Reports post-processed via a wordprocessor
Peter J Seymour
I'm interested in what people do on this one.
Suppose you output a report from your favourite genealogical program
in say DOC or RTF format because you want to put it through some
manual editing in a word processing program.
What is it you want to do? Is it to tweak the content (sounds a bit
dubious - why wasn't it right in the first place)? Or perhaps you
want to massage the appearance in some way.
Any comments on your experiences would be appreciated.
Regards
Peter
Peter J Seymour <mo...@pjsey.demon.co.uk>
Bob Melson
> I'm interested in what people do on this one.
>
> Suppose you output a report from your favourite genealogical program
> in say DOC or RTF format because you want to put it through some
> manual editing in a word processing program.
>
> What is it you want to do? Is it to tweak the content (sounds a bit
> dubious - why wasn't it right in the first place)? Or perhaps you
> want to massage the appearance in some way.
>
If I understand your question correctly, I'd think much would depend
on the output of your report generator. I have one, for example,
which will output date and place of death, even for living persons,
when the "show all events" option is selected. Now, even though the
output for living persons is something like "He died on _____ at
____", the fact it appears at all is annoying and more than a bit
off-putting (took me a while to connect the output with selecting
that particular option, BTW). That's point one. 'Nother thought is
that you might want to rearrange the way the facts are presented, or
combine notes or modify any of a number of cosmetic things that your
report generator does well (good enough for government work) but not
as you might wish. Font, layout, pagination, indexing, title page,
table of contents, addition of graphics - there's a whole slew of
things you might want to "play" with to get the report to look the
way you want it.
But the primary reason you might want to run the report through your
wordprocessor might be to convert it from, say, .doc or .rtf to,
say, .pdf or .ps. To my mind, anything that's MicroSoft or Apple
specific is immediately suspect and automatically goes to the bottom
of the pile for later conversion. (Notwithstanding that some 95% or
more of personal computers run some version of Windows or MacOS,
there are some who choose to run neither and may not be able to do
anything with those proprietary formats. As a result, you've wasted
your time and machine cycles preparing a report they'll likely never
read and have probably annoyed them more than just a little bit.)
My USD $0.02
Swell Ol' Bob
--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
A government big enough to give you everything you want is big
enough to take away everything you have. Thomas Jefferson
Bob Melson <amia...@mypacks.net>
Keith Nuttle
> I'm interested in what people do on this one.
>
> Suppose you output a report from your favourite genealogical program
> in say DOC or RTF format because you want to put it through some
> manual editing in a word processing program.
>
> What is it you want to do? Is it to tweak the content (sounds a bit
> dubious - why wasn't it right in the first place)? Or perhaps you
> want to massage the appearance in some way.
>
I use FTM 2006. For the basic father son grandson reports I let FTM
do what it wants and make sure the information in each field is
correct. I also edit my notes to make the grammatically correct and
formated properly.
I use the books function of FTM to put other things into the into
the documents. At typical "Book" usually has these pieces. Title
page -- In FTM this is free form text, that can be formated to your
pleasure.
Ancestor tree -- This is the FTM tree organized to provide the
family structure
Introduction --- This is a FTM function that allow the you to input
your own text. In mine this is a basic introduction to the paternal
and maternal families that make up the report family.
Basic Family report from FTM
Free form page --- This is a FTM function that allows me to put
anything I wish into the report. In mine I discuss weak links in
the family, or my current theories on the ancestors of the first
(oldest) ancestor in the report.
Index --- FTM function.
Except for the poor quality of the FTM wordprocessor which I work
around, I have found no need to export to a DOC or RFT file.
Keith Nuttle <keith_...@sbcglobal.net>
Ian Goddard
Peter J Seymour wrote:
> I'm interested in what people do on this one.
>
> Suppose you output a report from your favourite genealogical program
> in say DOC or RTF format because you want to put it through some
> manual editing in a word processing program.
