Dennis Lee Bieber wrote: > On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 21:35:26 +0000, Ian Goddard <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> > declaimed the following in soc.genealogy.computing: > >> If you want a simple data model let me offer you the humble 6x4 index >> card. Extract the data from evidence, e.g. >> > Where'd you find those cards? I've always lived with 3x5 <G> Bigger card and scissors? -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

Bob Velke wrote: > Peter said: > >> Going by web searching, there seems to have been no movement on the >> Gentech data model since 2001. There also seems to be an annual flurry >> of mentions in relation to the NGS conference, but no further >> developments. > > > No further developments by whom? We're all volunteers. Some of us > spent five years developing the GDM which was sponsored by all of the > major genealogy societies in the U.S. and it was promptly ignored by the > developers of the most popular software. The ground swell of market > forces by researchers who claimed to be passionate about the subject > also never materialized. Who do you think has the incentive to do more? > > In fact, there are a number of developers who are using the GDM (or some > derivative of it) to develop software programs, XML transfer specs, and > other projects. You can find some of them on the GenealogyXML mailing > list but I wouldn't ever expect to hear about them in the mainstream. > > Yes, about once a year there is a flurry of people who are aghast that > "nobody is doing anything" to solve their problems. > > Bob Velke > Wholly Genes, Inc. > The Gentech data model seems to me to provide a high-level set of principles rather than a directly implementable specification. That may be why there is not much mention of it, but it does make its influence more difficult to gauge. I have in the past described my own Gendatam model as compatible with (or some such language) the Gentech model, but as it was not actually derived from the Gentech model, I gave up on that. The strong point in the Gentech model is the emphasis on evidence, All genealogy software developers ought to take that on board. Peter

singhals wrote: > Tony Proctor wrote: > [snip] > >> The older ANSI C and ANSI SQL specs are abomininations resulting from a >> design-by-committee approach. You can understand the approach taken with >> Java whereby it was designed and evolved as a proprietary standard before >> being considered for an international standard. > > > Remind me again please -- what makes _their_ design-by-committee results > worse than what _your_ project committee could come up with? > > If standards in the genealogical software community need to be > agreed-upon rather than forced-upon, you're going to get > designed-by-committee standards. > > If it's bad when I (or Bob V) do it, then it's bad when you do it. > Ancient adage roughly translated as sauce for the gander. I guess what Tony is trying to say is that large committees tend to have a wide range of conflicting (and often irreconcilable) goals. In the context of committees whose remit is to design some kind of standard, the result is a standard that is bloated, confusing and often impossible to implement effectively. The best standards seem to come from very small committees, or better still, two or three very talented and highly-focussed individuals. Look at the standards which underpin the Internet -- IP, TCP, SMTP, HTTP -- which each originated as the work of one or two people. Likewise, languages such as C and Fortran, which were created by one person and a team of half a dozen, respectively. (And John Backus's Fortran team not only specified the language, but implemented the world's first optimizing compiler on a computer which had less memory than your cellphone!) David Harper Cambridge, England

Everett M. Greene wrote: > > There are anti-trust ramifications to participating in standarization > activities unless the activities are done under the auspices o a > recognized standards organization and follow proper procedures. There are plenty of standards established by trade associations (EIA, W3C, etc.), or professional societies (IEEE, etc.). The GDM was sponsored by several genealogical societies. There would have been no anti-trust problems, even if genealogical software were on the DoJ's radar. -- Thomas M. Sommers -- tms@nj.net -- AB2SB

singhals wrote: > It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime days, and of course my digital > camera chose to malfunction. The flash worked when it felt like it and > not otherwise. > > So, I have several photos of a cake with burning candles, except the > flash decided there was enough light that it didn't have to exert itself. > > Anyone with any suggestions what I need to adjust to be able to see the > cake rather than the bonfires? > > Thanks! > > Cheryl Have you tried opening (copies of) the photos in a graphics editor and used the functions which change the brightness/contrast/etc or just lighten the image? Which graphics editor do you use? Someone might be able to give you more specific instructions.

