Genealogy programs for home computers
It might help people be less aggressive on Family Search if people had their own personal genealogy data base on their computer. Many of them are free to download if you can't afford one, you just won't have all the bells and whistles working. It might help if the church websites would promote using them more than they have. I have made a list of what might encourage people to use them. I use Legacy.
1 no one can change the information except you
2 you can connect with the family search website and transfer data
3 legacy will show you all the mistakes that might be in your lineage to correct
4 you can print a book with the program so you can give hard copies to friends or just keep for yourself
5 you can print all kinds of charts
6 you can print Temple cards to take to the temple
7 you can have a wonderful family history with pictures and documents things like that
8 you can learn the program at your own speed
9 there is a lot of misinformation on the family search website
10 it has a great search database
11 you can have backup after backup so if you mess anything up you can reinstall it again back to the original
12 you can instantly download several generations from FamilySearch to your legacy program no need to type it all in
13 you can send all your information through a Ged.com file to any relatives or friends that have a genealogy program
14 you can download a free version of legacy just to get your feet wet. if you think it is worth it, I believe it costs about $35 for the full-blown edition
Thank you : )
Comments
-
Can you define or cite such 'aggression' - clarify what you mean?
Are you saying private 3rd party tree management application with Family Tree sync - reduces need for collaboration or maintenance of ones' personal tree within Family Tree?
If one syncs usually one will receive the latest information - which may or may not be 'correct'. Certainly one does not have to accept/sync - but then is removed from the Latest information. In this sense - yes - not collaborating does reduce the chance of 'aggressive' encounters. Syncing of 'correct' personal tree information to undo/reverse bad changes could be a good thing - but done without collaboration may result in 'aggressive encounters' responding to lack of collaboration...?
I probably need to review syncing ... again.
0 -
Caveat specific to Legacy: if you have relatives any further east than France, choose a different program, because Legacy will be unable to correctly render the diacritics in their names. It still hasn't learned Unicode.
2 -
I don't think anyone would argue that having a personal database is not a good idea. I use Reunion and it likewise has all sort of feature that Family Tree does not.
As to reducing aggressiveness? The only way that would happen would be if having their own database would lead people to never come to Family Tree but to just stick with their own databases which will die when they do. It may instead increase aggressiveness as people argue that information is correct not because of sources, but because "that is what I have in my database."
2 -
I use GRAMPS. It works on Mac, PC, and Linux. It's very flexible, and it's free.
0 -
I really like Ahnenblatt - it has a good clean interface. There is a free and a paid version. ( www.ahnenblatt.com )
Although the controls can be switched to a variety of languages, the F1 help function is only written in German. Don't worry, though: the interface is so intuitive that you won't need the help file!
0 -
Legacy [...] still hasn't learned Unicode.
@Julia Szent-Györgyi –– Thank you for that heads-up! So, yeah, Legacy would be a total no-go for me.
0 -
@s10297588641 Depends on how you define advanced user. GRAMPS does not pull in data from online sources, you have to enter it. It does allow you to create sources, and assign them to multiple repositories. Then create specific citations from the sources and assign them to multiple events. The names set up works well with different types of naming systems. You can create a very sophisticated set of places that will generate the correct name and jurisdictions for the date of the event.
0 -
I agree with the sentiment about maintaining your own tree somewhere different from Family Tree where it cannot be tampered with by a third party. It surprises me when I hear of people who maintain their tree solely using Family Tree, It is asking for trouble. So far, to my knowledge, I have suffered few problems but I spent several hours sorting a mess created by a well meaning but inexperienced user several months ago. Without being able to refer to my tree on another site, it would have been that much harder to sort.
0 -
@John Scovill Your suggestion has been submitted to the proper department for consideration. Thank you for sharing your idea.
0
