Win-Family

Introduction

Explanation of the helpsystem

General information

Tool-bar

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 second version of the program and we feel that it is becoming a good program.

But, It is important for us to receive feedback from users if there are errors or suggestions. Only this way can we improve the program.

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

Regards

JamoDat

Dr. Dagmarsvej 34

3650 Olstykke

Denmark


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 or selected 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.

Text search

Freeform search through all data for a given text.


Menu : trees
Trees

Ancestortree

An ancestortree 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.

Complete tree

This tree starts with a given person and then includes all persons that are in any way related to this person. In most cases, this will be the entire data-base.

Descendant/Ancestor-sun

The suns will show the same information as des./asc.-trees, but presented in another way.

For each tree you decide yourself which data you want included and, except for the complete tree, also how many generations you want included.

The trees can either be shown on the screen, sent to the printer for making a poster or sent to the printer in book-format with references between pages.

The suns can only be printed in poster-format.

  Push here for details on setting up the trees.


Menu : statistics
Statistics

You can see 5 statistics :

Month of birth

Month of death

Age at death

Children per marriage

Life lines

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, page numbers 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.

Database information

Here you will find information regarding the current database.


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 'free 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.

If you type a number, the person with the corresponding ID-number will be selected.

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.

If you want more information about a person, you hold down the control-key and click the person with the left mouse-button. This creates a popup-window with additional info.

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 appropriate 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 5 sections that can be accessed through the buttons : 'Data-1', 'Data-2', 'Address' ,  'Notes' and Ref.M..

'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 birthname, 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.

Ref.m. means reference-material. This concept covers pictures, video-clips, scanned documents, sound and any other form of documentation you want to connect to a person.

  Push here for details on how to use reference-material.

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.

OK

With this button you end entering data for a person. It has the same effect as pressing the ENTER-key.

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 appropriate 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 relations 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 appropriate 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 !

Special functions :

Sequence of children : When you add a child, the child will automatically be placed in the right sequence if there is a valid birthdate for the child.

By clicking with the right mouse-button on the spouse or child list you will get a menu that allows you to manually 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 per 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 imprecise with regard to adoptive parents, so you cannot expect to get this kind of information imported correctly.


Setup of trees

First you select the tree you want :

Ancestortree : This tree shows all the ancestors of a given person.

Descendanttree : This tree will show all the descendants of a given person.

Combinationtree : Here you get a combination of the two above mentioned trees.

Complete tree : This tree will start out from a given person and include all persons that are in any way related to that person.

Descendant/ascendant-sun : The suns will show the same information as the asc./desc.-trees, but presented in another way.

Second, you select how the tree should be presented :

Screen : The tree is shown on the screen with possibilities for moving around in the tree and searching for persons.

Printer (poster) and printer (bookform) : You will be presented with a screen where you can get an estimate of how the tree will look on paper and manipulate the printer-setup and font-setup until you get the desired result.

In poster-form the tree will be printed across pages so it can be assembled to form a poster.

The bookform is for insertion into a book, and means that the tree will be printed with cross-references between pages. If you select bookform, there is also a possibility of getting an index-printout with page-numbers for each person.

The list of persons is for selecting the proband of the tree. Please notice that the complete tree may change shape depending on the selected person, even though the trees includes the same persons.

Data

Here you select what data you want included in the tree. The field Max.generations determines how many generations, apart from the proband, should be included in the tree.

  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.

If you click on a person, this person will be highlighted and centered on the screen.

By double-clicking a person you will get a window with more information on this person.

The menu-items Father, Mother and 1.child allows you to move around with reference to the person that is selected at that time.

Find person...  is used to find a certain person. You will be presented with a list of the persons included in the tree, and can search for the person you want.


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 given the 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.

Show page...

This item will allow you to select one page and get it presented. The same result can be achieved by double-clicking the desired page.

Show all pages

If you selected a single page, this item will bring back the total picture. You can also do this by clicking the right mouse-button.

Find person

is used to find a certain person. You will be presented with a list of the persons included in the tree, and can search for the person you want.


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 per page) will print one person per 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.

Family-group is all the persons around a given person i.e. wifes and children.

Include :

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

Data in printout :

Select the data you want included.

Sort by :

The printout will be sorted the way you choose.

Headline :

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.

Please notice : If you select Person data(1 per page) and want to include a picture on the printout, the description of the picture in the ref.m. section must start with an asterisk.  (*)


Printout on screen
Printout shown on screen.

In this window you see the printout 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 given the 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.


General setup

Open/Save

Use backup (BAK) files.

Use this option to always maintain a set of backup files of your data. Every time you save, the previous version will be saved with a BAK extension.

Always save at exit.

This option will make the program save your data whenever you leave the program without asking you first.

Save after xx updates.