>
> What is it you want to do? Is it to tweak the content (sounds a bit
> dubious - why wasn't it right in the first place)? Or perhaps you
> want to massage the appearance in some way.
I've seen various web sites with what appear to be out-of-the-box
formatted reports and in many cases they're appalling. The chief
offence is to attempt to produce a narrative style report and the
result is simply a repetitious doling out of text such as "He was
born on 1st of October 1790" whereas "Date of birth 1 Oct 1790"
would have been quite adequate and the repetition would have grated
less. If you want narrative write it yourself. If want a
mechanically produced report go for a simple tabulation.
Another problem is poor handling of location. For instance if the
subject was baptised in a parish such as Almondbury or Halifax it's
folly to assume that they were born there - such parishes include
localities miles from the parish church and if the priest didn't
note the actual locality it's best not to mention it unless you can
provide it from other evidence. It's exacerbated when they go on to
say things like "Almondbury, York". I suppose the source of much of
this sort of nonsense is relying on data downloaded from IGI and
simply loaded into the program without any subsequence editing
although in many cases one suspects that the "researcher" hasn't
bothered to understand the geography of the area and couldn't have
edited it.
--
Ian
Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard
at nildram co uk
Ian Goddard <godd...@hotmail.co.uk>
Mick
Agreed except OpenOffice runs on most machines and not only deals
with the formats mentioned, but many others. And in fact when I had
office 2007 on one machine and XP on another exporting from 2007 in
97/xp/2003 format came up unreadable on an xp machine. Openining and
re-saving in OpenOffice saved the day, office XP could now read the
file.
I have 'strong opinions about the quality of Micro$oft software, few
favorable.
MickG
Mick <mic...@verizon.net>
Peter J Seymour
So I guess that if the program will output in PDF format that will
deal with your primary reason. It doesn't help with your minor
adjustments though. It looks like the program ought to allow editing
of the report before writing it to the file, but full-blown word
processing within the program would be getting a bit tricky. I think
I would be in favour of pushing back whatever those adjustments are
to being report generation options so that the generated report is
already as you want it (or pretty close). This would require a whole
raft of detail options but that is probably manageable.
Peter J Seymour
I admit that I am not very familiar with FTM. I was struck by the
Free Form Page. Structurally, it seems to serve the purpose of a
catch-all facility that compensates for omissions elsewhere in the
program. In that respect one cannot fault it, although it would be
better if the information was already incorporated elsewhere.
What problems does the FTM wordprocessor present you with?
Peter.
Peter J Seymour <mo...@pjsey.demon.co.uk>
singhals
> I'm interested in what people do on this one.
>
> Suppose you output a report from your favourite genealogical program
> in say DOC or RTF format because you want to put it through some
> manual editing in a word processing program.
>
> What is it you want to do? Is it to tweak the content (sounds a bit
> dubious - why wasn't it right in the first place)? Or perhaps you
> want to massage the appearance in some way.
>
>
Many of us don't write full sentences in our NOTES files -- mostly
that's those of us old enough to have started this before
5-and-a-quarter-inch floppies when space *mattered* who haven't
cared to spend valuable research time tidying up the file. But,
there do seem to be a lot of us. (g)
So, however good the "make me a book" report IS, it can't fix
sentence fragments so the grammar-hammer finds those and complains.
"Was an insurance underwriter." has to turn into "He was an
insurance underwriter."
Additionally, the occasional typo creeps into NOTES and isn't
spotted until it's in a book.
Sometimes, a remark that makes PERFECT sense when it's in the NOTES
becomes ambiguous in a book setting...either the antecedent of "he"
becomes muddy or the thing just reads wrong or tacky ... "He was a
traveller" for instance has various interpretations, only one of
which applies to this individual, and might be nice if that were
clear? Or "was dumb." When one knows the lady, one knows she was
unable to speak, not unintelligent, but again, future generations
won't know her, so let's make that clear.
