Documentation for GACP ver 2.10 INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this program is to assist someone extracting information from any decennial US census from 1790 through 1920. Versions prior to 2.00 only handled 1850 and later. As most of the 1890 census no longer exists there is no provision for handling that census. INCLUDED FILES: GACP.EXE The program. This is the only file that is actually necessary. READ-ME.TXT This documentation file. FORM1790 These are blank forms that may be printed out to FORM1800 assist you in the census extractions. They are in . no way necessary to the program GACP.EXE. . . FORM1920 INSTALLATION: The file GACP.EXE should be placed in its own directory. All the databases that the program creates are actually sub-directories of the directory that has GACP.EXE. On startup the program looks for any sub-directories and assumes they are databases. No harm results if the sub-directory is not a database but it can be confusing. PROGRAM LIMITS: The program can handle a database of 65534 records with twenty-four people per record, a total of 1,572,816 individuals per database. The program allows up to 256 databases. Note: Since each database is set up as a sub- directory DOS may restrict the number of databases if you run the program from a floppy. Running from a floppy is extremely slow so it is recommended that you run from the hard drive. MONOCHROME MONITORS: The program will try to detect whether the monitor is monochrome or color. Many laptops will indicate to the program that they have color monitors when in fact they have monochrome monitors. This may result in no highlighting and/or a display that is difficult to read. To force the program to overide the auto-detection and use monochomatic codes for the display you must run the program with the switch '-mono', i.e., GACP -mono ENTERING DATA: The cursor will be in the highlighted field. Data is entered in the usual manner. Once you get to the right hand side of the highlighted field any entry of data will cause the left hand side of the field to scroll off and be lost. The left and right arrow keys will move the cursor to the left or right. The END key will move the cursor to the right of the entered data, the HOME key will move the cursor to the left hand side of the data field. The DEL key will delete the character above the cursor, after which, the characters to the right of the vacated space will all move one space to the left. CTRL-DEL will delete the whole field. CTRL-END will delete everything to the right of the cursor. The ESC key will restore the field to whatever it was when you first entered it. All data entry is in the "insert" mode, not the "typeover" mode. You may use the TAB key to move to the next field or use SHIFT-TAB (SHIFT-TAB means to hold down the shift key and hit the tab key) to move to the previous field. STARTUP: From the DOS prompt type "GACP" to start the program. (see above if you are using a laptop with a monochrome display) You will be shown a picklist of choices. If you have not previously entered any data then the only choices you will be given are '' and ''. If you have previously entered data then you will also see the one, or more, databases you have started. Use the up and down arrow keys to highlight your choice then hit the ENTER (sometimes called RETURN ) key. If you have chosen '' then you will be asked for a name to be given to the data. If you want to enter only your 'Smiths' then you might choose the name SMITH for your data, or if all your data is from Georgia then you might choose GEORGIA. You may choose up to eight letters and/or digits. All letters will become uppercase even if you enter them as lower case. You can of course enter all your data into just one data base. The program will enable you to later pull out all 'Smith's or all Georgia records if you want them. If you have chosen a pre-existing data base then the program will go there and show the last record in that base. If you have chosen a data base that has no information in it, or have just created a data base from , then you will be asked to create a header for the first record. There are two types of information entered on the census. The "header" information consists of the District/Township, County, State, Date of Enumeration etc. Attached to each header are the individuals with their information. HEADERS: You will first be asked for the census year. Using the arrow keys you may pick 1790 through 1920. After selecting the year hit ENTER and you will be presented with a screen for entering the header information for that year. When entering the header you MUST enter something for the State, otherwise the header will be discarded. You may leave any or all of the other fields blank. After entering the header information hit the 'F7' key to return to the census layout. There is no error checking on the information entered. Where a number is called for, such as a house number, you may enter something like "$^*)" and the program will accept it. Only the essential parts of the header information will be shown. If you need to see the rest of the information you must hit 'M' (for Modify). You will see the same screen setup that you saw when you originally entered the information. You may use the arrow keys to move to a field in order to change it or you may simply look at the information. Hit the 'F7' key to return to the census layout. Hitting 'O' (for Output) will send the current header with its individuals to the text (ASCII) file GARECOUT.TXT. If the file GARECOUT.TXT already