I've heard mixed things about that. I use Family Historian to hold my conclusions and GenQuiry (of course :) ) to manage my in-progress research. And a bunch of other programmes as well for different specialised tasks. (I'm not of the school of thought that wants one-ring-to-rule-them-all/one programme to do everything.
If lkessler turns up, it will be interesting to explore that topic -- one programme versus many.
Really rough notes -- or things I've found and haven't processed yet -- go into OneNote (which I suspect is similar) but I try to get everything into GenQuiry as quiickly as I can. I know from experience that if I don't do that things spiral out of control. I'm a pack-rat for information.
I quite like Family Tree but I'm hardly an expert. I don't believe in switching from package to package trying to find the holy grail. Version 7 does everything I need and I much prefer the control over tree and report printing compared with online offerings.
I am an economist so slicing and dicing data comes pretty naturally to me, too :)
Don't get me started on online offerings -- I want to control who edits my data. (I don't mind publishing it online, and if others want to take it and use it, great, but I want control of the rigour of the research.
And I know what you mean about the fruitless search for the holy grail -- I started with Family Historian back at version 3 and have never seriously been tempted to move -- yes, it has flaws, but all the packages do -- there'll never be a perfect fit to what I want. If I'd started with something else back then, I'd probably still be with that too.
What i do like about FH is the scripting language in version 5 which means it's extensible by anyone who wants to write a plug-in. And the native data format is GEDcom (with all its flaws) so I can easily find other programs to operate on the database directlty like GenSmarts.
It's more than that, it does your calendar and contacts etc. you can also sync files with it but the app times out when I try to get it to see the tree files on my iCloud storage.
The company have been quite responsive but so far they haven't worked out a fix
i am hopeful they will fix it in the next major version or offer a wifi alternative, which is how the previous version worked. They have announced that a new version is being released in the northern hemisphere fall.
My in-laws tree is public but my own family's tree is not (they are currently on separate ancestry.com accounts, which is a bit crazy but my partner and I started working on our own trees before working out I had more of a knack for it)
Yes, my partner started first. we have separate websites of our own to publish our results so far, and a single ancestry account which has my tree associated with it. I can't remember if I coould associate multiple tress -- must look into it.
I got one of my best contacts ever through my ancestry tree -- a second cousin on my mother's side whose father knew her personally. She's lost contact with her family back in the 50s and wouldn't talk about them, so it was a great breakthrough.
Yes, you can have more than one tree on ancestry.com, I have seen others with multiple trees. Right now I have my own tree and then gave myself editor access to my partner’s. I also have contribute access to a friend's tree since we worked out that we both have ancestors from Ballaugh in the Isle of Man. It's a small parish so we must be related somehow.
@Verbeia There's a small parish in Pembrokeshire with a bunch of James families around 1800. I've in contact with the descendants of at least 3 lines (and I know there's a fourth) and we must be related somehow. We just can't work out how.
@Verbeia I think most packages have (quite a big) core of similar features, and a few differentiating features. I'd love better structured citations in FH, for example, which (I believe) FTM does well.
@AmericanLuke Didn't you post a question about losing the source for some Yugoslavian ancestor or am I misremembering?
I've lost my sources for an individual. Either I never wrote it down or it's been lost by my software (probably the former).
I realized this when I came back to this individual the other day and saw the birth recorded as in Yugoslavia about 1864. For those who know their history, this is a prob...
GEDCOM (an acronym standing for GEnealogical Data COMmunication) is a proprietary and open de facto
A GEDCOM file is plain text (usually either ANSEL or ASCII) containing genealogical information about individuals, and meta data linking these records together. Most genealogy software supports importing from and/or exporting to GEDCOM format. However, some genealogy software programs incorporate the use of proprietary extensions to the GEDCOM format, which are not always recognized by other genealogy programs, for example the GEDCOM 5.5 EL (Extended Locations) specification.
In February ...
The section on "limitations" outlines most of them
The GEDcom data structure for sources has a Title, a short title, an author, a publication place, and a link to a repository, and not much else. So you have to create a full (structured) citation in the title. And FH doesn't help you do that.
@AmericanLuke I disagree with that description of limitations for GEDcom -- you don't need to duplicate all the census information if it's associated with multiple people -- you just record it one in the source record (text from source r some such title) and then link the source to the census event for each individual.
Yes, but GRAMPS would share the census event, so there'd be one event for maybe a dozen people
> Some genealogy programs, such as GRAMPS and The Master Genealogist, have elaborate database structures for sources that are used, among other things, to represent multi-person events. When databases are exported from one of these programs to GEDCOM, these database structures cannot be represented in GEDCOM due to this limitation
I do sometimes wonder if my sourcing is adequate. I am still cleaning up some legacy from my ancestry tree where I thought it would be easiest to put FamilySearch urls in the description field.
Yep, it could be a problem. For my package (FH) somebody has written an add-on to automate the data-entry where one event names several people. It creates the source entries and all the necessary events and attributes for all the involved people. it's invaluable.
I probably go over the top for my sourcing. In my (copious) spare time, I'm reconstructing my main conclusion file with the sources all impeccably (maybe?) specified.
@AmericanLuke I would have single source that was the basis for recording that immigration event for all those individuals, and could view all the records linked to that source if i wished to.
FH has (1) an open-source data-structure (GEDcom) and (2) an open source scripting language (LUA) with a library of data-access routines provided by FH's developer. Best of both worlds. What are the charting facilities likein GRAMPS?