Then, there are the potentially embarrassing comments -- perfectly
TRUE, but nonetheless rude and needlessly hurtful to persons more
closely connected. Still, I can't be certain I've found all those
until I look at the output.
SOME people "tag" certain facts (OCCUP: farmer or MIL: Vietnam)
using truncated words which need expanding, because OCCUP: farmer
isn't a real sentence, even if you know what OCCUP means -- and MIL:
Vietnam is either Military service in Vietnam /or/ Mother-in-law in
Vietnam and clarity on that would be a good thing. ;)
And of course -- the book generator in PAF and in Legacy throws in
an enormous amount of white-space. Looks pretty, is useful for
adding comments or new info, but uses more paper than it needs to.
So I remove a lot of blank lines. I can sometimes reduce by half the
number of pages to be printed.
Now, whether tweaking the output each time I do output takes less
time than fixing the input could be debatable. IMO, it is at least
more fun to do the tweaks on output.
Cheryl
singhals <sing...@erols.com>
Bob Melson
> <snip>
>
> > But the primary reason you might want to run the report through your
> > wordprocessor might be to convert it from, say, .doc or .rtf to,
> > say, .pdf or .ps. To my mind, anything that's MicroSoft or Apple
> > specific is immediately suspect and automatically goes to the bottom
> > of the pile for later conversion. (Notwithstanding that some 95% or
> > more of personal computers run some version of Windows or MacOS,
> > there are some who choose to run neither and may not be able to do
> > anything with those proprietary formats. As a result, you've wasted
> > your time and machine cycles preparing a report they'll likely never
> > read and have probably annoyed them more than just a little bit.)
> >
> > Swell Ol' Bob Melson
>
> Agreed except OpenOffice runs on most machines and not only deals
> with the formats mentioned, but many others. And in fact when I had
> office 2007 on one machine and XP on another exporting from 2007 in
> 97/xp/2003 format came up unreadable on an xp machine. Openining and
> re-saving in OpenOffice saved the day, office XP could now read the
> file.
>
> I have 'strong opinions about the quality of Micro$oft software, few
> favorable.
>
No argument. I had wanted to avoid any serious M$ bashing, which is
one reason I said folks might not be able to handle the M$
proprietary formats. OO is a competent suite of programs and one
I've used for what now seems like forever.
As for the quality of M$ software, suffice to say that one can't
rely on alpha-quality products.
Steamin' Ol' Bob
(but it's a _dry_ heat!)
Bob Melson
I suspect that adding a bunch of formatting options to the report
generator wouldn't be justifiable - I don't _know_ that, but think
it likely.
The report generator included with Gramps is really pretty good and
does allow a fair amount of formatting, as well as a selection of
output options (pdf, text, open document, etc.). Its limitations,
and those of most genealogy software, are more a matter of what it
has to work with than anything else: there are only so many ways
you can say that Joe Doakes was born in Podunk Junction on
such-and-such a date, married Edna Uglyperson and produced so many
kids. These are the facts that're recorded in the gedcom and,
except for the more or less free form notes, are pretty much plain
vanilla.
Since most of the world can produce but not directly edit pdf or ps
files, it makes sense that if you wanted to edit your report
generator's output, you'd want that output to be in something that
permitted editing - text, or doc or rtf - and only after editing
convert the output to pdf or postscript, if you converted at all.
The reasons you might want to edit the report generator's output are
probably as many as there are people producing reports. I named a
few previously but would certainly not claim that the list is
complete - formatting, pagination, inclusion of graphics, addition
of indexes and tables of contents, font selection, etc.
Keith Nuttle
Free form pages. I do not put any thing into the actual database
that is not supported by some other documents. However, there are
incidents where I have a lot of circumstantial and inferred evidence
that the parents of x are y and z. Circumstantial evidence would be
two families of the same last name live next to each other on the
plat map, No documented relation can be shown, but it is probable
that they are related.
