Julia Ryder wrote in a message to Moderator:
JR> RE: Heltons Solans Valley Kentucky
JR> BY: Moderator to Robert Helton on Wed Oct 09 1996 08:45 pm
JR> Please forgive my ignorance...but could you give me a brief
JR> definition of what  a "Tiny Taefel"  is?
No problem....
        A Tiny Tafel is simply a representation of your research data
 in a form that can be easily scanned by computer or eye and which
 will reveal considerable information concerning how much actual data
 you currently have.  It also does it in a condensed form and doesn't
 take a lot of room doing it, hence the "Tiny" portion of the Tafel.
 Tafel is a shortening of Ahnentafel (sp) which loosely means family
 history.  It was first defined by Paul Andereck in an article titled
 Tiny-Tafel for Database Scope Indexing in the April/May/June issue of
 Genealogical Computing for 1986.  It was refined and formalized by
 COMMSOFT Corp.  and presented as a specification for their Tafel
 Matching System.
        Loosely, a TT will contain the originators information (for
 contact purposes, etc) followed by surname information.  That info is
 key to the TT in that it is presented in a specific manner.  On each
 line will be a soundex code for the surname, the earliest ancestor
 birth year, the latest descendent birth year, an interest flag
 denoting interest level, the surname itself, and lastly place names
 of the earliest and latest surname known locations.  WOW.  What a
 mouthful.  This info was taken from a widely circulated text file
 called TTSPEC.ZIP.  I do think there have been some modifications of
 this spec for use with the Tafel Matching System but the above will
 serve you just fine for use with the Tiny Tafel Database Fidonet ECHO.
         NOTE:  You should include some indication as to where you would like 
to be contacted.  The S line would be an appropriate place for this 
information.  Hopefully this will help prevent improper messages in the 
GENDATA area.
        There are several programs that can help you in Tiny Tafel
 creation and they are:
        GED2TTH1.ZIP    by Andy Kopenhaver
        PAFTT.ZIP       Generate Tiny Tafels from PAF files.
        TTED22.ZIP      by Chris Long (will also do matching on TT archives).
        TTGEN206.ZIP    by Tom Douglas
        TTSPEC.ZIP      The above mentioned text file.
 These files should be available on any well stocked genealogy
 oriented BBS system.
Michael Kirst
Moderator - Tiny Tafel Database echo (GENDATA)
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