Frozen Fish 1: Amiga/FrozenFish-Apr94.iso/bbs/alib/d7xx/d702/a-gene.lha/A-Gene/Instructions

Text File | 1992-08-03 | 28KB | 656 lines

******************************************************************
*  NOTE: THIS DEMONSTRATION VERSION OF A-GENE IS IDENTICAL TO    *
*        THE FULL VERSION BUT IS LIMITED TO 200 PERSONS AND 70   *
*        MARRIAGES. IT IS A FULLY USABLE VERSION OF A-GENE AND   *
*        WILL BE ADEQUATE FOR MOST CASUAL USERS. ALL FACETS OF   *
*        THE FULL PROGRAM EXCEPT SCREEN DUMP, OPERATION FROM THE *
*        RAM DISK AND ONLINE HELP FILES ARE IMPLEMENTED.         *
*                                                                *
*   THE FULL VERSION OF THIS PROGRAM (2 DISKS AND PRINTED        *
*   MANUAL) IS OBTAINABLE FROM:-                                 *
*   T.M. SIMPSON, 11 MERAUKE ST, WHALAN, N.S.W. 2770, AUSTRALIA  *
*   FOR $30-00 INCLUDING POSTAGE (PERSONAL CHEQUES IN ANY        *
*   CURRENCY ARE ACCEPTABLE BUT NO EURO-CHEQUES!!)               *
*                                                                *
*   IN EUROPE, A-GENE MAY BE OBTAINED (WITHOUT PRINTED MANUAL)   *
*   FROM:-                                                       *
*   AMIGANUTS UNITED, 169 DALE VALLEY ROAD, HOLLYBROOK,          *
*   SOUTHAMPTON ENGLAND FOR 15 POUNDS STERLING.                  *
******************************************************************


A-GENE INSTRUCTIONS - (by Mike Simpson)


A-GENE V4.18 IS COPYRIGHT (c) 1992 Mike Simpson and licenced to Amiganuts
United of Southampton, England who are the European distributors. It may
not be further distributed in any form.

The only freely distributable versions  of  A-Gene are those entitled "A-
Gene Demo" and so described on the startup screen.

A-Gene Overview   (All following remarks refer to the full version)

A-Gene V4.18 is a genealogical  data-base  program capable of maintaining
files on approximately 1500 persons and  500 marriages on a single floppy
data disk. The program is written in GFA-Basic v3.5 and compiled with the
GFA-Basic compiler V3. Both PAL and NTSC  versions are available.

Larger data-bases can be  constructed  if  you  have a hard-drive. A-Gene
logs details of a Person's birth/death/burial/marriage(s)  along with
baptism/confirmation/immigration  dates,  occupation   etc.  A-Gene  also
includes a built in  text  editor  which  is  used  to append "Free-form"
notes/comments to any  person's  record   in  the   Data-Base.  A further
feature is the ability to view  digitised photos of persons/weddings etc.
from within the program. Persons and marriage records can be searched for
Surname, Christian Name, Full Name, Birth Date, City and Country  (or
any combination thereof) as well as on the user definable codes..
This latest version also includes Ordinances for members of the Church
of Latter Day Saints. (Of interest to LDS members, I am working on a
utility program to convert A-Gene files to the LDS GEDCOM standard (and
vice versa) to enable them to transfer files to IBM PCs running
genealogy programs such as P.A.F.)

All text and menues in the program are held in ASCII text files and as
such may be modified by the user to reflect their own requirements or
may be translated into other languages without difficulty.

Reports, which may be output  to  screen,  printer  or  disk file in most
cases, include Pedigree  Charts  of  any  person,  Family   Group sheets,
Descendants charts for  up  to  50  generations  and    various  lists of
persons, marriages etc. sorted in various orders.


DETAILS:

A-Gene comes on 2 disks. The main disk is auto-bootable and  contains the
necessary 'C' directory entries,  the  text  editor  and  the A-Gene main
program. The second disk is  a   pre-formatted   data disk already set up
for 600 persons and 300 marriages and  ready for input of your data.

(The demo version includes the program and files on the one disk)

V4.18 will now run on both N.T.S.C. or P.A.L. Amigas. There is no longer
a separate version for each machine. The only changes necessary to run
on a N.T.S.C. machine are that the font "agene" size 15 - must be in
your "FONTS:" directory. The font is included on this disk. The
configuration program "A-geneCFG" must be run first to enable you to
correctly configure the program to your equipment.