When someone asked about a family, I like to include the
circumstantial and inferred evidence to indicate my line of
research, on the hope they may be able to contribute the clue that
will solve the whole problem.
While the FTM word processor does most of the functions it should,
it occasionally gets an attitude and will not copy and move text
properly. Sometime when copying it may just delete what you have
highlighted. This is especially a problem if the information crosses
page. At other time it will not paste text even if it comes from
the document being worked on.
I am running FTM 2006, Windows XP SP3 on an HP DV6130US with a Intel
2 Duo T5200 processor. The computer has the wide aspect screen.
Keith Nuttle <keith_...@sbcglobal.net>
Keith Nuttle
I understand where you are coming from, but I always work on the
assumption that I am doing none of this for me, but for my children
and grandchildren. If my notes are not clear, then my data will not
be adequate for the purpose for which it is intended.
Many times when there is to much white space in a report, it means
that I did not do a good job of entering the data. I then go to the
offending part and re edit the data to remove the the extra white
space.
This brings up a point that I have been considering what are you
doing for estate planning as far as your genealogical records and
databases?
Keith Nuttle <keith_...@sbcglobal.net>
singhals
>
> I suspect that adding a bunch of formatting options to the report
> generator wouldn't be justifiable - I don't _know_ that, but think
> it likely.
>
A year or so back, someone (here?) posted an objection to the way
her software phrased "died 14 Oct 1998" -- she felt "died" was too
bald.
So I frittered away some of my "copious spare time" ;) reading the
death notices and obits in my local newspaper. It quickly became
obvious why the genie programs all use "died" -- it's the least
objectional alternative.
If you're Hindu or Jewish, do you want your report to say that your
father was Called Home To Jesus on 14 Oct 1998? If your mother was a
Ph.D. in Biochemistry, do you want the report to claim she Graduated
on 14 Oct 1998? If your uncle was agnostic or atheist, you won't
want to say he Entered Eternal Glory on 14 Oct 1998. And if your
other uncle was executed by the State for mass murder ... ?
Nope. Died. One word fits all situations.
Then, the issue of fonts, faces, sizes, graphics and cutlines. In a
wordprocessor (whether it's PCWrite or WordPerfect of OO or
whatever) you can go through and flag the DSP entries, or who died
of Cancer or who was in Korea. Putting that level of options into
the text-producing software built-into the genie program would
inflate the genie program to swallow Jupiter (c Paramount Pictures)
and slow it down like nobody's business.
Then again, maybe it's the latent Wm Shakespeare in all of us that
simply wants some level of creative input. (g)
Cheryl
singhals <sing...@erols.com>
Bob Melson
On Saturday 13 June 2009 09:38, singhals (sing...@erols.com) opined:
<snip>
>> I suspect that adding a bunch of formatting options to the report
>> generator wouldn't be justifiable - I don't _know_ that, but think
>> it likely.
>>
>> Bob Melson
>
> A year or so back, someone (here?) posted an objection to the way
> her software phrased "died 14 Oct 1998" -- she felt "died" was too
> bald.
>
> So I frittered away some of my "copious spare time" ;) reading the
> death notices and obits in my local newspaper. It quickly became
> obvious why the genie programs all use "died" -- it's the least
> objectional alternative.
Well, yeah, the range of inoffensive options is kinda limited - the only
other one I can think of just off the top is "passed" or "passed away" and
even that may have cultural connotations I'm unaware of.
> If you're Hindu or Jewish, do you want your report to say that your
> father was Called Home To Jesus on 14 Oct 1998? If your mother was a
> Ph.D. in Biochemistry, do you want the report to claim she Graduated
> on 14 Oct 1998? If your uncle was agnostic or atheist, you won't
> want to say he Entered Eternal Glory on 14 Oct 1998. And if your
> other uncle was executed by the State for mass murder ... ?
>
> Nope. Died. One word fits all situations.
