How to say this in a nice way...

[Uncle Buddy]

"Because of the subject GEDCOM's design, any attempt to deal with the subject in a simple, straightforward, consistent and consistently desirable way is continually subverted by the subject itself. Unsensible ways of doing something are not to be fixed, but replaced. The reason that incremental changes are being advanced is that it keeps us from having to admit that the real fix that's needed is basically not possible. It would be nonsensical to keep using an unfixable tool as a model for patched-up partial-solutions which just encourage us to avoid finding a real solution."

Well that wasn't very nice.

My last thread was called "GEDCOM Revealed" because I was sure I'd finally hit on the simple solution to everything. But because of GEDCOM's inconsistencies, which might stem from the fact that it was designed as a text file in 1984 to avoid making programmers of yore do actual programming, any solution that deals simply with some certain one of GEDCOM's habits becomes cumbersome when trying to use it to deal with some other of GEDCOM's habits.

This suggests that GEDCOM is not even compatible with itself. This is understandable (there, I said something nice) since Python (for example) did not exist when GEDCOM was born, when programming had not yet heard of doing things the easy way. To be a programmer you had to be a programmer. Nowadays with stable, well-established, reliable tools like Python and SQLite readily available for free, and relatively easy to learn, a spoiled brat like me who has no computer science background can come along and build the core of a real genealogy program design in only a few years of full-time tinkering.

So it looks like when I finally dared to face up to GEDCOM, my response was to tell GEDCOM to go jump off a cliff. Because I'm spoiled by how easy it is to use Python and SQLite. I guess I don't know how to think hard enough to come up with a simple way to read GEDCOM into a realistically complex, custom-made database that is purposely not based on how GEDCOM thinks. (On second thought, I do have the ability, but I don't have the time. GEDCOM is not the backbone of Treebard, nor its reason to exist, and Treebard needs me.)

But GEDCOM isn't capable of doing away with itself. That stroke of genius would be our responsibility, if we had the good sense to do it. It is us who will be blamed by genealogists of the future if we let this charade go on one day longer than it has to.

But the existence of a committee of experts implies that the problem is being handled; GEDCOM's replacement is on the way, so you and I have nothing to do but wait.

How's that working for you?

[Uncle Buddy]

I'll be taking a break from trying to interface with GEDCOM. I see double when I spend too much time at the computer, and GEDCOM is extra obsessive for me. I need to pull away and spend some time in the garden, which is good for my eyes.

One of my many theories about GEDCOM is that it has an unnatural allure due to the fact that it's a text file. Since it's easy to humanly read, it's only human to assume that it will be easy to translate it from its designed structure to some other design structure. The repeated failures to find an easy way to do this are partly my fault for being a novice coder and partly GEDCOM's fault for being unsympathetic to the patterns of the world. By which I mean, the structure of GEDCOM doesn't reflect the structure of genealogy data well enough to make it a viable data transfer tool for the future of genealogy.

I don't mind that it's not easy, but I've gotten too involved with this problem under the circumstances. And here are the circumstances.

My genieware project Treebard GPS is, in spite of all my hopes, dreams, fantasies and delusions about it, meant to be the right program for me. I don't import and export GEDCOM at all. I have in the past, but once I did, I found I had no use for the data, since I don't copy from other people's trees. A big reason for creating Treebard is so that I will never have to export my data, and I no longer feel the urge to upload my trees to the web. And if I need to import GEDCOM just so I could have a look at someone's tree or get ideas for further research, then I could import their .ged to the programs I own, which are Genbox and Family Historian.

Treebard is a free, portable, public domain genieware, unfinished now and probably always, but since it's public domain, anyone can continue/alter/steal my work and I have nothing to say about it. I hope that if someone forks it and proceeds to ruin it, they rename their fork of it first. They probably will.

In my little corner of genealogy, a tree with more than a few thousand people in it is a sign that I need to read a good book, learn a new song on the guitar, spend more time with my family, walk one or more of my many dogs, or get out to the garden more often. Or paint the dang kitchen. Yuck.

I enjoy researching the families of old-time inventors, most of whom are relatively obscure individuals who barely found the time to reproduce. I also study my own ancestors from time to time. So I'm not a typical genealogist, trying to claw my way back to Adam & Eve as quickly as possible. I'd rather tell a detailed story about a few people than accumulate a bunch of names, places, dates and no story to tell. Most folks seem content to use one of the existing database programs, but I stopped entering data years ago till I could come up with a custom GUI and database to suit my interests. One of my interests is ease of GUI use and lack of tedious, repetitive clicking. My mouse hand hurts even worse than my eyes. In terms of the database, my main interest is that the storage facility for the primary elements of genealogy should be more accurate and relevantly detailed than any of the apps I've tried.

I might also be taking a break from working on Treebard in general, but I don't know. It's nearly finished, I keep telling myself, and then I see that self-expanding do-list and start thinking about the weeds outside that need pulling. I would like to finish the main part of it before I take a break. We'll see about that. Right now, this consists of finishing the family table on the current person tab and the sources/citations/assertions dialog which is a key feature of my revolutionary plan, a feature that hasn't been started except for occasional tweaks to the underlying data structure to someday accomodate it.

I would like to spend more time writing up more detailed critiques of specific genieware based on how they each fail to live up to the standards I've set for Treebard GPS. So far my reviews have been so negative that I changed the names of the products to prevent my becoming the subject of any misplaced animosity.

GEDCOM is really a side issue for me, and it's been taking all my time to even put a small dent in it. Its worst design features (citations, relationships and events) represent what should be its most important contributions to the data transfer it purports to do. But most of all, I'd like to be able to still use my eyes five years from now, and if I don't act like I care about my eyesight, then I won't have any of that left pretty soon.

In case anyone hasn't noticed, a Treebard Genealogy Software channel is growing on www.Rumble.com.

See you later. Maybe much later, maybe tomorrow.