GEDitCOM II 1.4 Build 1

GEDitCOM II, a Mac OS X genealogy program (requires OS X 10.4) has just received a massive upgrade. It’s now at version 1.4, Build 1 (Version 1.3 came out in January of this year) and there are quite a few major changes and additions that were made. I’m looking forward to checking it out.

It now allows for thumbnail creation for multimedia objects. It also has a new format that allows you to display your genealogy data with a look similar to Wikipedia. There are a lot of other changes and improvments, but a major one is that GEDitCOM II is now a free data reader for GEDCOM files.

Release Notes/Changes:
* GEDitCOM II is now free to use as a GEDCOM file reader. Thus, you can send your data to a relative with a Mac and then can download and use GEDitCOM II to view the genealogy data. * * You still need a registered copy to save changes or export data.
* GEDitCOM II will now create thumbnails for all multimedia objects with images. This change allows you to work much faster with files having many multimedia objects, particularly if the multimedia files contain large images. It also adds an option for the file to travel with the thumbnails and thus be able to display at least a small image even if the original multimedia files are not available.
* For non-image multimedia objects, GEDitCOM II will try to display the icon for the multimedia file type. It should work for most standard types of files.
* You can control click any editing field to have new options such as starting a Google search on that text.
* You can control click any date field to do date calculations such as converting calendars, finding day of the week, or finding age of individual on that day.
* The Find/Replace panel now works in any editing field.

Many changes to the GENerel formatting language have made new features in the user interface formats possible:
* The objectImage cell property now looks for thumbnails and uses that instead of reading the entire file.
* To have a cell look for the full scale image, a new objectFull cell property can be used in place of objectImage.
* A new #thumbnailSize$ read-only variable gives the current size being used for thumbnail images.
* The CreateLinkButton will create links at any location in the data where previously it could only create a link at the root level of the current window.
* Similarly, the optionalTag command can be used to allow creation of tags subordinate to other data, while previously it could only create tags at the root level of the current window.
* A new lineheight property for static or expression fields can set the spacing between lines in the field.
* Added #displayHeight$ read-only variable to find the height of the current window.
* The conditional if #string is htmldiv will test if the string is a element and therefore contains html text.
* Added string functions chars() to extract substrings from a string, word() to extract any word in a string, offset() to locate a substring within a string, and replace() to replace substring within a string.
* Fixed error in the #bottomMargin$ read-only variable.
* Fixed error that did not correctly set an array variable with a variable array index (e.g., #var[#i]=3 would not work before,but does now).

– User-Interface Format Changes:
* A entirely new “Wiki Genealogy” format has been written.
* All formats revised (as needed) to support the new thumbnails feature.
* Formats with multimedia links now separate images from web site links to give a better display.
* Added option to enter web site address for a repository.
* Some email fields are now followed by a button to send an email message (by starting your mail application with the entered address).
* Added separate scale and zoom settings to multimedia objects to make the display more clear.
* When printing records in a given format, the print margins now account for extra margins in that format, thereby giving better print results.

– GEDitCOM Editor changes:
* When a new template is opened, a record editing template is selected and ready for editing. It will look for the “INDI Record Editing” first. If that is not found, the first record editing template found will opened instead.
* The help information has been updated for the new GENerel language features listed above.

– Bug fixes:
* Fixed bug when merging source, note, or multimedia object records in a file that had recently been saved. The records merged OK, but the links to those records could have been reverted to previous record when later saving the file.
* Fixed issue where you could accidentally paste multiple lines of text into a field meant to only have a single line of text (Leopard and earlier).
* Fixed bug finding relationships in Leopard or earlier.
* Fixed problem that could cause recent editing change to be ignored
* Fixed problem on file open if album not found
* Fixed labeling error in relationship trees
* Fixed operation of tabs in child windows opened from a main record window
* Relationship search avoids duplicate families and thus gives more accurate results.

It can be downloaded here (GEDitCOM.com and it requires Mac OS X 10.4.

It is a free upgrade for existing owners of GEDitCOM II.