The program disk holds besides  the  main program, the files "A-Gene.txt"
and "A-Genemenues" which contain the  text  strings  from the program and
the menues respectively. These 2 files may be edited with any text-editor
or word-processor which  can output ASCII text files.









Also on the program disk  are  2  drawers containing  documentation files
and utilities. The utilities are a  script   file for loading A-Gene on a
hard-disk, a short program which  allows  you  to copy files from earlier
versions of A-Gene (including  the  demonstration  version) into your new
data-base and lastly a short  routine  named  SexChange  which is used to
alter the letters used for  a  persons  sex  (M/F in English versions) to
other letters if necessary for  foreign  language versions. (This routine
would only be necessary if  a  person  had  entered his/her family's data
using the English version  and  subsequently  upgraded  to  say a Swedish
version of the program).


However please note that  data  files  from  very  old versions of A-Gene
prior to V3.00 e.g. v1.01 and  v1.3  are not compatible with this version
and the only way they can be input  into  the new version is to send me a
copy of your old data disk  along   with  sufficient blank disks to cover
the cost of postage  and  I   will  run  a  conversion program which will
produce suitable  files. This conversion only  works if the data has been
entered  in a sequential manner starting at record no. 1. i.e. there
are no blocks of blank records in the data base.

The data disk  holds  4  random-access  files  containing  details of the
Persons, Marriages and Miscellaneous  information.   Once run, there will
also be a Parent/Child index file  and  a   Marriages  Index file on your
data disk.


Environment:

A-Gene as supplied will run on any Amiga, with a  minimum of 1meg of RAM,
a printer (80 column) is really  a necessity for the program to be
of much use. Two disk drives also  make  it  easier to use. A-Gene may be
run from the  CLI or it may  be  loaded from workbench by clicking on the
A-Gene.Boot Icon. The two disks supplied with this package are a bootable
program disk and a data disk  set  up  and  ready to use. A-Gene may also
be installed on a hard-drive.

It is recommended that  until  you  have  used  the  program  to test its
capabilities, you run it from copies of the two disks   supplied.


PROJECT MENU

The first menu holds several items which are self  explanatory:-

CHANGE COLORS
Accesses the color requester to change the  screens colours if you do not
like the ones I have chosen.  (At  the  present  time the new colours are
saved in the S: directory  in  a  file  called  MYCOLS and are reset each
time you use  A-Gene). If you wish  to use the screen dump facility which
is available on many screens to  copy  the  screen to a printer. Then you
should go to the change  color  requester,  click on Default, this  turns
the background screen color to white  and  gives better  printouts - even
better results are gained if all three  colors  (black, red and blue) are
changed to black. To return to  the  saved  colors,  click on load. It is
recommended you keep the colors of  gray  background, with black  text as
on the original as  these give best results with the 3D gadgets now used.
The lime green can be changed to whatever you like.
NOTE: This colour requester works  fine  in the  interpreted  version but
there appears to be  a problem  in  reproducing red shades correctly when
compiled. However it  does allow you to  change and save the colors which
is what it  was designed for.

RESET DATE AND TIME
The date and  time  can  be  set  from  the  Project  Menu,  this will be
necessary if you have not got  a   built-in  clock as some of the printed
output from A-Gene does bear the date and time of preparation.

CHECK FREE MEMORY
Memory can be checked to see how much free memory you have.


COPY RRD: TO FLOPPY
Can be used to copy files from the  ram  disk to the floppy to enable you
to back-up your files as you go. You  can  even keep 2 sets of data disks
as a safeguard against lost data.

QUIT exits the program cleanly.

UPDATE MENU

NOTE: The following keys can be used when in the Update Items.

1. Both update items can be  selected  using  hot  keys  i.e. Amiga p and
Amiga m for update persons/marriages.

2. You can  move  around  the  update  screens  using  the  arrow keys as
necessary.

3. You may enter a ?  instead  of a Father's/Mother's record no.This will
take you to the search  option  and  allow  you to locate the appropriate
record number.