>
> Then, the issue of fonts, faces, sizes, graphics and cutlines. In a
> wordprocessor (whether it's PCWrite or WordPerfect of OO or
> whatever) you can go through and flag the DSP entries, or who died
> of Cancer or who was in Korea. Putting that level of options into
> the text-producing software built-into the genie program would
> inflate the genie program to swallow Jupiter (c Paramount Pictures)
> and slow it down like nobody's business.
Gramps does a pretty good job when it comes to basic output options - font,
size, justification - and output type - pdf, postscript, doc/rtf, etc. -
and whether to view or just write to file. Note, I'm not speaking of
what's included in the report, just how it's formatted. I think it's made
the right choice in NOT including complex word processing functionality,
leaving that to an external application, instead. It's the right
decision, IMNSHO, because the choice is/was to have a reasonably competent
genealogical program OR a wordprocessor with genealogical capabilities.
It's not so much that "never the twain shall meet" as it is a matter of
deciding where the program's emphasis should be. Why add something to the
program that's handled well/better by another application?
> Then again, maybe it's the latent Wm Shakespeare in all of us that
> simply wants some level of creative input. (g)
But all this is a bit far afield from the original question, which I
understood to be something like "if you edit your report generator's
output, why, and, further, why not make the generator's edit functions
more powerful so you don't have to pass it through an external word
processor?" Why do I edit my generator's output? Pretty much for all the
reasons I've already stated: better font control, pagination,
justification, widow/orphan control, order of presentation, rewording of
potentially offensive phraseology, cleaning up notes, better source
citations, inclusion of graphics, a whole raft of things the report
generator doesn't do as well as a word processor can.
As for including those word processor functions in the genealogy program, I
think, as I indicated above, that it comes down to a trade-off: do you
want a genealogy program with a lot of unrelated infrequently used
bells'n'whistles or do you want some basic functionality that can be
passed to a more competent external word processing application? I
suspect the designers/programmers of most genealogy programs have chosen
the latter option because it makes more sense to concentrate of the
genealogy side rather than get wrapped around the axle re-inventing the
wheel.
Semi-dehydrated Ol' Bob
(we're in the midst of a drought, y'know)
Kathy
singhals wrote:
> Nope. Died. One word fits all situations.
My great-grandfather "went to the great beyond." That seems pretty
non-sectarian to me. :)
Kathy
Kathy <len...@worldnet.att.net>
bob gillis
> I'm interested in what people do on this one.
>
> Suppose you output a report from your favourite genealogical program
> in say DOC or RTF format because you want to put it through some
> manual editing in a word processing program.
>
> What is it you want to do? Is it to tweak the content (sounds a bit
> dubious - why wasn't it right in the first place)? Or perhaps you
> want to massage the appearance in some way.
>
>
> Peter J Seymour
This very very general question is rather irrelevant unless we know
what program you are using, what you expect to do or what problems
you are encountering.
I send most of my reports to my wp so I can add index, bibliography
and ToC if I want and adjust the fonts. I print out an editing copy
of the report, say a Journal Descendant Report and then change my
Tag sentences and/or data entry to make the final output read the
way I want it.
Sending tabular reports to my wp allows me to change the fonts and
the formatting easily
Sending the report to my wp allows me to send the report as an
email attachment either in my wp file format or a text file.
My program can output the report as a pdf file directly.
bob gillis
bob gillis <robert...@verizon.net>
singhals
Keith Nuttle wrote:
> > Cheryl Singhals <sing...@erols.com>
>
> I understand where you are coming from, but I always work on the
> assumption that I am doing none of this for me, but for my children
> and grandchildren. If my notes are not clear, then my data will not
> be adequate for the purpose for which it is intended.
When I began this, I wasn't even pregnant, I was just bored.
So, everything was for my own private and personal
benefit. By the time I had a child, my process was set and
I had far too many entries to go back and start "fixing"
things to the then-current standard; since that time, there
have been at least 4 changes in what constitutes "best
practice" for documentation, for citation, etc etc.
