far as any lineage-linked recording is concerned the illegitimate child belongs in a different family group.

In Pedigree (and most other programs) that means making a second 'marriage' record and noting that no marriage ceremony took place.

I believe there is a notation (i.e. something other that '=') for non-marriage partnerships and so the person would appear on the tree as the child of a non-marriage (with or without a father's name recorded) - If you are using a database made from Families, Ancestry or Census definitions that I supplied, then you should enter a marriage.note enclosed in (round brackets) such as (common law) or (partner) in a first 'marriage' without a spouse, with that illegitimate child only. Even if the spouse is known, this will cause “m.” to be replaced by “=”, but will cause the legal marriage to be counted as the second. - You can also, or only, enter a birth.note on the child's record, enclosed in round brackets such as (illegitimate) or (father unknown). This will appear with any birth.date in trees etc. - Exporting the database after this would it show as a partner in PediTree. - I think the normal sign for un-married is an = sign with an oblique through it. I have the sign in my word processor but it will not copy / transfer to this e-mail!!

(Hugh Weatherly; Malcolm Austen; Murray Kennedy; Peter Glover; Cliff Debney.)

Major or last occupation or residence

One of Pedigree's strengths has been the support for multiple occurrences of occupations and residences spanning peoples' lives. The downside has been the difficulty of showing only one of them, when a particular chart or tree has required this.

The PediView Elton.ped database introduced an extra picture for occupation called major which allowed you to add a semicolon to occupation.title that you didn't want to be shown, with the picture

if not  title contains ";" then title ", " end

So that only titles without a semicolon would be shown. It enabled you to mark the minority of multiple occupations to suppress them.

Another, arguably better way, is to show only the occupations and residences that do not have a final 'to' date. However, this may mean that no occupation is shown if you have recorded a retirement or employment termination date. Residence is safer in this respect.

Define a new picture script name called 'final' for occupation and enter:

if to absent then title 
end

Then use final(occupation) instead of your original picture in (say) Person detail picture script.

Define a new picture script name called 'final' for residence and enter:

if to absent then
  [dwelling|][road|][locality|][TOWN county|][postcode country|]
end

The main script has been copied from the 'address' picture so that you could use this new 'final(residence)' picture in the Source letter report. It is obviously wrong to have more than one address – particularly a previous address, in a letter!

If you don't know a 'to' date, it can always be 'bef.' death.date or some other later date.

(Murray Kennedy)

Modification of control.ged

Is it OK to alter a used person field GEDCOM tag by changing the 4-letter tag in the CONTROL.GED file using a txt editor program?

I go to options then definitions then person enter. I then alt T to change the tag but nothing happens. If I press enter I get the message “records already exist: can't change”.

I have modified my database so I have a person fields called censusA censusB up to censusF (as events)to represent the 1841-1891 censuses and of course I forgot to alter the cens tag, which was automatically given to each. - Why not just use Pedigree to make the change? You should make the change on a COPY of your database so that you have the original intact.

- I find that puzzling because it works in my customer.ped in Pedigree for DOS. Yes, you can't change data type, but you can change tags when records are present. There was no check that the tags were unique - which there should have been. Exporting and importing those duplicate tags would cause chaos, as the duplicate tags would merge into one field with multiple occurrences. Malcolm's advice is correct - if you have to. Backup, then edit control.ged with care as a text file, and don't save it as a word processor doc. - You are quite correct I can change the GED tag now I've changed my glasses and can see the blinking underline. Sorry I run Pedigree in a 7“ by 4” window so that I have other programs open at the same time.

(Mike Fisher; Malcolm Austen; Murray Kennedy.)

Modify an Index

Could anybody please tell me how to modify an existing index in Pedigree v2.6N? To an existing Person index, which is presently indexed by Key 1 - surname, Key 2 - forenames, I would like to add Key 3 - birth.date (or if no birth present, then baptism.date). - You cannot modify an existing index, but can create a new one. In Pedigree, key 3 has to be birth.date, and adding christening.date will only affect the order of duplicate names which all have no birth.date. It will not intersperse birth and christening dates. The index will be created as the last list. However, in PediView, you can erase the existing index, and create a new one, which will reuse the same list if it is the first empty list. That is effectively what you want. PediView can also sort it in the way that you want. Select birth.date as key 3 and then click the mouse back on key 3 and choose christening.date. That makes the key3 into birth.date christening.date, which will sort duplicate names into either birth or christening sequence as you wanted.

(Ray Nichols; Murray Kennedy)

Multiple events shown on trees

I use Pedigree's ability to add multiple entries for events like 'Birth' to keep track of my research, so I can end up with a person with an entry like

Birth 1	Date    c.1874

Place Enfield Note aged 7 Source 1881 Census

Birth 2	Date    c.1875

Place Enfield Note aged 16 Source 1891 Census

Birth 3	Date    c.1874 

Place Enfield Note aged 86 in 1960 Source Death certificate

Birth 4	Date    07 May 1874
		Place    Enfield

Note Source Birth certificate

Whilst I am happy with the entries on the screen and my 'Individual' reports, this can cause trees to become cluttered with multiple entries of the same event. Is it possible, either now or in the future, to have some mechanism where by an event etc, can be prefixed by some character which will inhibit is display on printed trees.

In the above example:

|                               |
Joe               instead of    Joe
BLOGGS                          BLOGGS
b. 07 May 1874                  b.c.1874
b.c.1875
b.c.1874
b. 07 May 1874

- You need to alter the event picture that is used by the particular level of brief, normal or detailed picture that is shown by pressing F5 in Pedigree before drawing the tree. Its name is shown like normal(descendant). Then use F7 to see what picture is used in the Person normal picture, such as normal(birth). You can either alter the event picture called normal, or copy its content using Alt+C into a new event picture called (say) 'tree'. If you rename it, then you need to create a new Person picture name to use it, and then use that name instead of normal(descendant).