Mac/iPad Family tree has a nice interactive tree for adding people and basics details. If you want to add sources to those details you have to go to the person edit screen.
In FH, you can work from a tree diagram and call up the 'property box' for an individual and navigate form there (and back) to the relevant source or media records.
It makes sense because often you get evidence that more than one person existed, say the parents names on a baptism record, and you get other details about the later, but you want to put a stake in the ground to remind yourself to research them more thoroughly.
As soon as I get a source, I record all the people it mentions -- even if that's all I know about them at the time (their name and their 'role' in what the source documents).
We're talking about the main software packages we use (and how we use them). So far, we have: GRAMPS, Farmily Historian+GenQuiry, and Synium's Mac Family Tree 7.
@AmericanLuke that family of Feathers in my in laws' tree showed me that boarders can matter. Census takers had different ways of handling illegitimacy. So to be on topic, software needs notes fields to handle all those "this record said she was a widow but that clearly wasn't true" moments.
One thing I mentioned close to the start that I'd be interested in discussing with you is the 'one-programme-to-do-everything' versus 'multiple-programmes-for-different -tasks' approach.
@lkessler I agree. If all you have is a single hammer, everything looks like a nail. Whereas if you have a full toolbox, you can do each job much better.
Its interesting that there are two people here who were unhappy enough with existing offerings that they wrote their own. What were the things that you found most lacking in existing products? @ColeValleyGirl I am guessing it was source management for you. Did I understand that correctly?
@Verbeia For me, it was the lack of facilities to manage the end-to-end research process -- from knowing you wanted to find something out, through the investigation and dead ends and 'could try that's' and 'I wonder if there's something in this recordset' through to the reaching a conclusion or set of conclusions. Most genealogy programmes are pretty good at recording a displaying conclusions, but not at the messy bit that comes first.
@Verbeia For simple tasks, that worked for me. But when it got to the point that I realised I'd repeated some searches multiples times and found nothing every time I searched, I wanted soemthing to record what I'd done as well as what I had to do.
@lkessler For recording my conclusions? I started with Family Historian and have pretty well stuck with it. When there's stuff it doesn't do well, there's usually a plug-in or add-on, or another programme that will operate on the native GEDCom file that FH produces... It's the GEDcom format I find most limiting.
I occasionally look at what else is available, but I'm not unhappy enough to switch (plus all the data transfer problems and learning curve -- no thanks).
@lkessler I don't know about other programs, but GRAMPS is constantly updated and is open-source, so if it doesn't do something, there's probably a plugin somewhere to do it
I think it depends how serious you want to get. I had a specific project with a deadline (grandmother-in-law's birthday), and now that's done, I know this is a hobby tat doesn't require perfection.
So as long as there is some prospect that iPad syncing will work one day, I'll stick with Mac FT.
Hard to say -- for some people it might be media-handling, or the sorts of diagrams that could be produced. Others (and I suspect they're a small minority) might switch for superb and flexible source and citation handling. I don't think there's any single killer feature.
That said, fast data entry is attractive, I think hats why a lot of people stick with ancestry. Adding people and info for hints and searches is so fast it's almost addictive.
@AmericanLuke I know FH does. @lkessler what others do?
@Verbeia I loath ancestry's shaky leaves. They are not reliable, but they're so seductive for people who are starting out. YOu can knot a whole tree out of totally erroneous links.
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And don't get me started on the borg tree at FamilySearch....
It's a great source of records, and contacts with other researchers. AFAIK, exporting a tree is not good -- all the source links get broken. (I will stand corrected if I'm wrong).
LI think I have been lucky that I developed a smell for bad trees very quickly, and connected with a couple of cousins who had actually done serious research that I couple replicate.
@AmericanLuke - Any program or online system that offers an API (Applications program interface) allows external programs to access the system data and is equivalent to a plug-in. Other programs offer extensions in various ways.
@ColeValleyGirl its even better now that they are putting scans of original parish records up. And when I exported two different gedcoms from ancestry, I did not lose my sourcing, but it doesn't retain links back to ancestry.com.
@AmericanLuke Obsessively. Master copy on hard disk, mirrored in the cloud (DropBox) and from there to my netbook. That includes my conclusions GEDcom, my GenQuiry file, all my source images, working spreadsheets, transcription databases, everything.
PAF can be considered the best-extended program of all time. They made their database format available, so hundreds of programs in the DOS days were made to access and do something (even update) PAF data.
@AmericanLuke Macs do auto backup very easily, and Mac Family Tree also offers iCloud sync. And most of it is still in ancestry as well, but not in sync. So even if my computer blew up I wouldn't have to start over for scratch.
@lkessler, On a separate topic, do you have any idea what RootsTech were looking for the year we entered? I wonder if they even looked at my package (being cynical) or whether it didn't fit their concept of advanced technology.
By the way, I submitted 3 proposals for talks to RootsTech 2014. One of them was "Answers to your genealogy questions" which would have talked about Genealogy & Family History Stack Exchange.
Starting this Saturday, we will be holding a weekly genealogy chat every Saturday. It will occur at 11:00 to 13:00 UTC (figure your timezone), but if you can't make this time, feel free to drop in and share your thoughts anytime. Be sure to register yourself for the event beforehand so you get a ...
@ColeValleyGirl - I'm sorry to hear that. With that news, I've now changed GenQuiry's classification from "Utility" program to "Auxiliary" Program on GenSoftReviews.