Win-Family

Introduction

Explanation of the helpsystem

General information

Menus :

File

Data

Trees

Statistics

Printouts

Maintenance


Introduction

Welcome to Win-Family.

This program was written because more and more people are using Windows and because the selection of genealogy-programs for Windows is very small. This is the first version of the program and we hope that it will become the natural choice for genealogists. If the program is a success, we will continue working with it and maybe release a new version.

It will be important for us to receive feedback from users if there are errors or suggestions.

The new version will probably contain additional types of printout and as we are working with Windows, it will be natural to make use of the multi-media possibilities. How about connecting soundrecordings, pictures and even video-clips to a person ?

Why buy the program now ?, you may ask.

Well, first of all, we do not know if there will be a new version, it depends on the sales figures, but secondly, there will be a very cheap upgrade offer to buyers of the first version. So it is important to keep the original version-1 diskette, as this will be the pass to the cheap upgrade.

We hope you will enjoy working with the program and gain much pleasure from your hobby.

Regards

JamoDat

Dr. Dagmarsvej 34

3650 Olstykke

Denmark

P.S. : In case you wonder; Denmark is the small country just north of Germany and famous,amongst other things, for Copenhagen, the little mermaid and Tivoli.


Menu : file
File

New

Start a new database which can be saved under its own name later.

Open

Open an existing database.

Save

Save the current data under the name shown in the header.

Save As

Save the current data under a new name.

Import

Import data that has been exported by another program in GEDCOM-format into Win-Family. This function is used for data-exchange between different programs.

Export

Export all data in GEDCOM-format. This function is used for data-exchange between different programs.

Exit

End the program.


Menu : data
Data

Persons

Define new persons, correct existing data about persons and delete persons.

Families

Define the family-relations between all the persons in the database.


Menu : trees
Trees

Ancestortree

An ancestorstree shows all the ancestors of a person, e.g. parents, grandparents and so on, in graphical format.

Descendanttree

This tree shows all persons descending from a person.

Combinationtree

This tree is a combination of the two above. It shows both ancestors and descendants of a given person.

For each tree you decide yourself which data you want included and how many generations you want.

The trees can either be shown on the screen or sent to the printer for making a big wall-picture.

  Push here for details on setting up the trees.


Menu : statistics
Statistics

You can see 4 statistics :

Month of birth

Month of death

Age at death

Children pr. marriage

The statistics can be based upon all persons, ancestors of a person or descendants of a person.

They will be shown as bar-charts, either directly on screen or on the printer.


Menu : printouts
Printouts

This function covers all kinds of printouts : list of persons, list of missing data, overviews, index or whatever.

First you choose the kind of list, which data you want in it and eventually if you want date, pagenumbering and a header printed.

Secondly you get the output displayed on the screen as it will look on the printer and you have the opportunity to change printer-setup and font-setup before actually printing.

You also have the possibility to 'print to file' so you can treat the data in a wordprocessor later.

  Push here for details on list-setup.


Menu : maintenance
Maintenance

General setup

Here you customize the program for your own personal taste.

  Push here for details.

Date-conversion

If you want to change the format of all dates in the database, you use this function to do it.

  Push here for details on this function.

Data-validation

This function will process all data in the database and look for logical errors. If one or more is found a report will be generated.

There will be a check for the following :

That all dates have the correct format.

The sequence of birth, christening, death and burial dates.

The age of a person is no greater than 150 years.

The sequence of multiple marriages.

That the husband is male.

That the wife is female.

That the marriage date is earlier than a divorce date.

The sequence of children in a marriage.

The report can be printed.


Explanation of the help-system
Explanation of the help system

The help system uses the same structure as the programs main menu. Below each item is a short explanation of that function. If there is a 'D' button you can get more detail by pressing that button. That detail will be the same as the one you get if you push the 'Help' button in the individual windows.

As an alternative you can use the 'search' function provided by the help-system.


General information

Dates

You can choose freely between 7 date-formats and a free format. If you select 'fre format', the statistics function will not be able to recognize dates and produce meaningful output.

Search for persons

In several windows you have to select a person. For this purpose there are listboxes with an edit-field on top. When the cursor is in the edit-field and you write an 'm', the listbox will scroll to the first entry starting with an 'm'. By typing more characters it is easy to find the person you want.

You have to finally select the person by clicking the left mousebutton over the name.

If you click the right mousebutton while the mouse-cursor is over the list, you get a menu from which you can select the sort order of the list.

Exchange of data with other programs

Different programs use different ways of organizing and storing their data. To exchange data from one program to another, a standard (GEDCOM) has been established. Win-Family supports the necessary parts of the standard, so that you can use the functions 'import' and 'export' to exchange data with other programs.