I would suggest that you add a semicolon ; or exclamation ! to the end of notes on any event that you don't want included on the tree. (This is what I suggested for occupations for a major(occupation) picture.) Then in the new picture insert this line at the start:

if not notes contains ";" then 

and at the last line add end

You may still get new lines for each extra occurrence of the event, unless you insert

separator=" "  {the default is new line}

before the normal picture for Person, or whatever picture name was used instead of normal(descendant) in your original F5 tree picture.

This may be all that you want to do.

ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR DATABASE FIRST ! When did you last do a GEDCOM export too?

(Michael Austin; Murray Kennedy)

Pedigree Full Up

A couple of days ago, upon pressing F10 to save data, I received the error message 'Maximum file size exceeded. Press ESC.' I knew I was nearing the 1MB limit for PED databases, but had put off converting to PDG, due to a warning from Murray (in a 1997 letter accompanying an update to v2.6k) - 'Your data will take more space so don't use /huge ./large options for smaller databases.' Anyway, following Murray's previous advice (PUG-L message 10/11/99), I upgraded to a PDG database, and everything seems to be fine. Curious as to how much more space my data now occupied, I checked. Contrary to Murray's warning, my data files are now smaller - MUCH smaller in the case of Person.dat (assumed to be the cause of the 'file size' problem), which had shrunk from 1,016KB to 727KB. Marriage.dat is now 70KB instead of 72KB, and Source.dat (unused) is 8KB instead of 16KB. Is this normal? In case it's relevant, I tried exporting a GEDCOM from both PED and PDG databases, and both files are 991KB, so I presume they are identical. - It is normal for the file sizes to be smaller after a GEDCOM export and import when the database has become fragmented internally due to some records getting larger or smaller. However, I would be surprised if a newly imported .ped was not smaller than a newly imported .pdg, because the .ped uses chunk units of 16 bytes and the .pdg 48, when making each record. Sometimes you can delay the change from .ped to .pdg to .pdh just by export and re-import to a new DB. When you enlarge a record, and it no longer fits its chunks, then it is moved to the end of the DB, and the .spc file marks the space left. The .spc file is used to find a free space for a new record, or one that has been repositioned, as above. That results in some fragmentation with empty chunks, spread throughout the DB.

(Martin Hagger; Murray Kennedy)

Pedigree scripts

I'm a total novice with the script language in Pedigree and would appreciate some help with a query that I have. I am printing out a descendant’s tree, using the following via Pedigree printing:

Descendants list Wide Tree using brief details. The tree prints out fine but my query is how do I amend the script (in simplistic terms) to only print out birth/baptism date, marriage date, death or burial date. Currently it also prints where the marriage takes place even with brief detail. - There is a quick fix, but it will remove place information from elsewhere: Choose Alt+O Options, Pictures, Event (group), brief. See this script in the Picture Editor:

  if notes between"("and")" then notes end
  date ["in" place]

Find the bit that says [“in” place] and delete it. Press F10 to save the modified Picture Script, then Esc twice to return to the main screen.

(Denis Broster; Colin Liebenrood)

Printing fractions in PediView / PediTree

My great grandfathers address in 1881 was “Fourteen and a half Tram Road Side”. Is it possible to type and print fractions in PediView reports and trees, in particular the 'half' fraction? The explanation for the half number was that the houses were built in a hillside, and were in total six floors high and divided into two dwellings. Both the dwellings opened onto street-level, but on different streets at different elevations. And although on different streets the houses shared the same number. - It is possible in Pedigree to show ½ (half) by holding Alt key whilst typing 171 on the numeric block. It might also print like that on your printer if it is using the IBMPC (PC-8) character set. HOWEVER, it will not appear the same in PediView in Windows, and will not be imported correctly by any other program, when Pedigree exports it unchanged. The same is true for £ (pound) and é (e acute) and other symbols higher that ASCII 126. I cannot recommend it until I can provide character translation facilities in GEDCOM export and PediView displays. Colin may now have a remedy for imports via GedUtils. - If you go to Start>Programs>Accessories>Character Map, then this provides a way to choose non-keyboard characters. You should find a ½ (half - if it gets through the email system) that you can copy and Paste into your text. BUT it won't look like that in Pedigree, because Windows programs use a different character-set (ANSI) from DOS programs (IBMPC), which affects accented characters and such symbols!

(Denver Coles; Murray Kennedy; Colin Liebenrood)

Punctuation between elements of a group

I'd like to put commas between elements of a group, especially Residence. At the moment I have to spend quite a bit of time editing the output before I can send it to someone. I'd like Residence to read, for example,

24 Jamaica Street, Edinburgh, MLN

At the moment, I get either:- 24 Jamaica Street,Edinburgh,MLN [with commas entered as part of the data]

or:- 24 Jamaica Street Edinburgh MLN [no commas entered as part of the data]

My Residence.detail picture is:-

separator=“, ” dwelling road locality town co POSTCODE [country] [“ (” from “-” to “) ”] [“Source: ” source]

and my Address.detail picture is:-

separator=“, ” [dwelling][road|][locality|][town co|] [POSTCODE country|]

but the

separator=“, ”

part seems to have no effect in either. -

Doesn't 'separator' only apply when a field has multiple instances? So:

separator=“, ” source

would result in multiple sources being separated by “, ”

In your case I think you need to do:

dwelling “, ” road “, ” locality “, ” town “, ” co … etc.

The hard bit is that you only want the separator to appear if there is something to separate … sounds easy:

dwelling [“, ” road] [“, ” locality] [“, ” town] [“, ” co] … etc.

but is it? That assumes dwelling is always present, in general you may find it safer to use:

[dwelling “, ”] [road “, ”] [locality“, ”] town [“, ” co] … etc.

