By doakey - Monday, September 19, 2005
|
Also on the subject of printing out for a book, how do I print out all the photos of each person, at the moment on the report it only prints one. apart from the photos of other close relatives
|
By maru-san - Monday, September 19, 2005
|
The requested function is not included yet, but is on the wishlist of others as well.
The present pages (htm) when creating a report are not that suited to be printed, especially not if there are many educations and occupations with pictures. All pictures will build one column and all narrative text will build one column. They do not match horizontaly.
|
By Yehudad - Monday, September 19, 2005
|
Dan said in the past that GenoPro will be able in the future to generate reports as word and rtf documents, and if I am not mistaken also in pdf format.
|
By GenoProSupport - Monday, September 19, 2005
|
This is correct. The report generator has been designed to handle other output formats than HTML. I spent more time with the HTML generator because I believe it is the best general-purpose language for generating reports. Generating RTF or PDF documents is a bit more complex than generating HTML. This is a post 2.0 feature because I don't want to delay version 2.0 for this.
|
By Yehudad - Monday, September 19, 2005
|
GenoProSupport I spent more time with the HTML generator because I believe it is the best general-purpose language for generating reports.I disagree. It may be easier to generate, but I think that most of the people are not using an Internet site for publishing their work. I think that most of them are generating their reports, using other genealogy software, to either word or pdf documents. This is a better and easier way to show your work and share it with your family.
|
By imcon - Monday, September 19, 2005
|
I have to agree with Yehudad (see the topic http://support.genopro.com/Topic7539-63-1.aspx). HTML is nice tool to navigate and present the genealogy on Internet or CD - but it is not useful for the long term future, it is not useful to take with to your trips, you can not send HTML to most of your relatives. The best result of the work with GenoPro should be a good quality book about your family. We have to see GenoPro just as a tool (a good one I have to say) to study and store genealogy information. Therefore I would like to emphasize the importance of RTF (you can create PDF from RTF) document. Jan
|
By honyk - Thursday, September 22, 2005
|
I think the best book (e-book) with minimal effort could be HTML Help. Generating of HTML pages is almost mature so only additional file with bookmarks (TOC) and project file are required - and these also can be generated *). User only need free HTML Help Workshop to compile .chm files. It is format of standard Windows help so it isn't requires any viewer. Good feature is also full-text search. _______ *) I use Docbook for publishing, where many outputs can be generated from single .xml file (xhtml/HTML_Help/javahelp/manpages/xsl-fo/...) so I think there is way to autogenerate HTML Help source files in GenoPro too.
|
By imcon - Thursday, September 22, 2005
|
honyk (9/22/2005) I think the best book (e-book) with minimal effort could be HTML Help. ...How you want to send the HTML Help e-book (probably on CD) to your old grandmother that she can read it? Many old people do not have computer and 80% of other prefer to have something printed. Do you want hand over work you have done (by building your family tree) to your grandson (who will be born in 2050)? Then forget about HTML! How he will read an old, broken CD-ROM ? HTML has an advantage - it is small, easy to navigate and it is possible to put it on web.
|
By honyk - Thursday, September 22, 2005
|
Other idea: GenoPro XML -> XSLT -> output.fo (XSL-FO) -> output.pdf For these who do not understand: When data are once stored in XML, there is another way how to convert them into PDF. Using special conversion language (XSLT) you can transform XML data into new descriptive format (XSL-FO) and then using free tools you can convert .fo format into PDF. These procedures are used in cross-media publishing. From one source you can get several outputs. Core of this system are XSLT templates. In another thread you can see conversion of GenoPro .xml file into .svg chart. For many people would be interesting WordML format too I think - XML format used by new version of MS Office. It could be imported and then printed. Of course, html can be generated from .xml directly too. But in this case I agree that for many people are reports still the best way.XSLT template should be very modular to be easy customized. I regret I have not enough knowledge of XSLT syntax. I'd like to show you its possibilities on working examples. Maybe in future. Good info about this technology you can find here.
