Wednesday, November 23, 2005 - Wed, 23 Nov 2005

Just about done with the Charsets. There are about a dozen different languages that I’ll add. The final problem of exporting to RTF seems to have been a setting on my machine, so the export actually works okay.

In the issue of Genealogical Computing that I received today, there was a review of the GenP program. What interested me the most was one feature that was described as:

“One of the best features I have seen in a long time is the ability to link individuals across databases without the need to merge. You read correctly - no need to merge! There are, however, a few settings that are required, but once you get used to this, you’ll never have to merge files again and yet retain the links. Links across databases are clearly identified by name and color. You are also able to link across databases in printing reports.

In fact, there are no merge capabilities found within GenP. … I guarantee, though, once you master the art of linking individuals from different GenBases, you will not go back to merging ever again. This feature has to be the way of the future.”

Those of you who have been following my Blog and have been reading the Behold Forum may already know my negative opinion about merging. I too would suggest that linking your database to any others you receive is the proper way to do it. I plan for Behold to fully support this by allowing you to easily select the various people in the two (or more) files you consider the same, and these links will be stored in the Behold file. Maybe I can help stop the creation of “junk genealogies” by eliminating the merging of unverified data from unverified sources into what formerly was a well researched family file.

Now I did relent to Steve in our Behold Forum discussion on merging. But I really am against doing it. This article has prompted me to stand taller on my podium. I want to first see if my implementation of linking will be good enough to eliminate the desire to merge, since I think the real goal is to be able to show all the data together. Most programs cannot show data from more than one file, so they use merging as their answer. Give me a chance on this one. I think it’s important that you see how linking works before you demand that Behold include merging. I plan to add these linking functions in Version 1.3 (January 2007 IAGW).

Oh, and if you can figure out how the linking in GenP works from their description of it, please let me know because it completely baffles me!