I guess a proper and complete solution could be produced using lots of 'if's. - Either way you can end up with a stray comma; I can't think of a totally tidy solution that isn't horribly verbose. Probably a trailing stray comma is the least worst option, that is, Malcolm's second solution. - I would use the same idea for each field, like

[dwelling “, ”] [road “, ”] [locality“, ”][ town “, ”] [co “, ”] [postcode“, ”] [country“ ,”]

and if you want a final full stop, surround the whole thing by

[ 'whole thing' “. ”]

(Ann Cossar; Malcolm Austen; Colin Liebenrood; Murray Kennedy)

PediTree on screen fonts

Is it possible to change the size of fonts in the PediView on screen family & list display? They appear to be different size on my screen & I can't remember if I changed the family display font or not? - The family buttons font size is determined in your Windows start menu. Open Settings | control panel | Display | Settings tab (Win95/8) + advanced if Win95/8 by choosing small fonts or large fonts. In Win XP - Open Settings | Control Panel | Display | On the Appearance tab, click Advanced | In the Item list, click the element you want to change, such as Window, Menu, or Scrollbar, and then adjust the appropriate settings, such as colour, font or font size | Click OK or Apply to save your changes. Colours of buttons, window text etc, is also set in Display | appearance tab, unless PediTree Window menu mentions it specifically. The detailBox font size when expanded is set in PediView by Print | Fonts style dialogue.

(Mike Fisher; Murray Kennedy)

Restoring deleted record in Pedigree or PediTree

Instead of detaching a person record in a database I accidentally deleted it. I have a backup with that record in it but not various other modifications and additions, so I do not want to use that unless I have to. If I now, at any time, export the database in which the record was deleted and load it into a new database, all the person RIN's after the deleted one will be changed, which would be disastrous. Is there any way in which that record number can be restored for reuse ? If not, it is a modification that would be very valuable. - Not without some difficulty, suggest this is for advanced users only. There's one rather circuitous method I can think of using GEDCOM to restore the lost record (not tested!). Knowledge of the GEDCOM file format is assumed in what follows:

1. Export the database to GEDCOM (A), setting 'Export deleted records as nulls' to yes.

2. Restore the backup to a different database-name and also export that to GEDCOM (B).

3. Using a text editor, locate the deleted record in GEDCOM files (A) (one line) and (B) (several lines). Copy the undeleted record from (B) to replace the single line in (A), removing any FAMS or FAMC lines from this record so that it is detached.

4. Make a new empty database and import the modified GEDCOM (A). Create the indexes: any previously deleted records will appear as blank lines at the start of the index(es) and can be again deleted.

5. Run Check database to ensure all is well. Check that your RIN’s are unchanged and that the lost record has returned!

Alternatively, you could just do steps 1 & 4, find the relevant empty record in step 4 and rather than deleting it, insert the missing information.

(Douglas Jopling; Colin Liebenrood)

Notes in Pedigree

Have notes in excess of permitted limit for some people in a number of databases. How can I transfer these notes to Microsoft Word and then delete excess from Pedigree. Have up to date backups in all cases. - I don't know which permitted limit that you mean. The longtext notes field in Person allows 4095 characters for each of 255 occurrences - up to your cache size limit set using F3 in Alt+Options Definitions. Each occurrence is created when editing by pressing Alt+A. I wouldn't recommend more than 12,000, but others can be put into Source records linked to this Person, or other people mentioned. The report area for notes may be your limit, but if there is no horizontal line below the area for notes, you can extend this area down to the bottom of the report itself (say 200 lines). To copy text out of Pedigree notes, make Pedigree a window, not full screen, by Alt+Return. Use Pedigree edit with F4 to zoom the notes. Use the Windows icons to copy the area of text (without vertical lines) in sections to Word. Delete these sections by marking them with Alt+B at opposite ends and Alt+D to delete them.

I summary, I would keep my notes in Pedigree, but spread them around to the people mentioned in them, using Source records which allows the info to be shared amongst different Person records. Pedigree will not accept a report longer than 255 lines but does not warn you. PediView will now continue the text in a report onto as many pages as you want - provided that the last area at least exceeded one page.

(Maurice Godbold ; Murray Kennedy)

Removing live people from trees

How do I remove live people from trees? - I must admit that I should have given this more thought since the introduction of the Data Protection Act many years ago.

There is no easy way unless you have been very methodical in your recording, and inclusion of estimated birth and death dates. However, you can make a picture script to give a reasonable guess, and then modify your records to fill in the estimates.

When a tree plan is made, there is no facility to suppress descendants if that person is alive.

This is my first attempt. Try it on a copy of your database. Change the picture script for brief, normal or detailed tree. (Pedigree -Print menu | tall or wide tree and press F5) (PediView -Options | Picture script | WideTall tree )

insert before…after the existing script:- if death present or burial present or birth.date present and birth.date<1900 or christening.date present and christening.date<1900 then

…….(Existing script)…….

else RIN “hidden” end

This will show the live descendants (say Person 123) with just the text 123 hidden or P123 hidden except that live spouses of dead descendants will still show.

An alternative to deal with that, requires the Person picture script named 'normal' or 'dates' or 'detail' to be changed instead, or a more complex condition using if spouse.death etc… end surrounding the second half of the tree picture concerning the spouse. - Are there not several shareware utilities that will strip out live Peeps from GEDCOM files? I remember downloading several. - I cannot vouch for these two, but certainly you will get a cleaner looking tree if you export, clean, and import them to an empty database.

You will probably have to convert Pedigree's GEDCOM with Ped-FHS first too.