4. A ? entered for a  persons/marriage  code  will  take you to  the Edit
Codes module.

5. A ? for the Edit Record No. will take you to the next blank record.

6. Pressing the Escape  (Esc)  key  when  entering dates/towns  etc. will
blank the field.







7. Records must be  entered  sequentially  beginning from Record #1. You
must not enter say records 1 - 15 for the first family, then 30 - 45 for
the second  and so forth.  A-Gene  searches for blank records during the
sort process and on finding 10 consecutive blank records assumes no more
data and stops looking. Thus you will get incorrect  printouts if you do
not follow this instruction!!


UPDATE PERSONS FILE
This is the main  input  screen  for  the   program,  selecting the  item
brings up a screen for the first  record.  Along the bottom  of which are
the gadgets "EDIT, SAVE,  MORE,  NEXT,   PREVIOUS,DUMP,TEXT  ED, GOTO and
QUIT".  Any  of  these   selections  can  be  picked  by  clicking on the
gadget, or by  typing the INITIAL  letter  of the word.    Selecting EDIT
allows you to input  a  record  number  (if  you  are   using a  new data
base,the record number at the top  is  -1  so   enter 1 to select the new
record number 1.) You are  then  asked   to   type the persons name, sex,
birth/date/burial information, along  with  the  record  number  of their
father and mother. If their father/  mother  are not already in the data-
base, just leave the numbers blank,  they  can  be entered later once you
have the necessary  information.   The  instructions  for  each entry are
selfexplanatory, when you have finished  entering  data  just type "/" at
any prompt, and you will be returned to the gadgets asking if you wish to
SAVE the data.  You may click on  SAVE  at this point to save the record,
or EDIT to enter some more data on  the person. To move around any of the
Update screens, you can use the arrow  keys  to move up and down  between
records, and sideways between the columns of the Update Persons screen.

When editing an existing  record,  each  existing  field  appears  in the
input box with the cursor positioned at  the  end of the box. You may use
the backspace key to position the  cursor  within the edit box. The arrow
keys DO NOT work in this box  as  they  are already used as above to move
around the update screen.   If you select  Edit and enter ? as the record
number,  the  program will search for the next blank record sheet. Also
if  you wish to delete  a  record,  after  selecting Edit, when asked  to
input the record no. enter it  as  a  negative  number e.g. -83  and this
will delete the record.

Maximum surname length  is  20  characters  and  maximum  given  names 30
characters. The program has been altered so that if the total length of a
name is  over  30  characters  then  on  some   displays/printouts  it is
truncated to the Surname plus the first given name and the initial of the
second. i.e. Jean Dorothy  Margaret  Marjorie Simpson-Smythe would appear
as:-  SIMPSON-SMYTHE, Jean D. on some printouts, although it is shown and
stored in full in most items. This change was necessary to avoid spoiling
the layout of some screens.

All fields for input have a  fixed  length, earlier versions  allowed you
to type in items longer than the  field which were later truncated by the
program. The latest version only  allows  input  of the maximum number of
characters in any one field.

Once you have saved the data, clicking on  MORE will pass you to a second
screen of supplementary data for  the  person,  e.g. baptism date, wife's
record number, (up to 3 wives) immigration and occupation details.

Most of this data such as details of the Persons Mother, Father and
Spouses are filled in automatically, however you can enter the persons
baptism and confirmation dates on this screen.  You can therefore enter
these and click on save,  and  click  on  RETURN  to  return to the first
screen. However also on the "More" screen there is now a button entitled
LDS, clicking on this button or pressing L will take you to a screen
on which you can enter various LDS Ordinance dates.

A-Gene now has a screen allowing Latter Day Saints (Mormon) users to
include their Ordinance information for each person. The following dates
may be included:-

          Christening
          Blessing
          Sealed to Parents
          Patriarchial Blessing
          Endowment
          Sealed to Spouse.

To input this information, from the main menu select Update Person, go to
the persons record and select "More" - This takes you to the additional
information screen of the person. A new gadget labelled LDS appears on
this screen - selecting it will enable you to enter the dates for the
above events for the person. Dates must be entered in the standard format
as listed in the instruction pamphlet.

(Please note I am not a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints,
therefore I have added this feature at the request of some program users
- I would be interested to hear from Church members who find this
feature of use to them (the dates are also printed out in the persons
record). I would also appreciate any other comments regarding
requirements from LDS members.