"singhals" <singhals@erols.com> wrote in message news:OvWdnQzTU8o5LKHanZ2dnUVZ_jednZ2d@rcn.net... > It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime days, and of course > my digital camera chose to malfunction. The flash worked > when it felt like it and not otherwise. > > So, I have several photos of a cake with burning candles, > except the flash decided there was enough light that it > didn't have to exert itself. > > Anyone with any suggestions what I need to adjust to be able > to see the cake rather than the bonfires? > > Thanks! > > Cheryl On my camera I can chose to make the flash compulsory. It must be a general function, unless you have an extremely cheap camera. Kurt F

Doug McDonald wrote: > Bob Velke wrote: > > You have people, and you have that relationship. That's > what genealogy is. Then you can accrete tons of data on > top of it. No! You have *evidence* - parish registers, civil registers, census returns, wills, diaries, newspapers, all manner of things. And then you can accrete hypotheses on top of it. If you want a simple data model let me offer you the humble 6x4 index card. Extract the data from evidence, e.g. Walter Dearnley father of William in baptism 1760 William Dearnley son of Walter in baptism 1760 Walter Dearnally father of John in baptism 1762 John Dearnally son of Walter Deanally in baptism in 1762 Walter Darnley father of Walter in baptism in 1763 Walter Darnley son of Walter in baptism 1763 Walter Dearnely father of Walter in 1740 Walter Dearnely son of Walter in 1740 and so on. This is *analysis* The Dearnley surname, as I've found out has many spelling variations - but this way we've preserved them all. Now let's construct a hypothesis - all the cards for Walter as father in the 1760s together with Walter the son in 1740 all refer to the same person. So, in addition to the humble 6x4 card we take the humble paper clip and clip then together. If we like we could take another card and write our preferred spelling on the front, something like Walter Dearnley father of family in the 1760s. This is *reconstruction*. Note that our analysis records are distinct from our reconstruction record. Is this important? It surely is. If we then find another item of evidence, the baptism of Walter son of William Darnley in 1741 we realise that part of our reconstruction is probably wrong. So we unclip the Walter Darnley as father in 1763 from the Dearnley bunch and clip it onto the Walter Darnley as son in 1741 card. Then we discover the burial of Walter son of William Darnley in 1742. So we can unclip our Walter as father card again and wonder what to do with it - were we right first time? - did William have a later son Walter? Maybe we just leave it on its own for the time being until we have more evidence. The 6x4 card is humble but it's powerful because we have flexibility how we use it. That would be my starting point for a data model. Does anyone know of a software package which offers that flexibility? Or, in any other way, separates analytical from reconstruction data? Or starts with the premise that any hypothesis could be wrong and that, therefore we must be able to unpick our identifications as easily as we make them? -- Ian Hotmail is for spammers. Real mail address is igoddard at nildram co uk

Tony Proctor wrote: > I'm not sure how much involvement the software vendors had > in those early standards like Fortran. However, with languages like C++ I > think most of the big vendors are represented on the standards body. These > same companies have "language lawyers" though that interpret those > standards, and often hide behind 'the letter' rather than embracing 'the > word' I remember back in the late 1980s when we were waiting for the new Fortran standard to succeed Fortran 66 and Fortran 77. The X3J3 committee had over fifty members, drawn from the big vendors, industry, academia and the U.S. government. The new standard was known informally as Fortran 8X, and as the decade drew to a close, there was much joking that "X" would have to be a hexadecimal digit. So, indeed, it turned out, because Fortran 8X turned into Fortran 90. > The older ANSI C and ANSI SQL specs are abomininations resulting from a > design-by-committee approach. You can understand the approach taken with > Java whereby it was designed and evolved as a proprietary standard before > being considered for an international standard. Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C Programming Language" remains a masterpiece of brevity and clarity in not only defining a programming language, but providing a tutorial for aspiring programmers. I doubt that any of the "modern" languages could be summarised in so few pages. But then, Dennis Ritchie didn't have to get the approval of a committee, because he created the C programming language. > I think the industry has benefited in the long term, albeit via an > evolutionary approach. Programming Languages are better defined now, and > more functional, and with less variation between vendor or hardware. I think > genealogy could learn a lot from the programming language history. Its > biggest problem, though, seems to be its fragmentation - there aren't the > same big companies or authoritative bodies around to help kick-start a new > standard. The world's first high-level programming language (Fortran, since you ask) appeared in 1956. Wikipedia's list of programming languages runs to more than 500 entries. That's an average of ten new languages every year. I'm not sure that's an example that the genealogy community would want to follow ;-) David Harper Cambridge, England

