Personal Ancestry Writer II - Version 72

Last friday, Personal Ancestry Writer II (PAWriter)- Version 72 was released by Howard Metcalfe. PAWriter is a free Mac genealogy program that incorporates a lot of features found in the original Personal Ancestral File (PAF) for Mac OS/Classic while adding new features in (including many requested by users). Version 72 fixes a bug with the ‘Find Person’ window, as well as adjusting what could be considered possible problems, and adds an option to Ahnentafels in regards to hiding information on living people.

You can download it here (PAWriter forums)

Changes/Updates:
* The source for the crash occurring in the OS X version when double-clicking on a person in the Find Person window has been isolated and corrected. With this correction, the window will open normally every time. Note that this problem occurred in other actions using the Find Person window, e.g., in Merge by Name and Find Relationship by Name. The crash in these other cases is eliminated as well.
* Children adopted by older people will no longer appear in the list of possible problems (previously listed under women 48 years old or older and under men 72 years old or older).
* An option has been added to Ahnentafels to suppress data for people who may be living. The Reference guide has been updated to state this option.

Family Ties (Familienbande) - June 16, 2007

A new version of Family Ties/Familienbande was released a few days ago. It’s a free Mac OS X (and MacOS 8.6/9 with Carbon) genealogy application written by Stefan Mettenbrink. It is only available in German, but it can be used by non-German speaking genealogists who are willing to work out the interface. There is apparently an Intel-specific version available if you contact the author (the normal version runs fine on either PowerPC or Intel-based Macs). It can be downloaded here (familienbande-genealogie.de)

The following is a translation of the changes, using Google’s language tools. Any inaccuracies are a reflection of that and not the software developers.

Changes:
* When updating the person list, the current position is maintained
* The SOURCE buttons have a larger font, if source data is present
* Representation errors in statistics functions repaired
* If additional data was loaded, the original file name did not remain
* If “use last denomination” was selected, the new denomination did not always change.
* When removing indivduals, exceptions such as multiple marriage, etc. was not adapted
* In the plausibility check window, the exceptions are indicated
* In the plausibility check window, exceptions can be deleted
* During GEDCOM import, wrong dates were read in if the SOURCE record indicated an amendment date
* Errors in the print routine repaired
* Plausibility check can examine/evaluate dates now
* GEDCOM export computed the families incorrectly
* During GEDCOM import, when broken links are imported, it would result in an error. Fixed.
* Error with the import of GEDCOM dates which use (UTF-16) encoding is fixed
* During GEDCOM importing, words with special characters can be indicated by a flag for examination
* Errors in the list of persons repaired
* Assuming the last denomination did not always function
* Improvement of the reference pictures
* In the list of persons, persons with identical first names are sorted according to other criteria
* Backup function inserted
* Excel/CSV import improved
* Various smaller corrections

Macworld Reviews Personal Ancestry Writer II

Macworld has reviewed Personal Ancestry Writer II v69. Personal Ancestry Writer II is a free Mac genealogy program that has a lot of features previously found in the old Personal Ancestral File (PAF) for Mac OS/Classic.

The had quite a bit to say, and seemed to be impressed, giving it 4 out of 5 mice and saying:

it’s well designed, has excellent documentation and support, allows you to collect a nearly unlimited amount of information, and is capable of exporting your genealogy documents in a variety of formats. While people whose genealogical needs are more religious in nature may need to look elsewhere to find all the features they need, the everyday genealogy enthusiast will be very happy with this program.

Full Review

Personal Ancestry Writer II Version 68

A few weeks ago, Personal Ancestry Writer II (PAWriter II) version 68 (Dated: 30 March 2007) was released. It’s a free Mac genealogy application (Mac OS X and MacOS 9) being developed by Howard Metcalfe, and was designed to have many of the same features found in the original Personal Ancestry File (PAF) .

Changes/Updates:
* The More Tag menu has been reorganized.
* LDS ordinances are now included. This is done in minimal fashion. LDS baptisms, endowments, sealings to parents and sealings of spouses are included. (Confirmations are treated as baptisms.)
* The only four items of information for each ordinance included are Status, Date, Temple Code and Place if Living. They are treated as plain text strings. Anything else still has to go into the notes.
* An LDS menu has been added. When you are in the main (navigation) window or in a Person window, you can choose to show an Ordinance window to add, edit or delete a baptism, an endowment and/or a sealing to parents. When you are in the main window or in a Family window, you can choose to show an Ordinance window to add, edit or delete a sealing of spouses. When you are in the main window, you can write a text file listing the TempleReady status of tagged people. There you can also tag people who already have any ordinances or have all ordinances. (People with some but not all ordinances entered can be found by tagging people with any ordinances and then excluding people with all ordinances.) You can also delete all ordinances.
* This means that an ANSEL GEDCOM file for submission to TempleReady can be generated. The only change is any ordinances you enter and your selection of people to be included. In the Submitter window you will be able to indicate that the GEDCOM is being prepared for TempleReady, and name the temple and any family file to which the GEDCOM is to be submitted.
* A caveat: As a result of adding this information to PAWriter data files, data files saved with ordinances in version 68 will not be readable in earlier versions of PAWriter. Of course, data files saved in earlier versions will be readable in version 68.
* If you don’t enter any ordinances in version 68, or you delete them all, the file structure will be the same as in previous versions and will be readable by earlier versions.
* The Reference folder has been updated to reflect these changes and a couple of errors corrected.

When updating, please replace the old Reference folder with the new Reference folder.

PAWriter for Mac OS X Download

PAWriter for MacOS 9

Personal Ancestry Writer II Version 67 (1 March 2007)

Personal Ancestry Writer II (PAWriter II) version 67 (Dated: 1 March 2007) was released yesterday.

It’s a free Mac genealogy application being developed by Howard Metcalfe. It’s been designed to have many of the same features found in the original Personal Ancestry File (PAG) application for MacOS (Classic). There are versions for both Mac OS X and Mac OS 9. This is a fairly major update to PAWriter II.

Changes/Updates:
* General notes are now treated as private notes when Exporting a GEDCOM for Another Program, and are no longer included in such GEDCOMs. Other programs may not properlly process multiple notes in this context since only one such note is allowed in the GEDCOM standard, and such notes may contain your own personal “to do” list, “have done” list and other status information in multiple notes.
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