Renee Zamora has written an article, FamilySearch’s New Feature Family Tree, about the Church’s replacement for TempleReady. (It does much more than that, of course.) It’s good to know about this because some features in Beyond will be pointless in the context of the new system (LDS-specific features, that is).

I’ve been thinking about online systems (like Family Tree, phpGedView, etc.) and wondering if there’s any point to writing desktop-based apps for genealogy anymore. The benefits of online are obvious for sharing and being able to access your information from any computer. As far as disadvantages go, the only real clincher I can think of is that you won’t always have Internet access when researching (especially out in the field).

I’m still going ahead with Beyond, regardless. There’ll be some research-oriented features which I doubt I’ll see on any online genealogy apps anytime soon, and I personally prefer doing my genealogy on a desktop app (if you’re online and the connection goes out, you can’t work anymore, and you may have lost some data).

But I’m not going to let my stubbornness get in the way of progress. :) I’ll be paying attention to where things are going in the genealogy/technology world and see how Beyond can best fit the needs that exist now and the needs that will exist in this new world.

Technorati Tags: Family Tree, FamilySearch, genealogy, phpGedView, LDS

Sorry for the long delay — I’d been planning to move the blog over to my web server (from Blogspot) and kept procrastinating it, but it’s finally done and there will be regular updates from here on out. The book that I’ve been working on has to go to press by mid-February, and once it’s done I’ll be focusing all my extracurricular energy on Beyond. Hopefully I’ll have some design sketches and notes up before then, though, if I can figure out how to manage my time better. :) Anyway, I’ve received the specs for the file formats for PAF 5.x, 4.0, and the old Family Records 2.3.1 (the last version of PAF for Mac), so we’re all set on that front. I’ll have to see if I can get file format specs for Legacy and Reunion and RootsMagic and other genealogy apps out there.

Last month I thought I would keep the design process under wraps, so as not to let the cat out of the bag prematurely, but after much more thought I’ve decided that it’s best to open it up — after all, my goal is to make genealogy software better on the Mac, and even if someone else “steals” some of my ideas, that ends up helping achieve that goal. :) So, here’s my current plan of attack, and of course it’s subject to change:

1. Sort through all the design notes I’ve been collecting these past two months and prioritize them.

2. Decide on the main goals for Beyond and the tasks users will need to accomplish and prioritize them.

3. Sketch out the UI and run some paper usability tests.

4. Finalize the UI (as much as possible) and the main user interactions.

5. Research the various XML specs for storing genealogical data.

6. Design the file format.

7. Figure out how to store the data internally.

8. Write a converter for PAF 5.x to the Beyond file format.

9. Come up with a list of the various modules to write (this will depend in large measure on the results of #1 and #2).

10. Set more goals.

Technorati Tags: genealogy, Mac, software development

Lately I’ve subconsciously felt unable to code for Mac, mostly because my previous attempts to learn Xcode and Cocoa have failed spectacularly. So today I decided to really go at it and see if I could make some progress. And I did! Not much, but it was there. :) It didn’t take too long before I realized that iDiary is still too complicated for me to start with, so I decided to write a program that reads a GEDCOM file and displays statistics on it (how many individuals, marriages, etc.). After an hour or so, I’ve figured out how to open a file and get the file size in bytes, but that’s about it. My head hurts and I’m going to call it a night. (I’ve had a headache all evening — it’s not from Cocoa. :)) Xcode and Cocoa really are difficult, but thousands of developers have learned it all and I can too. I don’t care how hard it is; I’m doing this. And just imagine how good I’ll feel when I finally do conquer it. Mmm… :)

Today I also started looking at the GEDCOM file format. (Right now I’ve just got a sample file that I downloaded from FamilySearch, but later I’ll get the actual spec.) It doesn’t seem too complicated. Indenting my sample file made the hierarchy much easier to conceptualize, by the way. Anyway, this week (hopefully tomorrow) I’ll get my program to read the GEDCOM file into an intelligible internal data format, give statistics, and then write it out as an XML file. I figure it’s better to learn all this “internal” stuff first and then focus on figuring out the GUI stuff (bindings, outlets, actions, etc.).