|
By rboshuis - Tuesday, September 27, 2005
|
imcon (9/22/2005)
honyk (9/22/2005) I think the best book (e-book) with minimal effort could be HTML Help. ...How you want to send the HTML Help e-book (probably on CD) to your old grandmother that she can read it? Many old people do not have computer and 80% of other prefer to have something printed. Do you want hand over work you have done (by building your family tree) to your grandson (who will be born in 2050)? Then forget about HTML! How he will read an old, broken CD-ROM ? HTML has an advantage - it is small, easy to navigate and it is possible to put it on web. If I look at the above quote, noting is good enough but ordinary paper.... But guess what, even ordinary paper is not good enough. That old grandma, is getting problems with her eyes and requires font size 20 to read text. So you're going to print new versions every week in multiple font sizes (since your nephew really prefers the arial-10 font), as long as you're making changes to the tree. Also, the hard copy paper is wearing out, and likely after your grandson is born, the paper is unreadably, and certainly out of date. I agree that being able to print is nice, but it isn't the holy grail that everybody is looking for. I typically change my tree at least 3 times a week, with, for example 30 additional persons every week for the last 4 weeks (I now have 1600 persons in my tree). It is just unthinkable that I would be printing this for the approx. 40 family members that are looking at my website very regularly. my $ 0.02, Ronald
|
By V.L.o - Tuesday, September 27, 2005
|
There is nothong like a printed report (esp. for older people), but many persons data are irrelevant for a bigger picture. Only thing that should be included is to have an option to print out complete reports on somehow selected person(s)! What might be usefull is to have a single page for a single family (defined as marriage or two persons that were married , and all their marriages with third persons too) with references to pages that are connected to a persons included on a page... i.e. family of parents and children should have partial family tree and references to grandparents page... If some individuals is designated as "more important" he might have his individual page afterwards with apropriate reference on a "family" page There might be an option to have more then two generations on a single family page... ...was it too much or should I continue this little brainstorming...
|
By imcon - Wednesday, September 28, 2005
|
To Ronald: you are right - printout isn't "The Best" solution (how to print out let say 1000+ reports from individuals? How to navigate through?...). I think that there isn't only one and universal best solution. HTML is good for navigating, Internet sharing but when I need to go to some relatives and discuss part of my tree, when I need to leave them something, when I want to send by post part of the genealogy to the people I personally do not know, when i want to keep the work I do for future generations - in such cases printout is still the best - and the only solution I know. That's also the reason why most of the popular genealogy softwares have many kind of printable reports (usually with many options how to generate them) included. I'd like to know how other people work with the database (tree) "on the way"? Do you visit your relatives? How do you collect the informations? Maybe I just missed something. And I ask myself another question: Ronald said that his relatives regularly look regularly at his pages with the genealogy. That's nice and I wish my relatives will do the same. On the other hand - do you think they will do the same within next 30,40 or 60 years? Some of my ancestors I have in my tree are from 1650 and I want that at least part of my work will last (will be accessible) many years therefore I need to redistribute it to many places (relatives) the way that our descendants will be able to read it in 2100, 2200..... (hopefully). I do not believe that HTML is good for it. GenoPro is a good tool, it is going to be even better and it will be able to generate printable report too (I hope that at least as many reports as the other genealogy programs). The only think I want to do is to emphasize importance of the NICE printable reports.
|
By appleshaw - Wednesday, September 28, 2005
|
The ability to generate a report on an individual is still in v.1.9x. If you want a report now then you can use the .v1x file and produce a file in RTF format.
Unfortunately this will not include all of the data from v.2 eg only Birth, not baptism, date. However it shows what can be done now and indicates what will be produced eventually.
|
By IainTait - Wednesday, September 28, 2005
|
Before I discovered GenoPro, I used to use Legacy for my archives and gedcom files and then TreeDraw to arrange graphic layouts for printing from the gedcom files. I have copied a page from an earlier theoretical tree into Word so that it can be seen. It is very basic but printable.
|
By GenoProSupport - Wednesday, September 28, 2005
|
I agree reports are important, and this is why I spent significant time designing an ultra-powerful report generator supporting popular scripting languages (VBScript and JavaScript). I said that the report generator is the stake of GenoPro's future, and I believe it the case today. Look around at other genealogy titles. You won't find any other genealogy software giving as much flexibility to generate reports. Using VBScript and JavaScript, you can do almost anything you want in a report. I am more than willing to help and add new methods and functions to improve the report generator, however I have to finish GenoPro 2.0 first. I can spend years writing new report templates and improving existing reports. New reports can be easily included after GenoPro 2.0, however if I don't complete new date format or finish the sources & citations dialog, GenoPro will lack important features that I will not able to include until version 3.0. In summary, Beta13 introduced the "new report generator" as a Proof of Concept. I am aware there are still outstanding issues with the report generator, but I know the technology underneath is working.
|
By IainTait - Wednesday, September 28, 2005
|
Dan, I am 100% in agreement with you about the quality of the report generator, as you can see the tree generated by treedraw (above) was very limited and I only included it as an example of all we had a few years ago. TreeDraw was very dificult to format as everything had to be de-grouped and moved to save space and then re-grouped to avoid accidental deleting, it can however include photos. The idea of a graphical layout tree with basic details and a small photo that can be printed could be usefull and perhaps can be made in PDF or Word some day if not already? The difficulty comes with huge trees requiring hundreds of pages like mine, which is why I stopped using treedraw or trying to do printouts for the moment and concentrated on a web version of my tree. There are quite a few report generators out there, but nothing comes near GenoPro, I know as I have tried most of them without being very impressed with any of them. Once the html report generator is finished, perhaps we could turn our attention to the possibility of a graphic printable format like treedraw, but better! I was thinking of the possibility of showing more details in the genomap, such as dates and places of BMD, which could then be printed ?
