PARENTS ------- PARENTS is an application that was designed to help make collecting and organizing your genealogy easier. With the help of PARENTS, you will be able to more easily gather, store, and view information about all of your ancestors as well as your children and your children's children. PARENTS allows you to enter and store vital information such as names, birth, marriage, death dates and places and more. All of this information can then be easily organized and related together to form your family tree. You will also be able to print the detailed information about any one of your ancestors as well as print your immediate tree. PARENTS is not public domain, nor is it free software. You are granted a limited license to use this product on a trial basis. You are also granted a license to copy PARENTS, along with the documentation, for the trial use by other users. If you wish to continue using the product, you must send $25 to: NickleWare c/o Bradley Nicholes 15817 130th Place S.E. Renton, Wa. 98058 We encourage you to copy PARENTS and share it with anyone who might be interested in tracking down their roots and learning where they came from. GETTING STARTED --------------- REQUIREMENTS - Microsoft Windows 2.1 or higher IBM compatible PC 286/386 Before proceeding, make sure that you have Microsoft Windows correctly installed. Next create a directory called PARENTS and copy the PARENTS software (PARENTS.EXE) into this directory. Then add the following entry to the WIN.INI file which is probably in the same directory where windows is installed. [PARENTS] DBPath=:\ This tells PARENTS where to place the data files. The key word DBPath is set equal to the and full including the trailing backslash, where the PARENTS data files will reside. For example: [PARENTS] DBPath=C:\PARENTS\ When the above steps have been completed, PARENTS is ready to be started. Simply start PARENTS in the same manner as any other windows application. PARENTS will then create all of the data files it needs to run, and place them on the drive and path that was specified in the above entry. GETTING AROUND -------------- INDIVIDUAL WORKSHEET -------------------- The main window for data collection is the INDIVIDUAL WORKSHEET. All of the genealogical information about any individual can be entered into this worksheet. It contains fields for the individual's name, birth date and place, christening date and place, the date and place where the individual was married, where and when the individual died and when and where the individual was buried. In addition to these fields is a misc. notes field that can be used to store any additional information, and a place to indicate the sex of the individual. The information that is entered into the date and place fields does not have to be in any specific format. MENU SELECTIONS FOR THE INDIVIDUAL WORKSHEET. NEW - This selection, from the FILE pull down menu, will display a blank INDIVIDUAL WORKSHEET. After all of the informtion has been entered into the worksheet, pull down the FILE menu and select SAVE. This will add a new record to the data base storing all of the information that was entered. OPEN - This selection, from the FILE pull down menu, will display a list of all of the individuals that have been entered into the database. An individual can be selected from this list by highlighting it and clicking on the SELECT button or by double clicking on the selection. All of the information that was previously stored in the database about this individual will be displayed in the worksheet. This information can be updated or added to, and then saved. SAVE - This selection, from the FILE pull down menu, will save the information that has been entered into the INDIVIDUAL WORKSHEET. If SAVE is selected after entering a NEW individual, the information will be added to the database. If SAVE is selected after updating the information for an already existing individual, the updates will be saved in the database. DELETE - An already existing individual's information can be deleted from the database if that individual is not currently being used in the FAMILY TREE. After making this selection, a message prompt will appear requesting a comfirmation of the action. If the individual exists in the FAMILY TREE, a message prompt will appear indicating that the individual cannot be deleted. PRINT - This selection will print the worksheet information for the currently selected individual. CLOSE - This selection will close the INDIVIDUAL WORKSHEET. IMMEDIATE FAMILY TREE --------------------- The IMMEDIATE FAMILY TREE displays and allows you to update a selected individual's family tree. The FAMILY TREE's center box has a thicker border than the other boxes in the tree. Any individual that is placed in this box will cause the tree to be centered around him or her. In other words, all of that individual's immediate family will be displayed in the other boxes of the tree. An individual can be placed in the FAMILY TREE's center box in one of two ways. The first way is by dragging and dropping from the INDIVIDUAL LIST. This is done by highlighting an individual with the mouse, and while holding the mouse button down, moving the mouse pointer over the center box. When the mouse button is released, the selected individual will appear in the center box and the rest of the tree will automatically be filled in. The second way is by highlighting an individual in the INDIVIDUAL LIST, then pulling down the RELATIONS pull down menu and selecting INDIVIDUAL. Again, the selected individual will appear in the center box and the rest of the tree will be filled in. The IMMEDIATE FAMILY TREE can also be used to create a