23 Jan 03 19:58, mark lewis wrote to David Noon:

 SN>>> Out of sheer frustration with the currently available
 SN>>> offerings, I'm contemplating writing my own genealogy
 SN>>> program.

 DN>> Ok, although I believe there are some around for OS/2.

 ml> there are but i've not looked at them.

I've not been able to find any except FTree (Warp 4 only), and I already
posted to Dave earlier in this thread what I think of it.

 ml> he's using PAF (from the mormons or latter-day saints, i don't know
 ml> which)

One and the same.

 ml> i/we started with an old (today) copy of brother's keeper which i
 ml> liked due to its simplicity and straightforwardness...

Is this the DOS version or the Win3.1 version?  I don't really care for
either one (I've been using both--mainly the DOS version--for years).  It
seems to do a pretty good job of information storage and retrieval, but the
user interface is clumsy at best, and the GEDCOM import/export is out of
date.  And it isn't as capable as some other programs out there.  The
latest Windows version seems to be better, but it doesn't run on OS/2.

 ml> searching google with "gedcom format standard" (sans
quotes) turns up
 ml> the following as the first hit...

 ml> http://www.gendex.com/gedcom55/55gctoc.htm

That's the one.

 ml> it was released Jan 2, 1996 and appears to be the current standard...

Yes, it is.  There isn't any genealogy database program out there, for any
platform, that implements the standard fully and correctly.  All of them
implement only a subset of the standard (this is true even of PAF, which is
written by the same people who write the GEDCOM standard), some implement
some tags incorrectly, and some extend the standard in non-standard (and
often unnecessary) ways.

Sarah
trinityoaks{at}cfaith.com

... Smith & Wesson LadySmith:  the ultimate in feminine protection
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