On Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:37:32 GMT, Eagle@bellsouth.net (J. Hugh Sullivan) wrote: >On Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:39:23 +0000, Tim Powys-Lybbe <tim@powys.org> >wrote: > >>On 27 Feb at 11:50, Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz >><spamtrap@library.lspace.org.invalid> wrote: >> >>> I've seen a lot of references to really old versions of GEDCOM. GEDCOM >>> 5.5.1 seems to satisfy my immediate needs[1], but has been in draft >>> status for a very long time. GEDCOM 6 is still a work in progress and >>> I'm not sure where GEDCOM-X is. What is the prognosis for the major >>> players to support at least GEDCOM 5.5.1 in UTF-8? >>> >>> [1] E.g., storing both a secular and a religous name, storing a >>> romanized transliteration of a name in a non-roman script, >>> storing a date in two different calendars. >> >>My opinion is a zilch prognosis. The problem with GEDCOM is that it >>makes it relatively easy to transfer a lot of the data between genealogy >>programs. But for the programmer this is not Good News; how much better >>to lock the user into their program by making GEDCOM transfers more >>difficult? >> >>Yo might get more mileage by asking your current program owners when >>_They_ are going to provide the above features. >> >>-- >>Tim Powys-Lybbe tim@powys.org >> for a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/ > >Seems to me the problem has recently been discussed here. Users demand >unique abilities in programs and developers try to satisfy. Even for >an accomplished programmer methinks it would be very difficult to >accomodate every variation even with options. > >Seems like a standardized version of GEDCOM with a program to adapt it >to specific needs would be more of an answer. > >But I'm a user, not an enabler. > >Hugh A perfect description of GEDCOM Explorer (GEDX) developed by the late Gary Bonham. It's possible some programmer could take what Gary started with and update it (it is at least 10 years old now). Gary's program included a base conversion routine to convert between several different "flavors" of GEDCOMs. It included user written macros to further tweak the conversion process. The macros were not trivial to write, but I'm not a programmer and was able to make a few that worked.