family tree. To do this, first make a selection from the INDIVIDUAL LIST and place that selection in the center box. Then in the same manner as described above, place each member of the immediate family in the appropriate box. As each selection is placed in the tree, that selection is related to the individual in the center box according to the position in which it is placed. To the left of the center box is the Children List. Each child of an individual in the center box, should be placed in the Children List. Directly below the center box is the Spouse List. The individual's current spouse and each previous spouse (if any) should be placed in this list. At the top right of the center box is the Father box. The Father of the selected individual should be placed in this box. Directly below the Father box, is the Mother box. There are also two other boxes the are tied to the spouse list. These two boxes are for displaying the parents of the currently highlighted spouse in the Spouse List. These two boxes cannot be used to relate a Father or a Mother to a Spouse. There are several special features of the IMMEDIATE FAMILY TREE. The first feature is that the tree can be shifted in any direction to show the extended family tree. This can be done by dragging and dropping an individual from any of the other family tree boxes to the center box. For example, if the individual that is currently placed in the center box is John Smith and his father is Jack Smith, by dragging and dropping Jack Smith from the Father box to the Center box, the family tree will immediatly be reorganized to show Jack Smith's immediate family. In the process of doing this, John Smith will be moved from the Center box to the Children box which indicates that John Smith is a child of Jack Smith and the individual that appears in the Father box is John Smith's Grandfather. The second special feature of the family tree is being able to view the information about an individual. This can be done by highlighting an individual in the INDIVIDUAL LIST and clicking on the VIEW button below the list or by double clicking on an individual in the list. The INDIVIDUAL WORKSHEET will appear with all of the information that had been previously stored in the database. The information on this worksheet cannot be updated and saved, it can only be viewed. After viewing the information, select CLOSE from the FILE pull down menu to return to the IMMEDIATE FAMILY TREE. MENU SELECTIONS FOR THE IMMEDIATE FAMILY TREE. SHOW - This menu selection will show an empty IMMEDIATE FAMILY TREE. This tree can be used to display or update an individual's family tree. HIDE - This menu selection will hide the IMMEDIATE FAMILY TREE, INDIVIDUAL LIST (and INDIVIDUAL WORKSHEET if shown). PRINT - This menu selection will print the currently displayed IMMEDIATE FAMILY TREE. CLEAR - This selection can be found in the EDIT pull down menu. It is used to clear the family tree or remove a relation between two individuals. This depends on which family tree box is currently selected. A family tree box can be selected by clicking on it with the mouse. After doing so, a dotted rectangle will appear around the individual's name that is contained in the box. If the center box is cleared, the entire family tree will be cleared. If the Father or Mother box is selected, the box is cleared and the relation is removed. If one of the children or spouses is highlighted, that child or spouse is cleared from the list and the relation is removed. The two boxes that are tied to the spouse box cannot be cleared. RELATIONS - This pull down menu is only available when the IMMEDIATE FAMILY TREE is shown. It can be used as an alternative way of placing an individual in a family tree box. By highlighting an individual in the INDIVIDUAL LIST and then choosing one of the selections in the RELATIONS pull down menu, that individual will be placed in the corresponding family tree box. OTHER FEATURES -------------- DRAG AND DROP - Whenever an individual is being transferred from the individuals list to the family tree, the individual's name may be dragged and dropped. This means that an individual can be selected with the mouse pointer, and while still holding the mouse button down, position the mouse pointer on top of the destination box. When the mouse button is released the selected item will appear in the entry field. For example, if you would like to center the family tree around an individual, that individual can be dragged and dropped from the individual list to the center box. CLIPBOARD - The clipboard is a convenient way of transferring data between PARENTS and other Windows applications. To use the clipboard functions, simply highlight any text that is displayed in an entry field, pull down the EDIT menu and choose COPY or CUT. The COPY function will place a copy of the highlighted text in the Windows clipboard. The CUT function also places the highlighted text in the clipboard but also removes it from the entry field. To retrieve text from the clipboard, place the cursor at the position inside an entry field where the clipboard text should be inserted or appended. Then pull down the EDIT menu and choose PASTE. The clipboard text will be placed in the entry field at the cursor position. EXITING ------- When you have finished using PARENTS, you should exit via the EXIT selection from the FILE pull down menu. If you forget and turn your computer off before exiting, Parents can not guarantee that your ancestors have been saved correctly. It is very important that you always exit PARENTS via this selection. This documentation must accompany the PARENTS software. NickleWare Copyright (C) 1990 Bradley Nicholes