GEDLIVING (http://www.rootsweb.com/~gumby/ged.html) or

GEDCLEAN (http://www.raynorshyn.com/gedclean/)

(Colin Skipper; Phil Warn; Murray Kennedy)

Destroyed database

I have destroyed a database by mistake. I have a GEDCOM backup but no backup of the much modified database design? I am running Windows 98 and UNDELETE in DOS comes up as bad command. - If you have loaded Win98 then it is quite likely that some or all of the disk space occupied by the deleted files will have been recycled and overwritten already. You might be able to get a professional recovery service to retrieve something for you (at a professional price I daresay). I think the only useful advice I can offer is that from the point you deleted the files any and every attempt to boot the system to Windows (DOS is probably ok) and try an idea that will reduce the slim chance of the data files being recoverable.

Oh, when you say UNDELETE in DOS, do you mean in a DOS window or do you mean you have booted into DOS mode? I'm not sure the latter will allow undelete to work but the former certainly won't work. - Firstly, don't do anything that will write files to the affected disk! Even starting Windows or reading e-mail does this. Secondly, there is no undelete or un-erase command in Win9x DOS, hence the “bad command”. If by any chance you have Norton Utilities for Win98, then that offers an undelete function. If you decide to buy it, then DON'T install it, but use the Emergency disk (as per the manual) to attempt to recover at least CONTROL.GED of your lost database, using the DOS-based un-erase program it provides. I've found this VERY useful, especially when I have deleted the wrong file by accident, just before doing a backup. If all that fails, then hard work lies ahead. Motto for all of us, you need a backup of your whole database; make sure you know how to do this safely before an accident happens. A GEDCOM backup preserves your information (and checks your database is fully readable), but does not contain all those altered Picture Scripts. - If you had any older backup of the modified DB design, then you can create a New DB from it and import the GEDCOM. But you say not, so I suggest that you use Colin's GedUtils v7.10 to do an analysis of the GEDCOM (which does work in my experience), and use that info. To add the fields and groups to a New DB made from Families, Census, Elton or whatever you think is the most complete.

(Mike Fisher; Malcolm Austen; Colin Liebenrood; Murray Kennedy.)

Databases: Families vs. Elton

I am now using PediTree successfully with a Families type database. I have extensive data in my Families Sources database. Is it worth the hassle to switch to an Elton type database? I cannot immediately see what the advantage is in switching? - 1. The Census record type in Elton.ped allows census household members to be indexed and linked to person records with full access to the Census source information for all censuses from either the person (several years) or Source (many members). Import from 1881 CDROM can be automatic via GedUtils v7. The other advantages for PediView / PediTree can also be gained by copying the pictures from the help file and by adding an AGE field of type= date to Person records. See help on : Differences from Pedigree for DOS then Differences in Definitions and Picture scripts for Elton.ped from Families or Census.ped databases then Elton.ped version changes

They are:

2. Age calculation for events in peoples' lives and age as at a specified date 'Now'.

3. Ancestry bloodline highlighted in trees and charts.

4. Images (BMP or JPG in PediTree) included in trees and reports.

5. If your Families-based database has not had your own fields or tables or reports or pictures added, then transfer to Elton.ped is simple. Otherwise, you have to decide which is easier: a) add the pictures above to your own DB b) add your own changes to elton.ped, before or after importing your data.

(Denver Coles; Murray Kennedy)

PediView / PediTree table page turning

Using the latest version of PediView I have drawn up a simple table of person records but when I go to change the page number with the spin arrows nothing happens. The only way to change pages is to go into the popup menu and view the following page. - The help on “Preview print” says that the page number is shown at the top right, and the spin box can be clicked up or down and the page number clicked to view the page selected. You can't just spin the figure because it doesn't know that you have decided to stop, until you click the figure too.

(Don Birkinshaw; Murray Kennedy)

Deleting source text in Pedigree

How do I quickly delete blocks of text in source records? I have tried marking the text and using Alt+D but that has no effect. “Edit,” allows me to Mark and Paste which I use all the time for pasting to and from Word docs, but there is no Cut option, which would be another way of deleting text? - You need to mark the block of text using Alt+B at both ends. Then move the cursor into the marked block and presses Alt+D; you will be invited to confirm that you wish to delete the marked block. Press Y and it is gone. - I think that you should try the Pedigree facility again. Mark both ends using Alt+B; Alt+C will copy it to the notepad (in case you want to restore it) Alt+D will delete the marked block. (It doesn't copy to the Pedigree notepad unless you also Alt+C first) “Edit” (in the Windows icon) allows Mark and Paste to and from Word docs, but there is no Windows facility in a DOS program to delete or cut text, although its Mark, Copy (to the Windows clipboard, and Paste work well in Pedigree.

(Ralph Atherton; Colin Liebenrood; Murray Kennedy)

Out-of-date tree plans

Just reminders that neither Pedigree nor PediTree update existing plans that have been stored as lists, when changes are made to any relationships like children or marriages. However, editing any data fields is OK, because whenever a tree is viewed or printed, the latest data is taken from the record. It is the shape of the tree branches, which is calculated in the plan, and then used in viewing Wide or Tall trees. Remember that if you delete a tree plan list, the letter used for the new plan will be the first unused letter in the alphabet. If you ever see missing lines in a tree, then remake that plan, and check again.

(Murray Kennedy)

Addresses from US 1880 census index

Last week I collected the entries for my surname from the new US 1880 census index on CD (now in stock at the Family History Centre at South Kensington, London).

The addresses are, for instance: … Chicago, Cook County, Illinois.

