In message of 13 Dec, Bob Velke <bvelke@whollygenes.com> wrote: <snip> > More modern programs are slowing coming around to the realization > that genealogy is not about recording facts. It is about recording > and evaluating _evidence_. And evidence doesn't play by such neat > and tidy rules. At least this was well understood by researchers of over a hundred years ago. I have recently been reading some articles where some researchers, each in their own study, were attempting to make sense of the slender evidence that has survived in the seven or more hundred years since the relevant people lived. Their conclusions were inevitably hesitant and with reservations. They usually ended their articles with a family tree of sorts, summarising their reasonings. But instead of solid lines to denote relationships, they had dotted ones to indicate those for which the evidence was not categoric. Perhaps one could have dots of different densities to denote different strengths of argument? Is this a direction that modern programs could usefully move to? -- Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          tim@powys.org              For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/