Repetition of the same information

When you type in new persons, often there will be names and places that repeat themselves.

Instead of typing the same data all over again you can do this :

When the cursor is in a data-field, push control and one of the keys F1 to F8.

The data from the data-field will be stored in one of 8 temporary buffers.

When you need to retrieve the data in another data-field, just press the appropiate F-key, and the field will be filled with the previously saved data.


Person-data

This window is the basis for all maintenance of data concerning a person. From here you create new persons, correct their data and eventually delete them.

The data of a person is divided into 4 sections that can be accessed through the buttons : 'Data-1', 'Data-2', 'Address' and 'Notes'.

'Data-1' covers date and place of birth, christening, death and burial. You also have the opportunity of typing source information.

'Data-2' has information of maiden name, occupation and reference. Besides that you have 3 fields for your own personal choice. The names of these fields are defined under Maintenance/general setup

Address and notes are free-from text, up 16.000 characters for each.

Family

This button brings you to the family-window where you define the relations between persons.

  Push here for details on the family-window.

Delete

This button deletes the person that is currently active in the window.

New

Use this to define a new person.

Print

This brings you directly to the printout-window, ready for printing all data concerning the active person.

Show

After selecting a person from the list, you press this button to have all the data concerning this person displayed. The same effect can be achieved by 'double-clicking' on the person in the list.

Repetition of the same information

When you type in new persons, often there will be names and places that repeat themselves.

Instead of typing the same data all over again you can do this :

When the cursor is in a data-field, push control and one of the keys F1 to F8.

The data from the data-field will be stored in one of 8 temporary buffers.

When you need to retrieve the data in another data-field, just press the appropiate F-key, and the field will be filled with the previously saved data.


Family-data

This window is rather complex and demands some explanation. The purpose of the window is to define the family re´lations between all the persons in the database.

You start by selecting a person and placing him/her in the field with the red frame.

Then you find the person spouse, children and parents and place them in their corresponding fields.

Placing ??

Yes, you place a person by :

A. Place the mouse cursor over the name.

B. Hold down the left button.

C. Move the mouse cursor to the appropiate field and

D. release the left mouse-button.

You can drag and drop a person from any field to any field. This gives you the possibility to 'walk' through a persons ancestors by repeatedly dragging father to individual.

So, what if you make a mistake, for instance by dropping a child that was not supposed to be a child ?

Well, you simply drag the child back to the list and drop it there !

Speciel functions :

By clicking with the right mouse-button on the spouse or child list you will get a menu that allows you to rearrange the sequence of persons in that list.

Clicking the right button in the person-list allows you to change the sort-order of the list.

Adoptive parents : Each person can have 2 sets of parents, the natural and adoptive parents. You switch between the 2 sets by clicking the right mouse-button over the father or mother-fields.

The existence of adoptive parents is marked by a star after the text 'father' or 'mother'.

Marriage-data

This button gives you the possibility to type in data about the marriages of the active person. This includes date and place of marriage, date of divorce and source-data.


Import
Import result

After doing an import you get this window. It contains the following information :

Who sent the imported data.(This information is not always present)

How many persons were imported.

How many families were imported.

The unknown tags.

The last bit demands an explanation :

The standard for data-exchange (GEDCOM), operates with 'TAGS', which are key-words that describe the following data. Each program stores different kinds of information. If you receive data from a program that for instance has a field for education, this field will be exported with a tag of 'EDUC'. As Win-Family does not have a field for education, it will not recognize an 'EDUC' tag.

But there is hope : Win-Family has 3 fields pr. person for your personal use and of course you can choose to use one for education. All you have to do is to tell the import-function that this field is related to education.

You do this under Maintenance/General setup where you will find a selection of the most common tags.

Exception : GEDCOM is very unprecise with regard to adoptive parents, so you cannot expect to get this kind of information imported correctly.


Setup of trees

Proband

In the list of persons you have to select the person that is the root of the tree, i.e. the person whos ancestors, descendants or both you want in the tree.

Data

Here you select which data you want displayed in the tree. The field Max. generations is used to limit the number of generations you want.

Destination

This is where you choose if the printout should go to the screen or to the printer. If you choose printer, you will get a screen-display that shows the printout as it will appear on the paper, so you can change printer and font-setup as you like.

  Push here for details on the screen-display.

  Push here for details on the print-display;


Tree on screen
Display of trees on the screen

It can be hard to get the total picture when displaying on the screen, so there is a menu-function called detail/overview. In overview mode you get the complete tree on the screen and also a frame that shows which part of the tree you will see in detail mode. This frame can be moved by clicking and holding the left mousebutton within the frame and then dragging the frame to a new position. When you switch to detail-mode you will see the part that was framed. This makes it easy to move around in the tree.