My question is how to fit them logically into Pedigree and consistent with my other data, where the current address group fields are:

Dwelling ; road ; locality ; town ; county ; postcode ; Country ;

Chicago is the town, fine. Illinois is the “county” but I don't want to leave out the Cook County as this is where I might have to go to view the vital records. Perhaps I need a new address group? Has anyone solved this problem already? - In my own family database & Wythall, WOR one-place database I have replaced all the fields you mention with one field PLACE in which I put the whole address separated by commas. If you do it in reverse order i.e. start with country you can index by place. - I would put Illinois into postcode because that is where the zip code containing the state appears in modern addresses, and it is the right sequence. Alternatively, you can add it to the county as in : Cook County, Illinois

(Ann Cossar; Mike Fisher; Murray Kennedy)

Census Data in Pedigree / PediTree

I have just read about the FreeCEN project to publish census information freely on the web. I contacted the co-ordinator to volunteer my census data that I have already input to Pedigree and he welcomes it in .csv format. I have tried to do this, but can only have a list of sources or the raw census data. What is needed is a list of each census entry as enumerated together with the references from the sources for each line. Any suggestions anyone other than inputting to their data recording program all over again? - Assuming that you have the information in a database based on the CENSUS design, then a specially designed single-column Pedigree Table will probably get near the required format. If it is based on the census record, then it should be possible to get the required information on each line. Care in sorting the census records first will be needed to get each household together. It may be necessary to edit the result to tidy it up, but that will be less work (and error-prone) than retyping it all.

(Alan Rowland; Colin Liebenrood)

Using filters in PediView / PediTree

Having been a long time user of Pedigree I have decided now is the time to change over completely to PediView / PediTree! I have been using the earlier versions of PediView / PediTree to print Trees, Tables and Reports with some success. However these have been generated using Pedigree. Generating trees using PediView / PediTree (after mastering the new techniques) has been extremely successful. However…generating a Table has been much more time consuming. After using Pedigree for so long it is surprising how difficult it is to carry out the same steps but in a different way! After an hour or two trying to create a new list using the filter (which I had done many times in Pedigree) using the filter:

treeref contains “A” without success,

I then tried surname=“Hall”

Still no result, so on checking “Help” I confirmed the syntax was OK so I decided to call it a day. Has anybody any suggestions where I'm going wrong? - I cannot see what you might be doing wrong, but here are some suggestions.

1. Select a Person index (all Person records) 2. Right click in that view window in the list and choose filter. 3. Type your filter (like one of those above provided that you have a plan A). 4. Click OK in the script editor.

This will make a new list and a new View window. If this doesn't help, then you'll have to say what happens after OK. - When you get the hang of it PediView / PediTree are a light years ahead of Pedigree for their speed in creating tables and pictures and filtering and sorting the results. I have 1024 names in my database and I created a 48-name table of Anderson's by the following methods:

Initially you need to create an indexed person list by

1. File>Open>Anderson.ped (or whatever) 2. List>Index create>choose person and for

          Key 1  surname
          Key 2  forenames
          Key 3  birth.date   - or your own personal choices.

3. List>Choose, and click on Person, which produces a window headed List 1 indexed with 1024 Person records or whatever. 4. Right click inside this box and click on Filtered Search. You may have to click on an OK button and if the cursor is not flashing in the top left corner double click. For the filter I typed - surname =“anderson” click the Test button 2nd right bottom it should either give a name or state “script OK but no output for this record” note that the button name changes to script if you are satisfied click OK or click the script button to enable you to amend the picture script. 5. Again right click inside the list of names select draw table near the bottom of the list. In my case this reduced the number of persons in the table from 1024 to 48

(Brian Hall; Murray Kennedy; David Anderson)

Printers and Printing

Printing Tables

I wish to print a “Table” containing a small list of descendants using PediView. I have made a “Person Table, called PersonBMD” (thanks to David Anderson's article in Pedigree Newsletter September 2000), which contains Forenames, Surname, Birth, Marriage and Death dates and names of Spouse. If I click onto the Person list the table produces the above information for everyone in the database. This is not what I want. I have made a DescTree from one person in the database and this Plan D contains 22 people. How do I obtain a printout of these 22 people and their Birth, Marriage and Death dates listed within the Table, PersonBMD? What simple operation have I missed? Or do I have to use a filter and if so what sort of filter? The usefulness of a Table like this is that it will show which dates are missing for a few closely related individuals. - In this case where you have a descTree for the people in which you are interested, and it is not as complicated as part of one tree and part of another, then you should just filter your main alphabetic index with:

treeref contains “X” where X is the letter of the plan that you made.

You can refine this filter by conditions like

treeref between “a” and “e” {a,b,c,d, but excludes “e” treerefs} and not surname contains “smith”

I think that David's tree branches may be more complex than can be handled by doing a descendants tree plan, but I thought that it sounded as if Arthur's example was straightforward. Pedigree's manual has useful filters on page 108 and a search on filter in PediView will show filter examples, which include Pedigree's useful filters.

(Arthur Golding; Murray Kennedy)

New Printer

I have a new printer, and have forgotten how to add this printer to the list of printers available - please advise. Version 2.4L - This could be tricky! Firstly, if you are asking about making it available to Windows programs, then Start | Printers | Add Printer is the place to start. Secondly, for Pedigree version 2.4L, you need to know that your new printer will work with DOS programs, like Pedigree. If so, then choose a compatible Pedigree Printer-driver. If not, then get the “Pedigree Printing” utility from PUGweb. Without a printer make & name it is not possible to advise further.

(Jeremy Hills; Colin Liebenrood)

Conversions

Converting FTM to Pedigree

I have received a GEDCOM file via an e-mail attachment, exported from Family Tree Maker and I would like to view this in Pedigree v2.6N. Would GedUtils v7.101 (which I have), be the program to do this? If so, could anyone please tell me, in very simple, step-by-step details how to do it. - Yes, it would. Get into GedUtils Help. In Help Contents, choose GedUtils Program | GEDCOM File Conversion | File Conversion Procedure for the outline of the steps involved. Other sections of the on-line help give greater detail of the individual steps. The Convert GEDCOM process should be straightforward with the supplied Conversion Parameter File.

