Re: Setting up a large family tree...

At 00:07 12/12/97 -0800, Shawn Collins wrote:
>>I'm currently in the process of setting up a
>>family tree of 200-1000 individual family
>>members and would appreciate a discuss

>I have been doing my families genealogy for years now, and the way it is
>set up bares a remarable resemblance to a hierarchy that you see pretty
>regularly on the webpages.  An index:  includes a brief history and an
>overview, and than branches off into the more detailed areas from there.  

I use a conventional program to collect and edit the information (I use
Family Tree Maker, with reservations). I then export it to a standard
GEDCOM (text) file. 

My initial approach has been to use a perl script to convert from GEDCOM
into HTML. My understanding is that there are several other versions in
circulation, the sole claim to fame of mine is that it produces the reports
_I_ want, in the way _I_ want them to be. <g>

This is somewhat bulky, creating almost 20 MB of HTML pages, and with less
search capability than I'd like. My present thoughts are to rewrite the
GEDCOM parser to produce some intermediate files, and use them with a group
of CGI scripts. GEDCOM is easy to parse, but somewhat cumbersome to work
with, and does not for example lend itself well to a classic single-pass
algorithm.

As far as forms go, for display I'd suggest a classic family group sheet,
whether NGS or LDS or whatever format is up to you. That I want different
levels of detail at various times is one of the attractions of dynamic
generation.

You'll likely want several forms of navigation, just as you'd have for
traditional genealogy reporting, as well as a variety of cross-references.
Personally, I find chronographic and geographic to be particularly
useful... I'm still trying to find the algorithm which will prepare the
question "I'm going to xxxxx library, who are the people for whom I might
constructively research, and what specifically might I look for." But I can
dream, can't I?

Good luck,  /Harold
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Harold A. Driscoll                       mailto:harold(at)driscoll.chi.il.us
#include <std/disclaimer>      http://homepage.interaccess.com/~driscoll/

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