exists then the record will be appended to the end of the file. If you have not sorted your database then the census headers will be in the same order as you entered them. You may view the previous record by hitting 'P' and the following record by hitting 'N'. If there is no previous record or following record then no action will take place. SEARCHING THE DATABASE: Hitting 'S' will let you search your database. All of the searching in insensitive to case. If you are searching for Talbot Co you may enter TALBOT, talbot, or tALBot. If you want to find everybody on page 272 of the Talbot Co census you would enter '272' for 'Page No'. If you leave 'Page No' blank you will find everybody in Talbot Co, regardless of page number. Entering a surname will let you find all records that contain that name. If you answer 'Y' to 'Soundex Equivalents?' you will find not only the records with the surname you entered but also all records that have a surname with the same soundex code. If you entered 'WHATLEY' in the surname field and answer 'N' to 'Soundex Equivalents?', you will only find the WHATLEYs. If you answer 'Y' in the 'Soundex Equivalents?' field you will also find WATLEYs, WATLYs, and WADLEYs. To get the soundex equivalents you must answer with a 'Y' or 'y'. Anything else counts as an 'N'. In the 'Year' field put the census year, not the actual year the census was done. These are usually the same but not always. Some of the 1850 enumeration was still being done in early 1851. To search for one of these records you would put '1850' in the 'Year' field. In the fields 'Other Names', 'Neighbors', and 'Notes' you may put any string of characters. The strings of characters will be searched regardless of whether they are complete words or names. For example, putting 'Milton' in the 'Other Names' field will not only turn up all people named 'Milton', but it will also find all people named 'Hamilton'. Putting 'ington' in the 'Neighbors' field will turn up 'Covington', 'Weatherington', and 'Arrington' among others. To exit the search mode without doing a search enter 'Y' in the 'Cancel Search?' field. You may (and generally will) leave some fields blank. A blank field is equivalent to an 'all' specification. For example, if you enter 'AL' for 'State' and 'HIGHTOWER' for 'Surname' and leave all other fields blank; the program will find all records from Alabama that have the surname HIGHTOWER, regardless of the county, regardless of the year, and regardless of the firstname. Another example, if you enter 'Greene' for 'County' and '1850' for 'Year', you will get all the 1850 records for Greene Co AL, Greene Co GA, Greene Co IL, and any other Greene counties you may have in your database. After making your search selections hit 'F7'. The program will find all records that meet your specification and sort them. The sorting is done first by year, then by state, then by county, then by (printed)page number, and finally by family number. You will be told the number of records found and you may then view them by using the TAB key and the SHIFT-TAB key. Hitting the 'T' key will send all the records found to the text (ASCII) file GASRCOUT.TXT. IMPORTANT: If the file already exist then it will be overwritten with the new records. An index of the people in the found records will also be sent to the file. Sorting the people in order to produce the index may take a while. See your computer and/or printer manuals for instructions on sending the file to your printer. Hitting the 'S' key will send the found records to a new database. You will be prompted for the name that you want to give to this new data base. You may NOT use a name that's already being used. This is useful if you have all your census records in one large data base and want to pull out all the JONESes for a second database. Note: This is one way to sort all the records; leave all selection fields blank so that all records are 'found' (and sorted) and then send them to a new database. DELETING RECORDS: Hitting the 'D' key will let you delete a census record. You will be prompted to verity that you really want to delete the record. VIEWING THE .TXT FILES The files GARECOUT.TXT and GASRCOUT.TXT are text (ASCII) files and can be examined with almost any file viewer. These files are essentially images of the input screen. They do contain "high" ASCII characters (the vertical lines, horizontal lines, and corners). As such, you will probably NOT be able to view them with a Windows program such as Notepad. Previous versions of this program were shareware. The status of those versions and this latest version has been changed to freeware. I have found this program useful in handling my own census extractions and hope others will find it just as useful. So that others may also get a chance to evaluate this program, it and this documentation file may be distributed to any individual, computer bulletin board (BBS) or on-line service. When the header bar is highlighted the cursor (arrow) keys may be used to 'scroll' the individuals. If there are more than twelve individuals then use the up and down arrows to view all of them. Use the left and right arrows to view information that is off the screen. INDIVIDUALS: Hitting the PageDown key will highlight the individual bar and blank out the header bar. Use the downarrow, 'A', or 'M' key to add or modify an individual. Each field of the individual will be highlighted and the individual status bar will tell you the information to be entered. All information in the fields is stored as a character string and there is no