(Ray Nichols; Colin Liebenrood)

Converting Pedigree To Brothers Keeper

I found recently that using Ped-FHS Option 1 to convert a GEDCOM file for import into a two years old version of Brothers Keeper BK5.2 did not work as expected. There were two problems :

1. Event notes (e.g. birth.notes) were not being picked up at all. 2. Only source numbers were being picked up, but no text.

I discussed this with Murray Kennedy and Don Steed of Brothers Keeper, and the following points emerged :

1. BK5.2 cannot handle event notes. I thought that Ped-FHS Option 1 dealt with this by combing them into a general note, as it does for Option 4 PAF4 and Option 6 FTM, but I was mistaken. One can get round the problem by using one of these other Options, but this may affect Occupations.

2. There is now a BK6 version of Brothers Keeper, which can attach notes to each event, but its GEDCOM import function does not yet read them. According to Don Steed it will do soon.

3. Pre-2000 versions of BK5.2 require source numbers to be in the form @S123@ rather than just @123@, which is how they are exported from Pedigree. The current version of BK5.2 has fixed this, and can be down-loaded from the Brothers Keeper web-site www.bkwin.com or www.bkwin.net as can BK6.1 and other recent relevant BK material

4. The alternative is to put the GEDCOM file through a word-processor to insert the required “S”.

5. Possibly a bit dated in 2003 but members may still have this problem!

(Maurice Loaring); Colin Liebenrood.)

Converting Trees to Word documents

Over the weekend I wanted to send a Wide Tree by email. I have done this before Windows came along so I decided on the following approach:

1. Print to file from Pedigree. 2. Open the file in Word choosing an acceptable file format. 3. Edit the Dos characters using the Replace and Insert Symbol (Box Drawing characters) functions. 4. Attach the document to an email.

The plan worked well but I had to experiment a lot with the Open format to use. Rich Text Format seemed to give the best results but the Word text was always wider than the screen. That was OK because I could use the scroll bars but I couldn't find a way to repaginate the text so that I could print it onto A4 paper. Another difficulty was that whilst most lines were formatted with tab characters some of them came with Indents as well/instead. This resulted in some of the box characters not lining up vertically. I would welcome any suggestions you all might have and a steer to where this has been discussed before. - I have a font called Letter Gothic Line, which I use for the same purpose - printing trees in Word. Its fixed pitch (non-proportional), so the box characters will line up. It saves the replace and insert chore with the box drawing characters, as the font has them built in. It's freeware, it's not the most decorative font though it's perfectly serviceable, and you're very welcome to a copy if you'd like it. - Useful, but possibly superseded by using PDF now!

(Tony Mooney; Patrick Black; Colin Liebenrood.)

Family Tree Maker

I've been sent a GEDCOM 5.5 file produced by Family Tree Maker for Windows. Can anyone advise what I use to import it into Pedigree, please? - Use the new GedUtils 7 and use the G55toPed.gcp converter, available from PUGweb.

(Patrick Black; Peter Walker)

Importing Family Tree Maker files into Pedigree.

I have been sent a 1.44 floppy disk with a Family Tree Maker *.fbk data file. I have also been sent a CD with the “Family Tree Maker 2” program on it. Could somebody please tell me in very simple, step-by-step terms, if I can view this *.fbk file in my Pedigree v2.6n, without installing FTM? I have GedUtils v7.101 installed on my hard drive. - If you aren't prepared to install FTM then I fear you must put the floppy disk back in the post with a letter asking the sender to export a GEDCOM file and send that to you. The only other option I can see is if you can find someone local to you with FTM who would do the conversion for you.

(Ray Nichols; Malcolm Austen)

Miscellaneous

Screen Size

For some reason unknown to me, my screen Window has changed in Pedigree v2.6n. In the family window I can see the family, i.e. Grandparents, Parents and children half screen along with the other half screen of Descendant/Persons index and details boxes okay but I have no top or bottom Edit type bars (I.E with inset etc) these off the screen. When I go to the Edit Person screen for example, the top line starts with the surname. The sex and Christian name lines are above the top of the screen. It seems that the screen has been stretched top and bottom the sides look okay I have never had this happen before, can someone guide me please to get it back to where it should be. The Windows ME screens are okay and do not appear to have been affected. - There are two possibilities here:

1. If you are running Pedigree full screen, then perhaps his monitor settings have changed. My monitor has different settings for Windows (graphics 800 x 600) and DOS (text 80 x 25); it knows which is in use and each can be adjusted separately.

2. The alternative (which I use) is to run Pedigree in a window, which allows cut & paste to/from other applications. In this case, the window should be maximised, (two overlapped boxes in the middle button top right), but may not be. (If not, then there will be scroll bars so that the whole Pedigree screen can be made visible piece by piece.) Clicking the said top right middle button should fix the situation. You can switch from full screen to windowed operation by the keystroke Alt+Enter. This works in Windows XP as well.

(Ron Booth; Colin Liebenrood)

Dates in Excel

In 'Pugglers Off-line' section of the March 2001 Newsletter (page 24) is an item 'Dates in EXCEL', originally posted by Ken Pringle. The item includes an URL for downloading a program, which will overcome Excel's pre-1900 dates problem. The URL does not work for me. The address may have changed, or no longer be available. Could someone please provide me with the correct URL? - Xdate can be downloaded at: http://www.j-walk.com/ss/excel/files/xdatedl.htm

(Martin Hagger; Bob Brock, Rod Clayburn.)