> Many times when there is to much white space in a report, it means
> that I did not do a good job of entering the data. I then go to the
> offending part and re edit the data to remove the the extra white
> space.
I guess I wasn't clear. The white-space to which I object
is the extra blank line after each child in a list, after
each paragraph, and so on.
As in:
Jeremiah Christian Jingleheimer was baptised on 18 Oct 1756
in the parish of St. John, Arrenkamp, Westfalia (Germany).
Registration was made at 10:30 am. German law at the time
required the baptism and registration to be within 5 days of
the birth, so he was born between 13 and 17 Oct.
Jeremiah was a tailor who worked in Dielingen and Bremen.
On 26 August 1778, Jeremiah married Ilsabe Dorothea
Schneider. Ilsabe was born 27 December 1758, according to
the civil registers for Dielingen, but no baptismal record
has been found.
She was the daughter of Johann Heinrich Schneider and Maria
Elisabeth Butcher.
Ilsabe apparently died in New York City in March of 1846.
5. M i John Jacob Jingleheimer born 1781.
6. F ii Jemima Jingleheimer born 1784.
7. U iii Infant child Jingleheimer born and died 1786
When I've got 15 generations, it saves a lot of trees and
ink to omit those blank lines and use paragraph indents
instead on the narrative.
> This brings up a point that I have been considering what are you
> doing for estate planning as far as your genealogical records and
> databases?
My Will gives the children dibs, followed by my sibs or
their children; if none of them are interested, it (and a
suitable lump sum) go to my home-county library. In all
events, LDS is to be asked to microfilm it first.
Cheryl
singhals <sing...@erols.com>
Peter J Seymour
> > I'm interested in what people do on this one.
> >
> > Suppose you output a report from your favourite genealogical program
> > in say DOC or RTF format because you want to put it through some
> > manual editing in a word processing program.
> >
> > What is it you want to do? Is it to tweak the content (sounds a bit
> > dubious - why wasn't it right in the first place)? Or perhaps you
> > want to massage the appearance in some way.
> >
> > Any comments on your experiences would be appreciated.
> >
> > Peter J Seymour
>
> This very very general question is rather irrelevant unless we know
> what program you are using, what you expect to do or what problems
> you are encountering.
> bob gillis
In clarification, I engage in family history research in a small way
(ie for my extended family) and I engage in software development
again I suppose in a small way where I have my own genealogical
program. I invited the discussion because I am trying to get a
better grip on the output requirements for such a program.
Suitable output requirements depend first of all on who the user is
- amateur, professional, beginner, experienced and so on. Beyond
that there seem to be some definite modes of output for reports:
-- screen
-- printer
-- plain text file for subsequent ad-hoc data processing
-- pdf file for subsequent viewing/printing
-- rtf (etc) file for word processing
-- csv file (where the data is appropriate)
-- image (jpg etc)
-- webpage (I'm not keen on this one, it is too easy to do
inappropriate publishing)
I have been trying to get a better grip on some of the more detail
points among all this. The comments made by various posters have
been quite helpful.
Peter
www.gendatam.com
Peter J Seymour <mo...@pjsey.demon.co.uk>
Bob Melson
Peter,
Opinions, it's said, are like portions of the anatomy: everybody
has one. _MY_ opinion, for what little it's worth, is that you
should concentrate on the genealogical aspects of your program and,
only after you have a satisfactory "product, branch into other
things, such as adding word processing bells and whistles. Matter
of fact, I'd suggest that, even then, you run, not walk, to the
nearest exit and avoid those wp functions like the very plague ..
unless this whole project is strictly for your own pleasure, you'll
never satisfy every potential user with such add-ons.
In lieu of wp functionality, may I suggest you look at gdbi and how
it makes use of the lifelines reports/report language? If you
decide to adopt/adapt those/that, you have "instant" wp-like
functionality and allow your users the ability to create
customi{s,z}ed outputs.