Clicking on the TEXT ED button will  take you to the built-in text editor
to allow you to add extra  free  form information   about the person. You
should note that the built in editor  is  a simple editor only allowing 1
page of text. If you require  something more sophisticated, then you must
elect on the  Preferences screen to use the text editor of your choice
"C:ED" and that is the one you  will be presented with). Clicking on NEXT
will take you to the next record,  PREV  will take you backwards and GOTO
to a numbered record. DUMP  will  use  the  program graphdump to dump the
screen to a  graphics printer, useful if you just want to print a single
screen. The quality of this printout will  depend on your printer and the
screen colours in use. It is just intended  as a quick way of obtaining a
rough record of a particular screen.

QUIT will exit the Update mode (If you  have made changes and not saved a
record you will now be advised).

UPDATE MARRIAGE FILE
Allows you to update the marriages  file, (Note: Persons in the marriages
file must already appear in the Persons file).

You will be prompted to enter the  Husband, Wife, Code, Place and Date of
marriage etc. in a similar manner to the Update Persons item above.

CREATE MENU

PARENT/CHILD INDEX
Creates an index file  linking  all  the  Parents/Children in the persons
file.

MARRIAGES INDEX
Creates an index file linking all marriages  in the marriages file to the
respective persons in the persons  file.

NOTE:  The  PARENT/CHILD   and   MARRIAGE   options   are   included  for
compatability with old versions  of  A-Gene,these files are automatically
updated as required in this  version  of  the  program  each time you add
information to the Persons and Marriages files so that the index is up to
date at all times. However if a file becomes damaged due to equipment
faults/power failures etc, this  option  may  be  used to reconstruct the
Index files. (You should also take  these options if you find Descendants
charts are out of order).

LIST MENU

PERSON'S RECORDS
Outputs a list in record number order  of  all the persons in the persons
file in the form of an  ASCII  text  file  to Screen, File or Printer. If
you choose  file, you will get a file-selector asking you where you  wish
to save this list, and under what name.  The text file  can then be input
by any word-processor or text-editor  which  can handle plain ASCII text.
The file can  then  be  reformatted  to  your  own requirements for later
printing. (Useful for when you have a  large  file, and you need  to know
the record number of say a  persons father or mother  who you had entered
in an earlier session.)

MARRIAGE RECORDS
Outputs a list of all  the  marriages  in  the  marriages file, in record
number order.

PARENT/CHILD INDEX
Outputs a list of the records in the Parents/Child index.

ALPHA PERSONS
Outputs an alphabetical List of  Persons   which  can be sorted on either
Surname or Year of Birth.

ALPHA MARRIAGES
Outputs an alphabetical List of Marriages

PRINT MENU

The items on this menu allow you to print details as follows:-


PERSON'S DATA
This item prints out  information  about  any   person  or persons in the
Persons file. You will be asked which  are  the first and last records to
print (If only one record is  required,  enter the same number for both).
A printout of all   the  persons  details  is  produced,  followed by any
supplementary text file for that person.

MARRIAGE DATA
Prints information regarding a marriage  in  the  Marriages file. (As for
the Persons data above).


PEDIGREE CHART
Prints or saves to file Pedigree charts  (Family Trees) for anyone in the
Persons file. The program  automatically  sizes  the  chart in accordance
with paper size being used. Blocks of pedigree charts can also be printed
say  by entering Person 1 as the  first  chart  and Person 5 as the last,
then charts 1 thru  5  will  be  produced.     Pedigree  Charts have been
altered to include room for you to  write   in the chart number, and also
to indicate that person no.1 of this  chart  is the same person as person
no. ___ on chart no. ___.

If you use a text editor to type  a short file consisting of  6  lines or
less containing your name,  address  and  phonenumber.  Then save this as
"SUBMITTER" on your data  disk,  this  information   will be displayed on
your pedigree chart along with the  comments: "Person Submitting Pedigree
Chart:-". This  complies with the requirements of the Mormon Church.

FAMILY GROUP SHEET
Prints Family group sheets giving  information  on various members of the
family.

DESCENDENT'S CHARTS
Outputs to the screen/printer or  file  Descendents  Charts  for up to 50
generations.