Installing Letter Gothic Line

My now deceased computer had Letter Gothic Line among the typefaces in the Windows Fonts. As this typeface did not appear in the Fonts list in my new computer running Windows 98, I downloaded LETGOTHL.ttf from the PUGweb site. I have tried three different methods of installing it among the Windows fonts, but always receive the instruction that as Letter Gothic Line is already installed in the Fonts folder, I must delete the old copy before I can install a new one. Is there any way of getting around this? - It is possible that you will need to restart Windows after moving the existing file because that fonts folder gets special treatment and the fonts are loaded into memory at start up. - The solution in the comment that the “fonts folder gets special treatment and the fonts are loaded into memory at start up”. My first attempt at installing the file must have worked, but the success was not apparent until I restarted the computer this evening.

(Denys Thomas; Malcolm. Austen.)

GEDCOM

Creating GEDCOM - information lost

When creating GEDCOM’s from my Pedigree database, I find that my sources do not get picked up in the GEDCOM - whether it is imported back to Pedigree or to another package. Is there any simple fix for this? Also, the Pedigree address format used in Residence (i.e., separate fields for different parts of the address) seems to cause problems to people using other packages (e.g., PAF). There is not a problem, I understand, when an address is entered elsewhere in a single field - e.g., as place of birth or death. Is there any simple way - short of rewriting all my Residence data in a single field on every record, which would be quite impracticable – of getting this data across? - Use Colin's GedUtils v7 for Windows downloaded from PUGweb or from your CDROM, Martyn. It has a process for ‘ExtractTree’, which uses a filtered list GEDCOM or tree plan GEDCOM together with a full export GEDCOM, to make a new GEDCOM with relevant Source and Census records. Use Ped-FHS for MSDOS, which is installed with PediTree, or in the separate £6 GEDCOM utilities package, to convert any Pedigree GEDCOM, including the output from GedUtils, into PAF, Generations or FTW. This is now partially superseded by PediTree facilities.

(Martyn Taylor; Murray Kennedy)

GEDCOM Files

Have lost “Open with” instruction In “Properties” for GED files in Windows 95 Explorer. How can I restore please? What is the best association to make for opening GED files? - I lost this as soon as I installed Family Tree Maker, which took over this association. I have left this association and always use Notepad to open a GEDCOM file or even Word for bigger ones. Someone more expert in Windows may advise you better. - Initially, there is no “Open with” setting (File Association) for GEDCOM files in Windows 95 Explorer. Pedigree, PediView and GedUtils don't have a facility to use such a File Association, but require that you choose or import GEDCOM files from within the running program. So if you use only Pedigree software, there is no recommended association to set. I believe some other genealogical programs can use and do set up such an association when they are installed, such as PAF and GenViewer available from: http://www.mudcreek.ca/ - I too have this association problem with Family Tree Maker. (and also with a number of programs that I have associated incorrectly) How do you break the association? - Call up Windows Explorer (Start>Programs>Windows Explorer), choose View, Options, click on the File Type tab. Scroll down to find and highlight the file type of interest. Click on Edit, select the “open” command, click on Remove, click on Close (twice to return to Explorer). - Alternatively:

1 Select the file 2 Hold down “shift” and right click at the same time 3 This should give a menu with “Open with ..” 4 Left click on this option 5 Scroll down the resulting list until you find the program (WordPad, or Pedigree) you want to use to open all .ged files. 6 Ticking the box will ensure that this association stays with .ged files (until you do what you did last time :-)))

I have sent it to the group not just you personally because I suffered like you until I found the fix so it may be useful to others.

(Maurice Godbold; Murray Kennedy; Colin Liebenrood; Mike Fisher; Alan Rowland)