Instead of using the menu, you can just click the right mousebutton, this will switch between detail and overview mode and vice versa.


Print of tree
Printing trees

In this window you see the tree as it will appear on paper.

Print

'Print' starts the actual print-operation. You will be giventhe choice of printing all or only selected pages.

Print setup

Using this function you can setup the printer the way you like. It is especially relevant to experiment with the landscape/portrait options.

Font setup

This function lets you select which font you want and the size of it. Especially the font-size can make a big difference for the finished printout.


Statistics

This function depends on the correctness of dates in the database. If they are OK you can have several statistics displayed as bar-charts.

These statistics can be based on all persons, ancestors of a person or descendants of a person.

If you select the printer as destination, you will get a window where you can manipulate the printout before actually printing.


Setup of printouts

Printout-type :

Index of persons shows the names of all persons and cross-reference numbers to their spouses and children.

Person data in list lets you choose what persons and which data you want in the list.

Person data (1 pr. page) will print one person pr. page and include all known information about this person.

Person worksheet is used for collecting information.

10 blank worksheets.

Missing person data gives an overview of which data is missing for each person.

Descendant sheet.

Include :

From here you can select (if the printout-type allows it), which persons you want included.

Data i lister :

Select the data you want included.

Sorting :

The printout will be sorted the way you choose.

Miscellaneous :

You can decide if you want page-numbering, current date or a header on top of each page.

When you press the OK-button you will see the printout on the screen.

  Push here for details on the screen-printout.


Printout on screen
Printout shown on screen.

In this window you see the tree as it will appear on paper.

Write to file

This function is only active for certain types of printout. It gives you the possibility of sending the printout to a disk-file with a name of your choice, so you can load it into a wordprocessor and manipulate it there.

Note that if you select a file-name that already exists, the file will be overwritten by the new data.

All fields in the file will be separated by a tab-character.

Print

'Print' starts the actual print-operation. You will be giventhe choice of printing all or only selected pages.

Print setup

Using this function you can setup the printer the way you like. It is especially relevant to experiment with the landscape/portrait options.

Font setup

This function lets you select which font you want and the size of it. Especially the font-size can make a big difference for the finished printout.

Information

Here you are told how many pages and persons the printout will cover.


General setup

Open/Save

Use backup files. If you put a checkmark here, the program will always maintain a copy of your database as it looked before any changes were made.

Import/Export

The standard for data-exchange (GEDCOM), operates with 'TAGS', which are key-words that describe the following data. Each program stores different kinds of information. If you receive data from a program that for instance has a field for education, this field will be exported with a tag of 'EDUC'. As Win-Family does not have a field for education, it will not recognize an 'EDUC' tag.

But there is hope : Win-Family has 3 fields pr. person for your personal use and of course you can choose to use one for education. All you have to do is to tell the import-function that this field is related to education.

This is done by first selecting the field you will work with and then selecting the appropriate TAG from the list.

Person data

You have 3 fields of free choice connected to each person. Here you assign labels to these fields. The labels will be used in all types of display and printouts.

List-sorting

You can change the sort order of all lists of persons by clicking the right mousebutton over the list, but here you decide what the initial sort-order should be when the list is displayed for the first time.

Date format

Here you select the date-format of your liking. It is important to have correct dates because the statistics function depends on it.

If you want to change from one format to another, you can use the function Maintenance/date-conversion.

Window-opening

Some windows will always open up using only parts of the screen, unless you use this function to tell them to use the full screen.


Date-conversion

This function allows you to change the format of all dates in the database from one format to another. You just select the present and the wanted format and push Start.

If a date cannot be recognized, it is presented in the window and you have the option of accepting it asis or correcting it.

You can stop the process by pushing the Exit-button, but this is not recommended as it may leave half the dates converted and the other half not.


Date-formats

Free format	03-22-1955

22 Mar 1955	03/22/1955

22-03-1955	03221955

22/03/1955	22031955

The european formats can be shortened from left to right.

Ie. : Aug 1989,  081989, 1989 are all OK.

You can prefix all dates with the words 'Bef' (before), 'Aft' (after) or 'Abt' (about) if you do not know the exact dates.

Ie. : Abt 1989, Bef 12-13-1989, Aft Nov 1989 are also OK.


Person-lists
Lists of persons

In several windows you have to select a person. For this purpose there are listboxes with an edit-field on top. When the cursor is in the edit-field and you write an 'm', the listbox will scroll to the first entry starting with an 'm'. By typing more characters it is easy to find the person you want.

You have to finally select the person by clicking the left mousebutton over the name.

If you click the right mousebutton while the mouse-cursor is over the list, you get a menu from which you can select the sort order of the list.