DISPLAY MENU
Displays genealogical  information  on  the  screen  in  various  formats
including a family tree.    The display option has several gadgets at the
foot of each  screen allowing  you  to  display  data about a person, his
family members, and his wedding.  It  is  also  possible  to call up data
about anyone else in the data base.      All  screens can be  dumped to a
printer for hard-copy filing.    In the  PAL  version only, when a family
is displayed, the  marriage number may be followed by (See Also nn) where
nn  is   another  marriage  record  number   for  one  of  the  partners,
indicating one or more of the partners has been married more  than once.


DISPLAY OF PICTURE FILES:
It is possible to show pictures of  each person, family group  or wedding
in the file. To use this     facility,  it will be  necessary to digitise
the photographs  using a program such as  Digi-View, and to store them as
IFF files on your pictures  disk.  Picture files should be stored   using
the following  filenames:-

PERPIXnnn       For individuals picture, where  nnn is the persons record
number in the persons file. e.g. PERPIX20

MARPIXnnn       For marriage picture,  where  nnn  is the marriage record
number in the marriages file. e.g. MARPIX25





FAMPIXnnn       For family  group  picture,  where  nnn  is the  FATHER's
record number in the persons file.        e.g. FAMPIX237

Note: As  picture  files  take  up  huge  hunks  of  disk  space,  it  is
recommended that you save  your  pictures  on  disks named  A-Genepix and
note on the label the record numbers of the persons included on the disk.
Then when you wish to view  the   pictures  of person #25, you would load
the appropriate disk when the  requester  asked  you to insert volume "A-
Genepix".

SEARCH MENU

SEARCH FOR PERSON
Allows you to search through  all  records for  particular criteria, e.g.
after SURNAME you may enter sim  as  the  surname to search for, you will
then receive on your screen a  list  of  all the SIMMS, SIMMONS, SIMPSONS
etc in the  file. The record  number  of  each person is also included so
you can then find a particular person and look up their details.



Searching is allowed on Surname,  Christian  Names,  Birth Date, City and
Country. Furthermore you can search  on  the user definable Persons Code,
this code can be used for  any  purpose  you require, and records with  a
code of say "6" can be  searched for and listed.    The Birth Date may be
preceded by  < for prior to or by > for  following, i.e. <1940 will list
births prior to 1940.    Multiple searches  are allowed, just press enter
on any line  you do not wish  to  search on, i.e. press enter enter enter
england enter enter and all  persons    born  in England will be  listed,
whereas if you had also entered a date of >1899 and a  sex of M then only
males born in England since 1900 would be  listed.     Searching is not
dependant on case, i.e. SIm  is  the  same  as   siM for search purposes.
SEARCH FOR MARRIAGE  allows  you  a  similar  search  capability  on  the
marriage files.    EDIT  CODES  allows  you  to  edit  the user definable
codes. (This  may also be entered  by  typing  ? instead of a code number
from  the update screens).


USING THE USER DEFINABLE CODES:

Both the update persons and  marriages  screens have user  definable code
fields. A short file "A-Genecodes" on the data disk stores these codes. I
have set up the system so that a   code  of 0 defaults to a normal person
and a marriage code of  0   is  a  normal  marriage.  Persons code of 1 =
Adopted Person and Marriage codes of 1  =  De-facto, 2 = Divorced and 3 =
Ended in  Death of a partner. These codes can be used in searches and the
file A-Genecodes can be edited as above to add your own definitions.

PRINTING

You can print out the various lists  directly,  or to a  disk file, so as
well as printing directly to the  printer,   these  files can be input by
most word processors and printed  in any format you like.


CUSTOMISATION

All the menues of A-Gene are now  held  in a file called  A-Genemenues on
your program disk, likewise all text  strings  in the program (apart from
the opening screen with copyright notices)  are held in A-Gene.txt. These
2 text files may be edited with  a suitable text editor (or wordprocessor
capable of producing plain ASCII text  files). Thus allowing you to alter
the wording of a particular screen,  for  the very ambitious allowing you
to produce a foreign language version.

The menu files are in the format:-
1,"PROJECT"
2,"Reset Colours" etc.


The numbers must  be  unchanged,  however  you  can  alter  the  text  to
anything you like as long as the text  length is not much longer than the
original phrase, otherwise printouts will be out of alignment.