|
By Yehudad - Thursday, September 29, 2005
|
iaintait The idea of a graphical layout tree with basic details and a small photo that can be printed could be usefull and perhaps can be made in PDF or Word some day if not already?TreeDraw is a graphical tool. GenoPro's Report generator has a lot to complete in this side, but as Dan said it will be much much later. However I think we all can help Dan by using the report generator the same way as Ron did and create more templates of new reports. For example there is a Descendant report. One can create the template for an individual and his descendants. This will add more templates to GenoPro without adding more work to Dan. I know that not all of us knows how to do it, but those who do know can help and have their assistance in adding report templates.
|
By IainTait - Thursday, September 29, 2005
|
Yehudad (9/29/2005) However I think we all can help Dan by using the report generator the same way as Ron did and create more templates of new reports. For example there is a Descendant report. One can create the template for an individual and his descendants. This will add more templates to GenoPro without adding more work to Dan.I know that not all of us knows how to do it, but those who do know can help and have their assistance in adding report templates.I only mentioned TreeDraw because there was discussion about the lack of possibility of print-outs. Your idea of a descendant report is a good one, but how would it be layed-out? I also realise that this suggestion of print-out possibilities is not for today, but maybe for GenoPro 3. Once GenoPro 2 is finished we can start thinking about it, unless there are talented programmers with time to spare who can take up the job for Dan as you suggested. I unfortunately am not capable of helping here.
|
By Yehudad - Thursday, September 29, 2005
|
iaintait
Your idea of a descendant report is a good one, but how would it be layed-out? Once GenoPro 2 is finished we can start thinking about it, unless there are talented programmers with time to spare who can take up the job for Dan as you suggested. I only used the descendant report as an example. I think that the report generator gives us now enough tools to do such reports. The only thing is that this takes time which I don't have What Ron did was outstanding. He took the template and improve it in a way that it wasnt like the original template. What I'm saying is that the ability is here and it can be done without the need for further development on Dan's side. The graphical side is a whole different thing...
|
By IainTait - Thursday, September 29, 2005
|
Yehudad (9/29/2005) What Ron did was outstanding. He took the template and improve it in a way that it wasnt like the original template. What I'm saying is that the ability is here and it can be done without the need for further development on Dan's side.The graphical side is a whole different thing...I also applaud Ron for his contributions which haven't ended yet, it appears, and I think we all wait with bated breath to see what comes next! I also think that the graphic aspect could be an interesting developement for the future as it seems that there are quite a few members who would like to be able to make adequate print-outs with GenoPro one day. Let us not forget that we already have an amazing piece of software thanks to Dan.  This is beginning to sound like a Dan and Ron Appreciation Society!  Very well deserved by them anyway.
|
By rboshuis - Friday, September 30, 2005
|
imcon (9/28/2005) I'd like to know how other people work with the database (tree) "on the way"? Do you visit your relatives? How do you collect the informations? Maybe I just missed something.If I visit my relatives, I typically take my laptop with me. If need be, I'll create a screenshot of the tree and zip the html report pages together and send that to the person who I want to check it or add new info. (Especially since I am using around 60 different Genomaps, one for each one of the different last names.) However, I find it easiest to directly input all the results from my visits into Genopro, since it allows me to do additional checks. Often I found out that nephews were of slightly different parents that the interviewed people said, which I can then immediately check with them. imcon (9/28/2005) And I ask myself another question: Ronald said that his relatives regularly look regularly at his pages with the genealogy. That's nice and I wish my relatives will do the same. On the other hand - do you think they will do the same within next 30,40 or 60 years? Some of my ancestors I have in my tree are from 1650 and I want that at least part of my work will last (will be accessible) many years therefore I need to redistribute it to many places (relatives) the way that our descendants will be able to read it in 2100, 2200..... (hopefully).
My ancestry tree now goes back to somewhere around 1550.. The way I save the data is by doing the following... - provide a copy of all images, html, GENCOM and genopro .GNO and .XML file on a DVD (it doesn't fit a CD anymore) and provide that once to my relatives. It will happen this year during our family reunion. Besides that, I have a password protected website which has the whole tree including low-res fotos etc on it, so people can check the tree themselves. This allows them to quickly check whether I put newly provided data properly in the tree. - Once I am happy enough with the whole thing, I'll start looking at an HTML2PDF converter (I know they exist) and will probably move everything into an PDF every now and then. However, even then, I won't have everything I have in the PDF. since that would also be an PDF file which doesn't fit a CD....(Most photos maps etc I have are around 600 KB jpegs, and I have a lot of those :-) ) rgds, Ronald
|