error checking on entry. In other words, you may give the individual a lastname of 'SMITH123++XYZ' and the program will accept it, or for sex you may enter any character, not just 'M' or 'F'. After leaving the LASTNAME field all letters in that field are automatically capitalized. After leaving the FIRSTNAME field the first letter of the name(s) is capitalized and the other letters are put to lower case. If the LASTNAME field is blank but the FIRSTNAME field is not blank then the LASTNAME is set to the same as the LASTNAME directly above it. This will not actually take place until you leave the individual layout and return to the header layout. This can speed up data entry. To skip over the remaining fields of an individual and start a new person you may hit CTRL-ENTER. This will put you in the first field (LASTNAME) of the next line. This can also speed up data entry. If both LASTNAME and FIRSTNAME are blank then the person is completely eliminated. There is a limit of twenty-four people per header. This should be enough to handle just about any family. If you're are dealing with an institution or hotel or some facility where there are more people then you will need to set up more than one header. OUTPUT TO PRINTER: This program does not send any output directly to your printer, instead all output is to the files GARECOUT.TXT and GASRCOUT.TXT. The best way to print these files is with your word processing program. Import these files directly into your word processor (they are ASCII files) and print from there. In order to prevent line wrap you will probably have to reduce the margins. The reports for the 1790- 1840 censuses are all 79 characters wide so any printer should be able to handle them. The reports for 1850, 1860, and 1870 are 92, 100, and 110 characters wide respectively. You will not be able to print these with the normal 10 characters per inch (cpi). You will need to tell you word processing program to print 12 cpi or 16.7 cpi. For the 1880-1920 reports you will have to tell your word processing program to print in "landscape" mode. I've had no problems using WordPerfect 5.1 with a Laser Jet II printer. Because the files contain "high ASCII" characters, a Windows program will not be suitable for printing them. If a Windows program is the only choice then make sure you are using a fixed pitch font. If do not have a word processing program then you should be able to print the 1790-1840 reports by typing "PRINT GARECOUT.TXT" or "PRINT GASRCOUT.TXT" at the DOS command line. The file PRINT.COM must be in you path. For the 1850-1870 reports you will have to first set your printer for 12 cpi or 16.7 cpi. See your printer manual for instructions. For the 1880-1920 reports you will also have to tell your printer to print in "landscape". Unfortunately some dot matrix printers will not print directly in landscape. If such is the case with your printer then you will not be able to print the 1880-1920 reports unless you have a third party utility for your particular printer which will allow you to do so indirectly. MERGING DATABASES: The startup screen will let you start a new database, merge existing databases, or use an existing database. If you choose to merge existing databases you will be asked to name the resulting database. You will then be given a picklist of the existing databases. Use the up and down arrows to move through the picklist. Select the databases to be merged by using the spacebar. An asterisk will be be shown to the left of the selected databases. If you hit the spacebar again the asterisk will be removed and the database will not be merged. To make effective use of the merging capability you should have some familiarity with MS-DOS. Suppose you have a database called PRCNCT1 and another researcher has a database called PRCNCT2 and you want to combine the two databases. In the same directory where you have GACP.EXE you will have a sub-directory called PRCNCT1. Create a sub-directory called PRCNCT2. The other researcher will already have a sub-directory called PRCNCT2. In that sub-directory will be two files called GAC$HEAD.DTA and GAC$PERS.DTA. These two files need to be copied from the PRCNCT2 sub-directory on their computer to the PRCNCT2 sub-directory on your computer. Now when you start the program you will have databases called PRCNCT1 and PRCNCT2 and you may merge them into a database called, for example, ALLCITY. TECHNICAL DETAILS: This program was designed as a one-to-many database. One file contains header information and one file contains information on the individuals. The header and person structures consist entirely of character strings. While it is possible to go into the data files directly with a file editor, EXTREME CAUTION SHOULD BE USED! This program was written in TurboC 2.01 PROGRAM HISTORY: Version 1.01. A minor bug pertaining to the indexing was detected in Ver 1.0 and corrected 08/23/94. Version 1.02. Data entry was enhanced by retaining the census year when adding a header and using CTRL-ENTER to start a new individual. Extra keystrokes were eliminated on leaving input of headers and individuals. 08/25/94. Version 1.03. Field descriptions for 1850 corrected. 10/29/1994 Version 1.04. Status changed from shareware to freeware . 12/14/1994 Version 2.00. Capability for the 1790-1840 censuses was added. 02/26/1995 Version 2.01. Background colors for 1850-1920 corrected. 07/14/1995 Version 2.10. Enhanced search capabilities and ability to merge data files added to program. 09/07/1995 Enjoy! Steve Martonak; 2204 B Viewtop Ln; Arlington TX 76012