On 11/05/2011 16:52, Richard Smith wrote: > I've spent years looking for decent genealogy software that suits my > needs, and I'm almost at the stage of giving up and writing my own. Just FYI, I've had similar problems, limitations and frustrations with existing genealogy software. Right now, I'm using a combination of FTM 2011, with the supporting data stored in Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) directories that are replicated across all my computers. It's just about adequate, but it's a long way from what I'd like. (Have you tried installing FTM using WINE under Linux, by the way? It might solve some of your problems.) There's good news ahead. A colleague and I are working on a completely new approach that I believe will answer most of your requirements in the first version, and probably all of them by the second or third. It will work seamlessly across PC, Mac and Linux (with no porting requirements, and no data incompatibilities between). It will include backup & publishing "to the cloud", with public visibility levels that you set. There are plans to have smartphone (Android and iOS) versions that store the text information but don't hold binary data locally, and data will be exportable in a number of standardised formats. (GEDCOM 5.5 and GEDCOM 5.5 XML at a bare minimum.) I'm not going to go into details quite yet. Apart from anything else, we're using some new-tech tricks that haven't been applied to genealogy before, using data representations that allow much looser searches, so there's a LOT that's commercially confidential. Bear with us - it's not going to happen tomorrow. We need to define a business model to make it worth our while too! I think it might make a lot of difference to genealogists when it's done. John -- Maintainer of the s.g.b FAQs, at http://www.genealogy-britain.org.uk/ Tracing London names LEE, BEDFORD, CLARK, SUTTON, KEEN, SPRING, HARTLEY, WRIGHT, PETHERBRIDGE (Devonian/Cornish), MOODY (Cornish/Devonian), STEPHENS (Cornish) ** LOOK OUT, SPAM BLOCK AHEAD! ** To email me, please remove ".invalid" from the email address

On May 16, 4:58 pm, John Prentice <[email protected]> wrote: > A colleague and I are working on a completely new approach that I > believe will answer most of your requirements in the first version, and > probably all of them by the second or third. It will work seamlessly > across PC, Mac and Linux (with no porting requirements, and no data > incompatibilities between). It will include backup & publishing "to the > cloud", with public visibility levels that you set. There are plans to > have smartphone (Android and iOS) versions that store the text > information but don't hold binary data locally, and data will be > exportable in a number of standardised formats. (GEDCOM 5.5 and GEDCOM > 5.5 XML at a bare minimum.) That sounds like excellent news, and I look forward to hearing more about it in due course. Have you yet chosen a product name so that I know what to keep an eye out for? Richard

On 17/05/2011 10:19, Richard Smith wrote: > That sounds like excellent news, and I look forward to hearing more > about it in due course. Have you yet chosen a product name so that I > know what to keep an eye out for? Yes, but it's hush-hush for now! Rest assured we'll be announcing it here first when we launch (or need alpha/beta testers). John -- Maintainer of the s.g.b FAQs, at http://www.genealogy-britain.org.uk/ Tracing London names LEE, BEDFORD, CLARK, SUTTON, KEEN, SPRING, HARTLEY, WRIGHT, PETHERBRIDGE (Devonian/Cornish), MOODY (Cornish/Devonian), STEPHENS (Cornish) ** LOOK OUT, SPAM BLOCK AHEAD! ** To email me, please remove ".invalid" from the email address