GEDCOM Splitting

I want to split my Kettle One-Name study database into smaller chunks. I'm not fussed how it splits, except that I want to keep each family together. That's because I've just downloaded GEDCOM Estimator, a rather nice little freeware program that checks a GEDCOM file for date inconsistencies, but my Kettle database produces a GEDCOM file which is too big for it to cope with. GedUtils will extract a tree from a GEDCOM file, but I want a coarser sieve than that. Suggestions anyone? - It occurred to me that this could be approached using some program fragments borrowed from other work; two hours later I split a small file of my own, so I offered to help Anna who sent her 3Mb+ GEDCOM file. My program found 3023 families and started splitting into that many files (a family here means a set of individuals that are related in any way). Not wanting that fine a split (or that many files), I modified the program to put up to 100 families in a file and sent Anna the resulting 31 files (in one ZIP-file wrapper). - Is this a facility that others would find useful? At present the program is a PERL script, needing the user to obtain and install PERL version 5 or later, so is not something I would want to distribute widely. Such a facility could possibly be added to GedUtils at some stage. - I have 3-4 largish Pedigree files, which are ragbag mixtures of integrated families and fragments of families and individuals. From time to time, I am asked to split out all the related and unrelated entries of a particular surname - without losing the family links where they exist. Present utilities allow splitting out a whole family, but not the unrelated hangers-on. - A search of the various archives Tucows, Cnet, etc. for a GEDCOM utility that would split a GEDCOM merely into certain sized chunks. None of the ones I found fitted the bill, mostly they used the 'related to X line' criterion for the splitting. - Not having created a GEDCOM with more than 2,500 Peeps on it, I have not felt the need for such a utility. BUT I must admit that I would LOVE to find one that merged multiple GEDCOMS. I downloaded all the Witchell surname folks by Christian name, so I had several William files, John, Robert, etc. and in total some 60 or so. I did not fancy importing them one by one into Pedigree or PediView so used Steve Archer's LDS Companion to create one Excel File, one Dbase IV file and just peruse them. I recommend a web search for GEDCOM utilities; a few seconds with GOOGLE, http://www.google.com found a very good GEDCOM browser and me several useful ones. Is there any chance of a Batch Import facility? It would be useful to import ALL GEDCOM files in a named Folder/directory. - I find that GEDSplit, which is Freeware, available from: http://www.rootsweb.com/~gumby/ged.html This is very effective and versatile and quite simple to use. It is designed for Windows 95. If you have a GEDCOM with lots of unrelated trees it s very easy to split it up. It can also be used, though I find the nomenclature rather confusing to split up a GEDCOM of a single tree into fragments based on relationships and generations; difficult to describe but very flexible in this respect. The options are almost endless. The main thing missing is a visualization showing the family tree and highlighting on how the GEDCOM is being split under your selected option. - Thank you for all the responses on this subject. Malcolm suggested GenViewer (http://www.mudcreek.ca/), which I had looked at briefly last year. It is now shareware with a 30-day free trial and, yes, it allows you to export one or more “islands”, which are defined in the same way as my “families”, namely a set of people related in some way. It has the added advantage of exporting linked source records as well, but I haven't yet checked if it handles other Pedigree extensions. It reports a different number of islands in Anna's file to my program, which I will need to investigate. I also tried Peter Lowe's suggestion of GEDSplit (Freeware from http://www.rootsweb.com/~gumby/ged.html), but have been unable to get it to work on my system. It appears to read the GEDCOM file, but its display remains blank. - What does the term “Islands” mean in a GEDCOM file?? - Explained when reporting on the shareware program GenViewer. This program allows viewing of basic GEDCOM file information; one of its displays is a list of the “islands” in the file. An “island” means a set of related individuals and families, for example, you + your wife + your children + both your ancestors + their spouses & siblings ….. etc is one “island”. The other Booth family that you haven't been able to relate to the first lot (if you have one?) is a second island. One-Namers tend to have a lot of islands in their files; Anna's file (that started all this discussion) had some 6000 islands, of which 3000-old were individuals with no relations. If you want to extract one or more “islands” from a database, then GenViewer is a good tool to use. In conjunction with GedUtils, it should be able to extract all relevant records from a Pedigree database, including linked Source and Census records. - I think this would be a very good facility to be added to GedUtils. - I'll consider it after I have implemented the essential selective export and GEDCOM 5.5 export facilities in PediView. - Further to my last message, GenViewer, available from: http://www.mudcreek.ca/ Is shareware with a 30-day free trial. It allows you to export one or more “islands”, namely a set of people related in some way. It has the added advantage of exporting linked source records as well, but I don't think it would handle other linked records (e.g. Census). Each “island” goes into a separate GEDCOM file, so it wouldn't do for Anna Kettle's “chop up coarsely” job (see previous messages). It displays a list of “islands” with the number of individuals and marriages in the set and the name of the first person encountered. From this you can choose what to examine further and/or export. The exported “island” file(s) derived from a Pedigree GEDCOM file will import into Pedigree or work as Plan/List files for GedUtils Extract Tree process (version 7.101 or later, there was a bug!). However, at present the exported files lack a newline character after their last line (0 TRLR), which causes Pedigree to think that there may be another file to come. I will report this lack to GenViewer's authors. My previous report that it found a different number of islands from my program was not correct, once I looked harder. The displayed list is in descending order by (number of individuals); there were 15 “islands” with one person and one marriage, which count as an island in my program. These were scattered amongst the 3102 one-person “islands” and I had overlooked them. - The problem you had with GEDSplit is that one needs to first run the GEDCOM through a programme that I think Murray gave me that removes a trailing character at the end of each line. I'll check at home and look for more details. The problem depends upon whether you export directly from Pedigree or use something like PEDGED - One way to use Pedigree and GenViewer in tandem is to split off sections of a copy of a .ped family by using the detach command. Each of these sections then shows up as an island when GenViewer looks at the exported GEDCOM. As Colin says, a GEDCOM of each island can then be produced. I have used this method to send a copy of a family tree in GEDCOM form, without extraneous parts of the family that were not relevant. For correspondents without a GEDCOM reading program, it is also possible to send a dedicated copy of GenViewer with the GEDCOM as a .exe file. ($CDN 30 is about £GBP 13.66) - Trailing spaces upset GEDSplit. I copied a couple of GEDCOM files with GedUtils version 7 (which strips any trailing spaces) and GEDSplit then shows entries in its list window.

(Anna Kettle; Howard Fuller; Phil Warn; Peter Lowe; Ron Booth; Peter Glover; Murray Kennedy; Bill Gathercole; Colin Liebenrood.)

File transfer and/or merging

I have built up two SEPARATE Pedigree databases with large families (and some disconnected persons) in each. I now find that there is a connection between families in the two databases. Is there any way, other than by making a GEDCOM transfer (with all the tedious business of editing the notes and other fields which GEDCOM has not transferred), of connecting the two families in one or other of the databases - some variant of the Mark & Place procedure perhaps, or possibly by use of Windows Explorer or a utility (I have X-TREE GOLD) ?? Or is it something that PediView make simple? - There is no way to link families in separate databases, not even with PediView! So John is stuck with GEDCOM transfer to combine the two databases, then making the relevant links using mark and place. It will probably be best to transfer both databases into a single new one (thus preserving the old ones intact for the moment). Pedigree/PediView are very well behaved over GEDCOM transfer and don't normally fail to transfer information, unless the databases involved have different fields. So I'm not sure what John means about ' the tedious business of editing the notes….'. Two possibilities occur to me:

1. If John has added any fields, perhaps he has a duplicate GEDCOM tag in a Group or Record. 2. Import GEDCOM to Pedigree versions earlier than (I think) 2.6n can cause loss of indentation in Notes. (1) can be checked with PedSpecs; (2) prevented by using PediView, or a Pedigree upgrade, or using a facility in GedUtils to put a non-space character at the start of each indent, thus preserving the layout. The other problem John may encounter is duplicated Person, Marriage and Source records. My articles in the Newsletter Sept 1977 and Dec. 1977 are about dealing with this.

(John Walford; Colin Liebenrood)

pug-l/2001.txt · Last modified: 2018/08/30 00:19 by 127.0.0.1

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