Just my US $0.02,
Sun-tanned Ol' Bob
(100+ days without rain here in the Desert Southwest!)
bob gillis
Peter J Seymour wrote:
> In clarification, I engage in family history research in a small way
> (ie for my extended family) and I engage in software development
> again I suppose in a small way where I have my own genealogical
> program. I invited the discussion because I am trying to get a better
> grip on the output requirements for such a program.
>
> Suitable output requirements depend first of all on who the user is -
> amateur, professional, beginner, experienced and so on. Beyond that
> there seem to be some definite modes of output for reports: -- screen
> -- printer -- plain text file for subsequent ad-hoc data processing
> -- pdf file for subsequent viewing/printing -- rtf (etc) file for
> word processing -- csv file (where the data is appropriate) -- image
> (jpg etc) -- webpage (I'm not keen on this one, it is too easy to do
> inappropriate publishing)
Peter, I think you are way behind the times.
Many genealogy database programs already output to the native format
of many word processors and included exhibits whether text or
picture. Only the free or pared down versions limit output to text
and rtf.
More and more programs are implementing web page publishing either
included in the program or as an add on.
Many programs include multiple languages.
For getting ideas on what you should include in a new program review
the features that other programs available in Europe and North
America already have.
Browse the lists and forums for existing programs to see what
features users would like to have.
bob gillis
> I have been trying to get a better grip on some of the more detail
> points among all this. The comments made by various posters have been
> quite helpful.
>
> Peter www.gendatam.com
> Peter J Seymour <mo...@pjsey.demon.co.uk>
bob gillis
Bob Melson wrote:
> <snip>
>
> In lieu of wp functionality, may I suggest you look at gdbi and how
> it makes use of the lifelines reports/report language? If you
> decide to adopt/adapt those/that, you have "instant" wp-like
> functionality and allow your users the ability to create
> customi{s,z}ed outputs.
Pray tell, what is gbdi?
Peter J Seymour
> > > > I'm interested in what people do on this one.
> > > >
> > > > Suppose you output a report from your favourite genealogical program
> > > > in say DOC or RTF format because you want to put it through some
> > > > manual editing in a word processing program.
> > > >
> > > > What is it you want to do? Is it to tweak the content (sounds a bit
> > > > dubious - why wasn't it right in the first place)? Or perhaps you
> > > > want to massage the appearance in some way.
> > > >
> > >
> > > This very very general question is rather irrelevant unless we know
> > > what program you are using, what you expect to do or what problems
> > > you are encountering.
> >
> > ....
> >
> > > bob gillis
> >
> > In clarification, I engage in family history research in a small way
> >I have been trying to get a better grip on some of the more detail
> >points among all this. The comments made by various posters have
> > been quite helpful.
> >
> > Peter J Seymour <mo...@pjsey.demon.co.uk> www.gendatam.com
>
> Peter,
>
> In lieu of wp functionality, may I suggest you look at gdbi and how
> it makes use of the lifelines reports/report language? If you
> decide to adopt/adapt those/that, you have "instant" wp-like
> functionality and allow your users the ability to create
> customi{s,z}ed outputs.
>
I hadn't really been aware of GDBI but having found it, I find it is
a fairly omniverous sourceforge project with various points of
interest, if only academic. Gendatam Suite does have an internal
scripting facility used for the newer style of reports and for forms
and templates. I have been considering encapsulating the various
standard report bulding blocks in subroutines accessible to
scripting (easily done, it is just a matter of getting down to
it)and this would further streamline the specification of reports.
This would also facilitate the control of reports via user-setable
options. It is really a question of just how far do you go in
providing the user with choice.
Bob Melson
Formally, gdbi stands for Gedcom DataBase Interface. gdbi is a
program, written in java, which provides a Brothers Keeper-like
interface to, among others, phpGedView. For more details, see:
And remember, google is your friend!
Smilin' Ol' Bob