hcj@lzsc.ATT.COM (HC Johnson) (03/06/90)
I recently requested from the net information on Geneology Programs. I have and Atari, but also emulate MAC and PC. So I was interested with all three as sources. This started when My Uncle sent me a data base on FHS (Family History System, IBM). It worked, but seemed clutzy. (see other comments below). I downloaded both GEN_PLUS and RELTREE (both ST) from Genie. GEN_PLUS is build on a data base program and kept crashing. RELTREE also screwed up quickly on my entries. It seemed very confused about establishing families. All three were much more interested in index numbers rather than names as keys to the system. I did not like this. The Major responses were that The Mormon Church underwrites a program Personal Ancestral File (PAF). This is availiable for IBM and MAC. ($35 and THEY pay the shipping). I bought the MAC version. Its very nice. Below are comments from the many responders. I thank you all for writing. Howard C. Johnson ATT Bell Labs att!lzsc!hcj hcj@lzsc.att.com =======COMMENTS from WRITERS ==== The best genealogy program on the market is FAMILY ROOTS Quinsept, Inc. P.O. Box 216 Lexington, MA 02173 1-800-637-ROOT or (617) 641-2930 I have it and it's a pleasure to use and it'll do anything you'd ever want to do in terms of genealogy. The support is also great and there is even a Quinsept User Group to help out. Give'em a call and they'll send you information on their line of genealogy software (which runs on everything from IBM PC, Macintosh, Apple ][, Commodore 64/128, TRS-80, etc. all optimized to their platform, but with exchangable databases) I recently downloaded (from CompuServe; GO ROOTS), a shareware program called "Brother's Keeper." I have tried several "free" genealogy packages, and until now, have found them cumbersome to use and unable to handle "special" situations (e.g. multiple spouses). There are many genealogy packages available. There are several tolerable PD packages out there, but for $35 you can buy a first-rate package called Personal Ancestral File (PAF) that the Mormon Church publishes. You can order by phone - call the Latter Day Saints' Family History Library in Salt Lake City and they can probably direct you to the right people. (The Mormons are heavy into genealogy for religious reasons, but they are remarkably nice about helping all us J. Random family historians, too...) COMMSOFT up in the Bay Area somewhere publishes Roots III, which is arguably the cadillac of genealogy packages. If you buy it from them it will cost around $300 (depending on what utilities you order), but you can save $50 by ordering from one of the mail order catalogues. I used PAF until I had about 2500 people on file, then switched to Roots because I wanted the fancy footnoting and book-generating features it has. (That's right - Roots III will turn your data into a formatted, publishable family history...) MAC & IBM PC: There are two good ones. One is Personal Ancestral File from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (The Mormons) GEnealogical Cept Ancestral File Operations Unit 50 East North Temple St Salt Lake City, UT 87150 Costs $35 for which you get a reasonable manual, 3 or 4 program disks and extra disks and labels for your data and backups. It's a great bargain for the money. Quite a competent program, easy to use, well developed with no tremendous bugs in it. The other one that's really excellent--much more flexible and adaptable is Roots III. However, it costs $300. MAC: I have written a genealogy stack for people who do much research. It will keep track of family, individual, and pedigree records, as well as having templates for raw data, such as marriage, birth, census, etc. It is called Genealogy 1.1 and is available on any of the main online services. For keeping record of formal data in family record and pedigree form, as well as some research notes, I recommend the Personal Ancestral File program put out by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I haven't used the stack, but there is a geneology hypercard stack in the info-mac/hypercard directory at sumex-aim.stanford.edu. If you don't already know, you can do anonymous ftp to that site. Hope this helps. You may want to seek out someone who has used it, though. I recently posted this same query to the net and was inundated with replies. 99% said use "PAF- Personal Ancestor File" from the Church of the Latter Day Saints (the mormons). It is only 35 dollars (plus shipping) and is really great. Though it is a port of a PC program it is very well done. Very Mac'ish. Entry and editing are extremely good. There are lots of output options. It is oriented towards printing Pedigree charts (ie show me a tree of my ancestors). It can print descendant charts (more like traditional family trees) but thse are printed as nested text, not as a tree. On the PC there is a shareware program called Brothers Keeper that will take the files generated by PAF (these files have aparently become the standard genealogy interchange format) and print a traditional family tree. THe only drwaback is that the database entries are weighted towards Mormons. Their are entries for baptism, bonding-to-spouse, and other christian/mormon rituals. THere is a commercial product (name escapes me at the moment but it is advertised in the back of all the usual Mac Magazines) that is supposedly a liscenced version of PAF that has been extended to better support non-mormons. The problem is they want more than $150 for it, which seems a bit out of line given the price of PAF. IBM PC PROGRAM: I am using a shareware program called Family History. The entry is simple. Editing is no problem, just reference the record number assigned by the program which corresponds to the individual. To make your own life easier, print out a list of names and record numbers so you do not have to constantly refer back to the screen which provides that The software package I have is PAF 2.2 from the LDS church. It doesn't have any fancy pull-down menus and stuff like that but it sure does the job.