Gedcom

[Keith Nuttle]

There is a Gedcom that is on that web that was created by distant
relative (Died many years ago and can't find anyone who knows any thing
about it.) and about the family of my Great Grandmother. While there
are a few errors based on my research, the important thing is that it
contains many letters written by family and some transcription of will,
etc.

Question: Other that by brute force in a word processor is there
any way to extract these letters and transcription to individual
files?

The purpose would be to quickly find them and have them in an easy
to read format with out the gedcom commands(?).

Keith Nuttle <Keith_...@sbcglobal.net>

[Wes Groleau]

wget --mirror
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget>

curl
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CURL>

One at a time:
For text, File->Save as
For images, right-click, then look for the option to save the picture.

If you have ftp access, in windows, in a windows explorer window
(directory window, NOT Internet Explorer) type in a path of

ftp://userID:password@hostname

and then you can drag whole folders to your desktop.

On Mac, Cmd-K in Finder (Go -> Connect to server) and use the same
URI to accomplish the same thing.

Actually, you might try either of the above with anonymous FTP by
using

ftp://hostname/~userID

If you're willing to share more details, I could take a closer look.
I have both wget and curl installed, and have used wget to download
my entire website when I accidentally erased the local copy. (It's
easier than wrestling with the @#$#$%^ Time Machine.)


--
Wes Groleau

ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI

[Ye Old One]

> There is a Gedcom that is on that web that was created by distant=20
> relative (Died many years ago and can't find anyone who knows any thing=20
> about it.) and about the family of my Great Grandmother. While there=20
> are a few errors based on my research, the important thing is that it=20
> contains many letters written by family and some transcription of will,=20

> etc.
>
> Question: Other that by brute force in a word processor is there
> any way to extract these letters and transcription to individual
> files?
>
> The purpose would be to quickly find them and have them in an easy
> to read format with out the gedcom commands(?).
>
> Keith Nuttle <Keith_...@sbcglobal.net>

I would load it into something like Family Tree Maker then go to
each page and cut and paste the text into your chosen word
processor.


--
Bob.

Ye Old One <use...@mcsuk.net>

[Edward Feustel]

Do you have a genealogy program that can import the Gedcom and
assemble the information properly? Use it to read the Gedcom, use
the program to go to the desired documents. Use the visual interface
to copy the documents to an appropriate file. Save the file under
an appropriate name or copy the document to notes in your Genealogy
Program.

Ed

Edward Feustel <efeu...@hughes.net>

[Joe Makowiec]

It shouldn't be difficult, depending on how the GEDCOM file is
structured and what kind of programming you have available. You'd
need to write up a program, something like this:

- - Open GEDCOM file
- - Read a line
- - IF (left character of line = '0') // have a new individual
- - output (print | save to file | something) previous individual
- - // look for name tag
- - name = (find 'NAME' at positions 3-6; remove positions 1-6)
- - // look for note tags
- - note(n) = (find 'NOTE' at positions 3-6; remove positions 1-6)
- - // if you find a note tag, look for CONT tags
- - note(n) = (find 'CONT' at positions 3-6; remove positions 1-6; append)
- - continue

I'm looking at a GEDCOM output by The Master Genealogist 4.0d. NOTE
tags occur on the 1 level, which look like actual anecdotes, and
higher levels, which look like comments on other tags. So if you
want to get the higher level tags, you'd also want to extract which
tag it comes from. (For some reason which I can't fathom at the
moment, I use a 'Memo Note' in addition to a NOTE tag. It comes out
as 1 EVEN / 2 TYPE Memo Note. I'd want to extract those as
comparable to NOTEs.)

Macro programming languages for various word processors could
probably be induced to do this. I'd probably write something in
PHP, just because that's what I'm most familiar with at the moment.


--
Joe Makowiec
http://makowiec.org/
Email: http://makowiec.org/contact/?Joe

Joe Makowiec <mako...@invalid.invalid>

[Keith Nuttle]

> Joe Makowiec


I thought I would open the file in WordPerfect as a text document
and write a little macro to strip the GEDCOM commands from the text,
reformat and save or print to a PDF.

Finding the sections I am interested in is not hard as they are
several page documents. I am quite familiar with the family so
knowing who is who is not a problem.

Before writing and debuging the macro, my hope was that someone
would say "OH use xxx and it will do exactly what you want". I am
on the lazy side.

Thank you for your input.

Keith Nuttle <Keith_...@sbcglobal.net>

[knuttle]

OP: Since I could not find the easy way, I opened the Gedcom as
text in WordPerfect and removed the unneeded lines of code with
simple "Select" and "Delete".

For the leading code in the text sections I wanted I used the
"Select Rectangle" (Block MS Word?) and "Delete" to remove that
code.

Stripping out the leading codes for the text left a document full of
short strings. This was resolved by creating a table of contents
and marking the headers and then stripping the "Hard Returns" codes
from the document. While the table of contents was not necessary it
created division in the document to assist in subsequent formatting.

I still have the "make it pretty" to complete the formatting.

knuttle <keith_...@sbcglobal.net>

[Jim]

Keith,

The way I would do it with Brother's Keeper version 6 would to be to
read that GEDCOM into a new database then with Notepad open the
GEDCOM and search for whatever the GEDCOM tag is the letters, then
scroll up looking for the "INDI" if this was the full file from the
sender versus just a branch, the number inside the @xxx@ will be the
individual's number in BK go to BK and do a edit then find and us
that number which should that you to that individual and probably
under Note or Media will be your letter. From there you can easily
copy and paste or it it's in the Notes tab save it to an external
file.

Hope this helps.

Jim

Jim <James...@SBCGlobal.net>

[singhals]

> Before writing and debuging the macro, my hope was that someone
> would say "OH use xxx and it will do exactly what you want". I am
> on the lazy side.
>

> Keith Nuttle


If you've got the GEDCOM, pull it into PAF5 (free d/l);

then open Search/advanced focus-filter. Select ALL for who, then
under Define, it's NOTES/contains [any unusual word in the bit you
want]; OK. tic: Show Results only

Ought not be more'n a couple; select one, open NOTES, copy'n'paste
into Word/WP/OO/WTH ... and repeat until you've got 'em all. It's
been working for me. (g)

Cheryl

singhals <sing...@erols.com>

[Keith Nuttle]

> Cheryl Singhals<sing...@erols.com>


OP Thanks to everyone who responded to my request. I got impatient
and pulled the letters out in a word processor.