Every time you update/create a person, count is kept. Here you specify after how many updates an auto-save will take place. If you do not want this facility, just set the count to zero.

Automatic file open.

This option will make the program auto-get the specified database every time the program is started.

Im/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 per 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.

User fields

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. You also select if you want to have ID-numbers included in the lists.

Date format

Here you select the date-format of your liking. It is important to have correct dates because the statistics and other functions depend on it.

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

Windows

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.


Dateformats
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.

If you type a number, the person with the corresponding ID-number will be selected.

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.

If you want more information about a person, you hold down the control-key and click the person with the left mouse-button. This creates a popup-window with additional info.


Reference material and how to use it
Reference material and how to use it.

You can have much material concerning a person that does not fit into Win-Familys datastructure. It is typically material that other programs are specialized to handle.

For instance :

Paintbrush will show pictures.

Media Player will show video-clips.

Soundrecorder will play sound-clips.

There is no way Win-Family can do this better than all the programs written for those purposes. Fortunately, Windows defines a communications standard called OLE which ensures that one program (Win-Family) can ask another program(i.e. Paintbrush) to do things for it. So, if Win-Family wants to show a picture of your mother-in-law, it will simply ask another program to do it. It is a requirement that the picture was originally created using this other program.

Let us go through an example of connecting a picture to a person in Win-Family :

1. Start Win-Family

2. Enter the person-data window.

3. Select the person in question and push Show to have his/her data displayed in the window.

4. Start the program that has a picture of your mother-in-law (Paintbrush ?)

5. Load the picture into Paintbrush.

6. Select the part of the picture you want using the appropriate tool.

7. Use the edit-menu and select Copy.

The picture is now placed on the clipboard together with some additional info.

7a. At this time you can close Paintbrush if you  wish.

8. Go to Win-Family.

9. Push the Ref.M. button.

10. If all the above was OK, the NEW button will be enabled.

11. Push the NEW button.

12. You will get a small window where you type a description of the picture.

13. Push OK, and now you see the picture.

14. This is the end of the process.

The same procedure is valid, whatever program you use.

From here on, you can always select the right person, push Ref.M. and use the SHOW button regardless if it is a picture, a video, a sound or whatever. There is no practical limitation to the number or art of things you can connect to a person.

If you want to edit the source of the object, you can either use the Activate button or just double-click directly on the picture.

Depending on the source of the object, the activate button may present a popup-menu with the choices that the originating program supports.

You can connect many pictures to one person, but only one picture will appear on the printout. To tell the program which picture to use for the printout, you must start the description of the picture with an asterisk.

For instance : Instead of Mother-in-law you must write * Mother-in-law.

Not all programs support OLE, so there is an alternative way. Use the program Object Packager that you get with Windows. It will take a non-OLE object and wrap it into a OLE package.

The easiest way is to select the object in filemanager and drag it onto the Person-data window of Win-Family and then drop it there. Win-Family will then call Object-Packager and do whatever is necessary.

A little about the file-structure.

One thing that multimediaobjects have in common, is that they take up a lot of space. We have therefore chosen not to include the objects directly into the GEN-file.

Instead, the objects are saved in separate files with names like WNPxxxxx.yyy. xxxxx is the internal ID-number of the person and yyy is a sequence number. But, if you have more than one database, you may have more than one person with the same ID-number. Because of that, one subdirectory is created for each database and named after the database. If in subdirectory C:\WINFAM, you have a database called SMITH.GEN, and you connect an object to a person in this database, a subdirectory named C:\WINFAM\SMITH will be created, and the objects placed there.

This is all transparent to the user, but just nice to know.


Menu : Data / Text search
Text search

With this function, you can search for any text throughout the entire database. Just enter your search argument and hit the search button. The checkboxes on the right allow you to restrict the search to certain datafields. Searching is case independent.

The resulting list can be printed using the Print button.


Menu : Filer / Import
Import

Importing means reading a file in GEDCOM-format and converting it into the format used by Win-Family. You can either let the data be the base of a new database or append them to the currently loaded database.

Notice that when importing, the persons all have new ID-numbers assigned to them.


Menu : Filer / export
Export

When exporting, you take all or a selection of the currently loaded database, and writes it to a file with the filetype GED. Data is stored in the international standard format for genealogical data called GEDCOM.


Toolbar

The toolbar gives easy access to some of the most commonly used functions.

  File / Open.

  File / Save.

  Data / Persons.

  Data / Families.

  Data / Text search.

  Maintenance / General setup.

  Maintenance / Database information.

  Help / index.


Picture
Ref. material

If you want to edit the source of this object, you can either use the Activate button or just double-click directly on the picture.

Depending on the source of the object, the activate button may present a popup-menu with the choices that the originating program supports.