Dennis wrote: > On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:20:40 -0500, Bob Velke <bvelke@whollygenes.com> > wrote: > > >>Dennis said: >> >> >>>Is there more documentation available on this effort? Perhaps a mission >>>statement? Goals? Objectives? A history/summary of what went on? >> >>Do you mean other than the first 10 pages of the document? > > > Is the first 10 pages of... > > https://www.ngsgenealogy.org/ftp/pub/GENTECH_Data_Model/Description_GENTECH_Data_Model_1.1.doc > > ... all that there is on the web? I would be interested in reading more > on the effort. > Going by web searching, there seems to have been no movement on the Gentech data model since 2001. There also seems to be an annual flurry of mentions in relation to the NGS conference, but no further developments. Peter

My rationale Bob (rightly or wrongly) was that if the free viewer was produced by the Gentech project, and endorsed by the Gentech backers, then people would feel safer distributing it to their families & friends. Hence, although it would not present any immediate advantage over the current free downloads from the Web, it would have a lot of hidden potential in being future-proof and being supported. If such a viewer were free then who's going to try to compete with it. Also, if the converter for GEDCOM-to-new_format is _not_ distributable then it would mean there's less prospect of the viewer being used simply as a free GEDCOM viewer. Once the new file format is used by enough people, I'm sure vendors would consider native support for it - especially if it solves issues they would otherwise have had with GEDCOM. Tony Proctor "Bob Velke" <bvelke@whollygenes.com> wrote in message news:mailman.584.1195147237.7651.gencmp@rootsweb.com... > Tony said: > > >I know that Bob, which is why I said "dumbed-down". :-) > > > >I was just trying to make a case for getting a new file format on as many > >desktops as possible. It would be some time before anything really took > >advantage of its full potential, but it's "numbers" that count > > I think that the last 10+ years proves what drives the genealogy > software market - and it isn't a overriding interest to transfer data > between researchers while maintaining data integrity. > > So if a reader application was capable of displaying those > "dumbed-down GEDCOM files" in the context of a more comprehensive > data model, then wouldn't that just discourage software developer's > from producing anything else? Going out of your way to accommodate > weakness doesn't hasten its demise. > > >then it wouldn't be long before that new format was all-pervasive, and not > >long after that before other products would support it natively. > > I don't think so but go for it! I'd even pay for a copy. > > Bob Velke > Wholly Genes, Inc. > > > -- > No virus found in this outgoing message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.15.32/1131 - Release Date: 11/14/2007 4:54 PM > >

I know that Bob, which is why I said "dumbed-down". :-) I was just trying to make a case for getting a new file format on as many desktops as possible. It would be some time before anything really took advantage of its full potential, but it's "numbers" that count Tony Proctor "Bob Velke" <bvelke@whollygenes.com> wrote in message news:mailman.583.1195140985.7651.gencmp@rootsweb.com... > Tony said: > > >I can't imagine why there was no participation from the software vendors > > Can't you <g>? > > >I know there are such viewers available now but what if there > >was a free one that used the GDM model, and supported all the > >bells-and-whistles associated with its enhanced specification. It may sound > >a brain-dead idea but if there were non-distributable tools to convert all > >those dumbed-down GEDCOM files to the format accepted by this new viewer... > > As I said, by the time the data has been converted to GEDCOM, the > damage has been done. The data that has been lost/corrupted can't be > recovered/repaired by merely looking at the GEDCOM file. It isn't there. > > Bob Velke > Wholly Genes, Inc. > > > -- > No virus found in this outgoing message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.15.32/1131 - Release Date: 11/14/2007 4:54 PM > >

It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime days, and of course my digital camera chose to malfunction. The flash worked when it felt like it and not otherwise. So, I have several photos of a cake with burning candles, except the flash decided there was enough light that it didn't have to exert itself. Anyone with any suggestions what I need to adjust to be able to see the cake rather than the bonfires? Thanks! Cheryl

Tony Proctor wrote: [snip] > The older ANSI C and ANSI SQL specs are abomininations resulting from a > design-by-committee approach. You can understand the approach taken with > Java whereby it was designed and evolved as a proprietary standard before > being considered for an international standard. Remind me again please -- what makes _their_ design-by-committee results worse than what _your_ project committee could come up with? If standards in the genealogical software community need to be agreed-upon rather than forced-upon, you're going to get designed-by-committee standards. If it's bad when I (or Bob V) do it, then it's bad when you do it. Ancient adage roughly translated as sauce for the gander. Cheryl

