Post by Howard Metcalfe on Dec 1, 2006 14:17:24 GMT -5
Q: Why was PAWriter developed and what philosophy does it embody?
A: Many years ago, the limitations of the old Mac PAF drove me to create a similar program without some of those limitations, and to rescue years of work already committed to PAF so it could be processed in today's MacOS. Here's a few of the objectives I wanted to and did attain.
The number of people on file and the size of notes for any person had to be virtually unlimited. The length of person and place name pieces had to be doubled. Some additional GEDCOM tags had to be accepted. Book writing (including automatic generation of an index) and HTML capabilities had to be added. PAWriter had to run equivalently under MacOS 9 and MacOS X.
For writing books, the notes would have to carry the load of most of the book text. They would contain all of the evidence, substantiation, documentation, background information, clarification, interpretation and/or other relevant commentary pertinant to a person on file.
On the other hand, the entries for a person's vital statistics (birth, marriage, death, etc.) would represent the researcher's best current conclusions as to the true facts, given the information in the notes.
For the notes to fulfill this purpose, footnotes within the notes were required, so that any statement in the notes could be sourced by a footnote following that statement, without any limitations, as one typically finds in genealogical books. Also, boldfacing, italicizing and a few other features within the notes and the footnotes needed to be added.
These features within the notes were accomplished with a simple markup language. The markups allowed PAWriter to generate equivalent HTML, RTF and MML files. (MML was required for publishing using FrameMaker, at the time and still the best book production system, although now unsupported.) Citations of source documents were centralized so they could be easily referenced from within the notes in multiple formats (short form and long form in footnotes and long form in bibilographies). Standardized entry of census citations was added.
Along the way, I added additional features to PAWriter to assist in my research: basic pedigree charts, family group sheets, possible problem reports, self-checking of file consistency, etc. Ultimately the inclusion of pictures was added so that images of census pages, other source documents and family memorabilia could be displayed.
To navigate through very large numbers of people on file, a powerful "tagging" system was included. It provides flexible selection of subsets of people in a file by marking them as members of the subset using a host of selection criteria. Selections include inclusion, exclusion and intersection of the set of people meeting the criteria with those already tagged.
Some things PAWriter is not meant to do: LDS ordinances (which will be handled by Logan Allred's MacPAF when it is completed), complete GEDCOM compatibility as defined in the version 5.5 standand (which is handled nicely by John Nairn's GEDitCOM), fancy charting and other bells and whistles that are included in other genealogical programs (no disrespect intended) such as Reunion. The emphasis is on secular research (including intercommunication with other researchers) and publishing. Also note that PAWriter uses the English calendar (pertinent for the Julian to Gregorian transition in 1752).
In my opinion, PAWriter has accomplished these goals as witnessed by the publiication so far of three large tomes, the last by Heritage Books, Inc., wherein the entire register portions of the books (most of the contents of the books) was produced by PAWriter. On my 1.4GHz G4, a 3,000-page register in final format can be generated from my current PAWriter data file for FrameMaker, and converted from there to PDF and burned on CD, in less than an hour, thereby facilitating any number of last-minute changes in the copy sent (and re-sent) to the publisher.
A: Many years ago, the limitations of the old Mac PAF drove me to create a similar program without some of those limitations, and to rescue years of work already committed to PAF so it could be processed in today's MacOS. Here's a few of the objectives I wanted to and did attain.
The number of people on file and the size of notes for any person had to be virtually unlimited. The length of person and place name pieces had to be doubled. Some additional GEDCOM tags had to be accepted. Book writing (including automatic generation of an index) and HTML capabilities had to be added. PAWriter had to run equivalently under MacOS 9 and MacOS X.
For writing books, the notes would have to carry the load of most of the book text. They would contain all of the evidence, substantiation, documentation, background information, clarification, interpretation and/or other relevant commentary pertinant to a person on file.
On the other hand, the entries for a person's vital statistics (birth, marriage, death, etc.) would represent the researcher's best current conclusions as to the true facts, given the information in the notes.
For the notes to fulfill this purpose, footnotes within the notes were required, so that any statement in the notes could be sourced by a footnote following that statement, without any limitations, as one typically finds in genealogical books. Also, boldfacing, italicizing and a few other features within the notes and the footnotes needed to be added.
These features within the notes were accomplished with a simple markup language. The markups allowed PAWriter to generate equivalent HTML, RTF and MML files. (MML was required for publishing using FrameMaker, at the time and still the best book production system, although now unsupported.) Citations of source documents were centralized so they could be easily referenced from within the notes in multiple formats (short form and long form in footnotes and long form in bibilographies). Standardized entry of census citations was added.
Along the way, I added additional features to PAWriter to assist in my research: basic pedigree charts, family group sheets, possible problem reports, self-checking of file consistency, etc. Ultimately the inclusion of pictures was added so that images of census pages, other source documents and family memorabilia could be displayed.
To navigate through very large numbers of people on file, a powerful "tagging" system was included. It provides flexible selection of subsets of people in a file by marking them as members of the subset using a host of selection criteria. Selections include inclusion, exclusion and intersection of the set of people meeting the criteria with those already tagged.
Some things PAWriter is not meant to do: LDS ordinances (which will be handled by Logan Allred's MacPAF when it is completed), complete GEDCOM compatibility as defined in the version 5.5 standand (which is handled nicely by John Nairn's GEDitCOM), fancy charting and other bells and whistles that are included in other genealogical programs (no disrespect intended) such as Reunion. The emphasis is on secular research (including intercommunication with other researchers) and publishing. Also note that PAWriter uses the English calendar (pertinent for the Julian to Gregorian transition in 1752).
In my opinion, PAWriter has accomplished these goals as witnessed by the publiication so far of three large tomes, the last by Heritage Books, Inc., wherein the entire register portions of the books (most of the contents of the books) was produced by PAWriter. On my 1.4GHz G4, a 3,000-page register in final format can be generated from my current PAWriter data file for FrameMaker, and converted from there to PDF and burned on CD, in less than an hour, thereby facilitating any number of last-minute changes in the copy sent (and re-sent) to the publisher.