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Newsgroups: soc.roots
Date:         Thu, 13 May 1993 09:20:36 CDT
Reply-To:     Mike Scudamore <s...@MACSCUD.HUNTSVILLE.SPARTA.COM>
Sender:       ROOTS-L Genealogy List <ROOT...@NDSUVM1.BITNET>
From:         Mike Scudamore <s...@MACSCUD.HUNTSVILLE.SPARTA.COM>
Subject:      Family Tree Charting Software (Q)
Comments: To: Root...@Vm1.NoDak.Edu
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As a newbie to Roots-L/soc.roots, I have been quietly watching for a while and
have seen several threads concerning software. Most of these have been
discussing the merits of particular data base packages (TMG, PAF, ROOTS-IV,
etc.). And although I haven't tried them all to see what all of their
capabilities are, I haven't noticed much discussion concerning the presentation
of the data after it has been accumulated into the data base.

There are two major graphical presentations that I am aware of: 1) The Pedigree
Chart (bottoms-up), and 2) The Descendants Chart (top-down). I am interested in
the later. I currently have almost 750 entries (22 generations) that I would
like to graphically illustrate as a "Family Tree".

I recently tried "GENBOX" that I downloaded from hallc1.cebaf.gov. And although
it is a crippled version, it gave me a pretty good idea of how well it would
work for me. My "chart" was 59 pages wide and 6 pages deep. Taped together,
that would be almost 40 feet wide and 5 feet deep. Not exactly what I was
looking for. I understand that trying to plot up that much data won't fit on an
8.5x11 piece of paper, but I think 354 pages is a little much.

My question is -- What experiences have others had in creating family tree
charts and what is, IYHO, the best software package to generate a classical
family tree with?

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