David Harper wrote: > >> The older ANSI C and ANSI SQL specs are abomininations resulting from a >> design-by-committee approach. > Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C Programming Language" remains a > masterpiece of brevity and clarity in not only defining a programming > language, but providing a tutorial for aspiring programmers. I doubt > that any of the "modern" languages could be summarised in so few pages. > > But then, Dennis Ritchie didn't have to get the approval of a committee, > because he created the C programming language. The original ANSI C is not an abomination. It is just fine, no disasters. It does lack one important thing that should have been added: passing of multi-dimension arrays with filled-in dimensions. This could easily have been done by kludge, with no logical inconsistency, but there was a war between the "just do it " people and the "but we HAVE to use a dope vector" people. Doug McDonald

That's just so sad Bob. It must be very frustrating. I can't imagine why there was no participation from the software vendors I was aware of Gentech, although I didn't know it addressed many of the issues/requirements raised in these discussions, or was supported by so many bodies - I tried to read the spec a few months ago but my whole machine locked up in a very suspect manner (I didn't try again after that) What about a back-door approach... One of the biggest areas of software requirement is arguably for a cheap family tree (& history) viewer. The sort of simplified product that can be distributed freely on CDs/DVDs to members of one's family together with a file containing the data from all your hard research work. I know there are such viewers available now but what if there was a free one that used the GDM model, and supported all the bells-and-whistles associated with its enhanced specification. It may sound a brain-dead idea but if there were non-distributable tools to convert all those dumbed-down GEDCOM files to the format accepted by this new viewer then it wouldn't be long before that new format was all-pervasive, and not long after that before other products would support it natively. I expect to be shot down in flames here but it's happened before, in other industries, where market acceptance was dictated purely by how pervasive something was, rather than cost, or technical merits, etc. In fact this same argument already applies to the existing incumbent format: GEDCOM. Tony Proctor "Bob Velke" <bvelke@whollygenes.com> wrote in message news:mailman.579.1195131744.7651.gencmp@rootsweb.com... > Tony Proctor said: > > >Although there are several genealogical bodies around, I'm not aware of any > >that have taken this initiative [to design a data model], or feel > >any need to. > > The "Genealogical Data Model" (GDM) was started by GENTECH, now a > division of the National Genealogical Society, in _1996_ > (http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/ngsgentech/projects/Gdm/Gdm.cfm). The > project was sponsored by the National Genealogical Society (NGS), > Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS), New England Historic > Genealogical Societies (NEHGS), American Society of Genealogists > (ASG), Association of Professional Genealogists (APG), and the Board > for Certification of Genealogists (BCG). I submit that you'll find > nothing closer to an authoritative body within the genealogical community. > > >If they did then would the people/companies with software interests > >respect their authority anyway? > > The design committee included professional genealogists, software > developers, and data modelers. I was a member of that committee as > was a representative of the LDS Church. > > Several of other developers of the most popular genealogy software > programs were invited to participate. None accepted. > > They were invited to attend planning meetings. None accepted. > > Upon release of the first draft of the GDM in 1998, their peer review > was solicited. To my knowledge, none was provided by them. > > Upon release of v1.1 in 2000, their peer review was solicited again > -- and again, none was provided. > > The "GDM" remains by far the most comprehensive and authoritative > effort that has every been made to model genealogical data -- and I'd > wager that few of the major genealogy software vendors have ever > _looked_ at it. As I said before, I believe that the reason is that > they perceive it to be against their interest to do so. Ten years of > so-called "market forces" seems to have validated their strategy to > ignore the problem. > > Bob Velke > Wholly Genes, Inc. > > > -- > No virus found in this outgoing message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.15.32/1131 - Release Date: 11/14/2007 4:54 PM > >

