The Family Tree
By Terence L. Day
Terence L. Day, genealogist and journalist, is on the Washington State University faculty. He welcomes e-mail at genealogy@moscow.com, or regular mail in care of the Tri-City Herald City newsroom, P.O. Box 2608, Tri-Cities, WA 99302-2608.
Personal Ancestral File upgrade helps genealogists
This story was published May 11, 1997
A long-awaited major upgrade of the DOS version of Personal Ancestral File, the popular program for computerizing genealogy, was unveiled recently at the 1997 National Genealogy Society Conference at Valley Forge, Pa.
Pull up your socks and duct tape 'em to your shins, or this new version of PAF is going to blow them off.
PAF 3.0 as a major upgrade. Although still a DOS program, it will run on Windows 95, as well.
The upgrade should be available from the Distribution Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints within a week or so.
I wish I could say I have tested the new program, but I haven't. Product Manager Raymond Madsen filled me in as he was packing his bags to fly to the Pennsylvania meeting, and it sounds as if PAF 3.0 is the upgrade I've long prayed for.
PAF is my favorite genealogy software and I had begun to worry it might die of neglect as a buffalo herd of genealogy software programs roam the digital world of personal computing.
Here are a few highlights.
PAF 3.0 allows multiple sets of parents and linkages. This will enable genealogists to record biological lines, adoptive lines, religious sealing lines, challenged lines on which genealogists differ in their interpretations of parentage and even disproved lines.
PAF 3.0 blows far past the old 16-character limitation in fields. In PAF 3.0, you'll be able to enter up to 120 characters. That's no mean trick in a system that's only 80 characters wide. The beauty is that you'll now be able to enter all your Hawaiian relatives' names without abbreviating, as well as lengthy place names.
Fields now will accept diacritics. Researchers into German, Spanish and several other languages will especially appreciate this modification.
Let me illustrate the problem as best I can in a newspaper that -like earlier versions of PAF -doesn't provide for diacritics.
My great aunt Maud married Martin Zindel. Zindel is one Anglican spelling of the name. Zuendel is another. In German, the name would be spelled Zundel with an umlaut (two little dots) over the u. An example in Spanish would be the use of a tilde (a squiggly line) over the first n in manana.
Genealogists working in languages that use diacritics will be thrilled out of their socks.
Event-specific source citations now have structured sourcing, which will convert to conform with the Chicago Manual of Style. The ditto function has been improved as well.
The 65,000-record DOS barrier has been broken. Madsen says PAF 3.0 has a theoretical limit of 1 million records.
PAF 3.0 will run in Windows 95, creating its own icon for initializing the program, or in DOS. If you run it in Windows 95, it's still operating in DOS, but you will no longer have to exit Windows to the DOS prompt to run it. Although it will run on a 286 computer, Madsen recommends at least a 386. Best performance will be with a 486 or Pentium.
Those of us who have had tendons eaten by mouse-happy programmers will appreciate PAF 3.0's command-driven features. By typing two or three keys, we will be able to move from area to area within the program without using the mouse. Those who wish to navigate by mouse will still be able to do so.
While the imbedded word processor for notes doesn't exactly rival Word Perfect or Microsoft Word, Madsen predicts you'll be much happier with it than the one in earlier versions of PAF.
Family Group forms now will print more children per page, eliminating the need for a second sheet for some.
Data entry has been improved and users will be able to edit from almost anywhere. Multi-layered menus have been greatly reduced.
Date fields now will accept non-standard dates. Earlier versions required a date, such as 1750, or some such. PAF 3.0 will accept, "When the buffalo roamed the village," as a date. I presume those into American Indian genealogy will be glad for this, as well as those researching some other cultures.
A final piece of good news. The price tag for this new program is $15 and it includes a new manual.
The previous version of PAF cost $35 from the LDS Church. Private vendors may have charged more.
And now for the bad news.
All of this has come at a price, which is an entirely new database. Consequently, PAF 3.0 won't be interactive with current versions of Ancestral Quest, a Windows application.
I've long recommended that those who can afford both applications do so and use PAF for data entry and some other functions, and Ancestral Quest to print forms and for some other functions that in my opinion it does better than PAF.
Matt DeWitt, Incline's software support manager for Ancestral Quest, told me an upgrade is in the works to make Ancestral Quest compatible with PAF 3.0.
He doesn't know how long it will take, but hopes it will be on the market by winter.
Even so, unveiling of PAF 3.0 at Valley Forge is a great day for PAF users, new and old.