4 thoughts on “Personal Ancestry Writer II (PAWriter II) – Screenshots”

  1. I just downloaded this along with Reunion and I must say your app I like better. However, I wonder if you can make it a bit easier to navigate the pedigree charts. I notice that “F” and “M” will take you to Father and Mother, but it would be much eaier to use the arrow keys, like you can in the old DOS PAF programme.

    I also miss being able to use arrow keys to navigate in family records.

    Also, can you make a nice version for bigger screen resolution? I’m on 1024 x 786 ans PAW turnos out to be pretty small. I would really love to have the old layout from PAF too. Rather than me and my wife at the bottom of the screen, a more familiar husband and wife on the left with the mother and father to the right and grandparents a bit farther.

    I downlowded, because I just got a Mac and really want a good programme for geneaoloy. After looking a quite a lot of them, yours is the best. But it is still not quite like my old, friendly PAF.

    Thanks for accepting comments. Good work, overall!

    One more question, why does my child only get her first initial when in the pedigree chart?

    Dave

  2. Hi Dave,

    I’m sorry to say that revising the layouts as you suggested won’t be possible, I just won’t have the time to embark on a major change like that. But I’ll think about using the arrow keys in the pedigree window.

    The names in the pedigree window are abbreviated as necessary to fit in the buttons. This occurs as required in other windows.

    The advantage with the current window size is that it allows one to simultaneously view a portion of a census image (or other source document) from Ancestry.com, HeritageQuest or elsewhere high on the screen and PAWriter low on the screen, so the source info can be entered into notes as it is read. I’m using as 1280 x 1024 display which really makes that process easy.

    Best regards,
    Howard

  3. Thanks Howard!

    Now one more question. How do I merge people sucessfully? My BIG BIG problem…I cannot figure out how to link two families that are in one file. Person A is in the file. Person B is in the file. Person A is the duaghter of person B, but I cannot seem to find “add another child to this family, I KNOW THE RIN.” I can only seem to add NEW people who are not in the file. I’m sure I’m missing something really simple.

    By the way, where is the help section?

    As far as screen resolution, I understand that, but it would still be nice for the pedigree chart to be bigger (since you can’t add any information into it anyway from anything else on the screen). I’m a visual person, which is why I use Macs in the first place, and I’d really appreciate being able to see more of the pedigree at one time.

    Think about using the arrow keys differently in the main window, too, please. Why does hitting the up arrow once take me to the first person alphabet-wise in my file? It would certainly make more sense to me if when the Person was highlighted, the right arrow moved me to their partner, the up arrow to their father and the down arrow to automatically open the children and once there, up and down to scroll through them and left go go back up to the Person…that would be a good improvement, I think.

    But, I’m not yet a professional at this genealogy bunsiness, so maybe i’m suggesting things which would hinder people used to doing genealogy. In that case, ignore me!

    Thanks again,
    Dave

  4. Hi Dave,

    To add person A as a child of person B, click in the children list box, pull down the family menu and you will see menu items for adding the child. Use the one for adding by RIN or press command-R. The trick is to make sure you’ve clicked in the children list box, so that PAWriter knows you want to do something with the children.

    Assuming you know about the shift key and rolling over something in a window to view popup help, the reference guide folder should be downloaded from my website and placed in the same directory as the PAWriter application so that PAWriter can find it. Then choose PAWriter Reference from the Apple menu in OS 9 or the PAW2X menu in OS X, or press command-‘ (apostrophe, single quote). Click away to see the various writeups. I licensed UniHelp to provide this capability because it is simple and efficient.

    The best I can do about the pedigree chart is to point out that you can press the option key while rolling over the pedigree boxes to popup the complete name and vital info about that person. It works like the shift key for rollover help.

    At present, in the main window, the arrow keys move alphabetically between people , which can be very useful checking people with the same names, etc. The arrow keys are just keyboard shortcuts for clicking the buttons labeled Prev Person, Next Person, First Person, Last Person. Like Tab and shift-Tab move to the next and previous tagged person. But I should rethink the use of the arrow keys as you suggest. (I think the best I might do with the down arrow is go to the first child due to a programming problem.) But no promises as to if and when the arrow keys might change.

    Please note the new version 47 posted today. It adds “File menu > Write HTML > Web Site for Tagged People” to PAWriter. But watch out for doing it with too many tagged people. It can generate thousands of files with many, many megabytes.

    I think you make excellent observations.

    Best,
    Howard

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