Peter said: >Going by web searching, there seems to have been no movement on the >Gentech data model since 2001. There also seems to be an annual flurry >of mentions in relation to the NGS conference, but no further developments. No further developments by whom? We're all volunteers. Some of us spent five years developing the GDM which was sponsored by all of the major genealogy societies in the U.S. and it was promptly ignored by the developers of the most popular software. The ground swell of market forces by researchers who claimed to be passionate about the subject also never materialized. Who do you think has the incentive to do more? In fact, there are a number of developers who are using the GDM (or some derivative of it) to develop software programs, XML transfer specs, and other projects. You can find some of them on the GenealogyXML mailing list but I wouldn't ever expect to hear about them in the mainstream. Yes, about once a year there is a flurry of people who are aghast that "nobody is doing anything" to solve their problems. Bob Velke Wholly Genes, Inc. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.15.32/1131 - Release Date: 11/14/2007 4:54 PM

On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 05:48:59 -0800 (PST), huangsinwhu@gmail.com <huangsinwhu@gmail.com> wrote: > When you bought your Fuji digital camera, you knew you were buying a > product with a name you could trust. Your shill spamming, nym-shifting, and poor writing style, for a blog that is astonishingly off-topic for his group - you're doing it wrong on about 8 leves of fail. Go away and stay there. You won't attract traffic to a site by showing the world you can't read, write, and that you assume we're too dumb to recognize your tactics.

On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:59:50 -0800 (PST), sggfku9mdy1nbsuudd6gk@gmail.com <sggfku9mdy1nbsuudd6gk@gmail.com> wrote: > You can create your own family trees and timeslines. I created a baby > book complete with a timeline. The sign up is free as well! I found it > at this site: Found it, did you? Why then does this sound like the shill tactic we've seen on Usenet for decades?

Everett said: > > Several of other developers of the most popular genealogy software > > programs were invited to participate. None accepted. > >There are anti-trust ramifications to participating in standarization >activities unless the activities are done under the auspices o a >recognized standards organization and follow proper procedures. >Just try to get IBM to participate in an ad hoc meeting. None of those vendors voiced any such objection or proposed an alternative strategy or overseeing body for developing the specification. If they responded at all, they simply said that they weren't interested. Keep in mind that genealogy software companies are typically very small and even the biggest ones have one principal developer. In most cases, that developer is also the public face of the company at national conferences. We're not talking IBM here. > > They were invited to attend planning meetings. None accepted. > >Who was underwriting the costs of attending these meetings? It >gets expensive and time-consumng attending a lot of meetings at >various sites. We met at the national society conferences (NGS and FGS) where those developers were always already present - and by email. >What was done to publicize these releases and solicit comments? Feedback from the public was solicited through Dick Eastman's newsletter, the NGS newsletter, and others. Participation and feedback from the vendors in question was solicited by every conceivable method, including face-to-face. In some cases, the question was, "Would you go across the street from the exhibit hall for a meeting tomorrow at 4pm and tell us what you think?" and the answer was "No, thanks." Whatever their excuses for not participating in the committee, I think it is safe to say that they (and newer developers that have come up since then) could have found time within the last 10 years to offer some feedback about the published document if they had the slightest interest in the subject matter. Bob Velke Wholly Genes, Inc. -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.503 / Virus Database: 269.15.32/1131 - Release Date: 11/14/2007 4:54 PM

On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:09:24 +0000, Peter J Seymour <moz@pjsey.demon.co.uk> wrote: >Dennis wrote: >> On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 12:20:40 -0500, Bob Velke <bvelke@whollygenes.com> >> wrote: >> >> >>>Dennis said: >>> >>> >>>>Is there more documentation available on this effort? Perhaps a mission >>>>statement? Goals? Objectives? A history/summary of what went on? >>> >>>Do you mean other than the first 10 pages of the document? >> >> >> Is the first 10 pages of... >> >> https://www.ngsgenealogy.org/ftp/pub/GENTECH_Data_Model/Description_GENTECH_Data_Model_1.1.doc >> >> ... all that there is on the web? I would be interested in reading more >> on the effort. >> >Going by web searching, there seems to have been no movement on the >Gentech data model since 2001. There also seems to be an annual flurry >of mentions in relation to the NGS conference, but no further developments. I wasn't referring to what has gone on since 2001 (although now that you mention it...). But, for example, http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/ngsgentech/projects/Gdm/Lex98081.cfm says "in response to a call by genealogical software developers, GENTECH asked its Technology Committee to address the need for an effective genealogical lexicon they could use in developing software". Who specifically were the developers who called for this? I was hoping to find a little more info... -- Dennis