The text files are in a similar format although of course the phrases can
be much longer. In a few cases  where  the words are the text of gadgets,
e.g. 502,"EDIT    SAVE    RETURN      DUMP"  If  you  change one of these
words, then the associated   initial  letter,  e.g.  500,"E" must also be
changed to allow the  hot-keys to  work.  Care  must also be taken if for
instance you change Y/N to Ja/Nein then Y must be changed to J.

If anyone translates both the  text  files  into  any foreign language, I
would greatly appreciate a copy of the  files on a disk, thus allowing A-
Gene to be spread to even more countries  than  it all ready is. I have a
partial Danish translation, plus full  Swedish and Finnish versions which
are available on request (please  include  postage  and  a blank disk for
foreign language versions) but would appreciate full versions from anyone
who manages this task.

ENTERING DATES

Dates may now have the format  a.1902,  b.1902  or  c.1902 as well as the
acceptable formats dd mmm  yyyy,  mmm  yyyy  or yyyy. These abbreviations
meaning After 1902, Before 1902  or  Circa  1902. The date formatting has
had to be fairly rigid as the  last  four characters of the date are used
in sorting family members into date-of-birth order on some screens.

MULTI TASKING

Depth gadgets now  appear  at  all  times,  and  the program  multi-tasks
nicely, it is simple to  click  screen  to  back  to   use the CLI etc if
necessary.






THANKS

A-Gene like most programs could not  have been written  without  the help
of numerous other people in  the  Amiga  field   who have either directly
helped with suggestions, utilities,   bug   reports  and suggestions. The
list is getting longer each  day,  but  the following have to be included
as without them,  A-Gene  in its present form would not exist:-

Tomas Rokicki for placing DFC in the public domain.
The Other Guys for the recoverable ram disk, RRD:.
Richard Barrows of King Island for  sending  me his complete data base of
1100 family members which allowed me to test the program to its limits.
GFA Data Media UK for their  help  in providing updated versions of their
basic interpreter and compiler.
Fred Fish/Tony Thompson and Amiganuts for distributing my demo disks.
Ray Burt-Frost of Amiganuts, Southampton, England for distributing A-Gene
as licenceware worldwide.
Anders Wilfors of  Vasa,  Finland  for  the  great  work  he  has done in
providing Swedish and Finnish language text files.
And last but by no means  least,  thanks  to  Tim Strachan of Megadisc to
whom the Amiga community  in  Australia  owes  so  much,  for his help in
promoting the program.


BUGS: Sometimes the window title "GFA-Basic" appears when a  requester is
shown, this appears to be a bug  in  GFA  which has   been fixed in v3.5,
unfortunately they introduced a new bug  in  that release which precludes
its use.

Please advise if any other problems are found.

I hope this program   will enable  you to carry out interesting  research
into your own family background.

I should like to hear  from  anyone  who  finds  this program useful. Any
suggestions for improvements, additions,  changes  in  format etc will be
greatly appreciated. A contribution  towards  return postage (blank disks
are fine) is also greatly  welcomed. Future enhancements  will all depend
on feed-back  from users.

Mike Simpson, 11 Merauke Street,
Whalan, N.S.W. 2770  Australia.
Phone [phone]   Fax [phone]

Overseas Callers - Please check the time before phoning. My wife does not
like being called from her bed at 01:30 to answer queries!!!

21st July 1992.


OTHER PRODUCTS
--------------

I currently have  2  other  similar  data-base  programs  ready for early
release:-

A-VIAN - A data base intended  for  Pigeon breeders. A-Vian is similar in
layout to A-Gene, but  allows  breeders  to  save  details  of around 200
breeding pairs and 1000 sale birds on  a  data disk. Files on the program
disk hold details of Customers  name  and  address files along with their
purchases. Each birds pedigree can have the breeders loft included in the
heading and prints out full  details  including  race  results of all the
birds ancestors.

A-LOG - A  similar  product  but  designed  for  cat  (CAT-A-LOG) and dog
(DOG-A-LOG) breeders. This produces similar  sales  and pedigree forms to
A-Vian as well as  show  results  and  includes champion classifications,
kennel club registration numbers etc etc.

Anyone  interested  in  either  of  the   above  products  can  obtain  a
demonstration disk from me by sending a  blank disk and $5 (or equivalent
in blank disks, gold bars, etc.)  to  the  above address. The final price
has not been fixed but will be approx 20 pounds/40 dollars.