Family Historian User Group

It seems to me that Family Historian is losing ground to Ancestry and, although it is not very good, MyHeritage is also gaining a position. If you can't beat them ... I've tried to swap data between Ancestry and Family Historian but my last attempts were pretty disastrous and I haven't tried for a while. So my Ancestry tree tends to grow (as it is so convenient to add to it from my iPhone) and my Family Historian tree gets left further and further behind. Can I suggest that the fluency of syncing data, including images between Ancestry and Family Historian should be a priority?

As far as dedicated iPad and iPhone apps go (the main topic of this thread) I presume it's a question of resources and priorities for Calico Pie, i.e skills in developing Apple/Android Apps, design, programming time and the need to purchase Apple Computers to access the software required develop iPad/iPhone apps, plus the Fees Apple charges to developers who have to publish via the App Store; all balanced against "What possible financial return?".

As far as the rest goes, I know Mike Tate has been working with others to improve the data interchange situation using a Plugin; and will probably comment soon.

Personally, I can't see much hope of an 'official' data exchange link between FH and Ancestry, unless Ancestry releases detailed specifications to software developers on how to interface with its online resources. This it seems very reluctant to do. There have been some developments recently between Ancestry and FamilySearch on family tree data interchange but, when I last checked, only LDS Members have access to whatever data can be accessed through FamilySearch Family Tree.

It might be more productive if Calico Pie were to examine/develop links with FamilySearch and FindMyPast, neither of which produces competing Desktop-based Family Tree software.

David, I have split this off from the Ipad & Iphone app (5487) thread, because I think it is heading in a different direction.

As mjashby suggests, synching between different genealogy products requires an in depth technical liaison between the developers, and in most cases that rarely happens, because each developer wants to retain their commercial market share, so they protect the software interface needed to support synching.

It is really nothing to do with what platform the product runs on (Windows, iPad iOS, Android tablet, etc).

The best vehicle that exists for synching between products is GEDCOM. I know it is not perfect, and each product tends to have its own GEDCOM dialect, so some details get lost in translation, but without it the task would be hopeless.

It would help if each product at least fully implemented the glossary:gedcom|> GEDCOM Standard Release 5.5, but most do not. If you could persuade Ancestry/FTM to do so, then that would be great, and would solve most of the problems. The biggest snag with Ancestry is that it does NOT import/export Media files with its GEDCOM. I understand this is partly solved by using FTM, which synchronises with Ancestry, and does import/export Media linked to GEDCOM. Some work is in progress so FH can support how_to:exchanging_data_with_ancestry_ftm|> Exchanging Data with Ancestry and FTM.

In the meantime, also see how_to:import_from_ancestry|> Import from Ancestry website and how_to:import_from_family_tree_maker|> Import from Family Tree Maker (FTM).

As Mike says, Ancestry are reluctant to release the interface to their on-line databases, for the simple reason that they have a desk-top product, FTM, that syncs with Ancestry so they'd hardly want to allow a competitor to do the same and take market share from their FTM.

As for getting the Ancestry produced GEDCOM and using that, while Mike has performed some heroics trying to match Ancestry GEDCOMs with FH, the simple fact is that Ancestry only stores a fraction of the data that a fully GEDCOM compliant program does. Plus its interpretation of data from its own databases, when inserting into a tree, is both inconsistent and a little odd. It doesn't, for instance, appear to have a census event! Instead it uses census data for supporting residence, etc.

Different companies do things different ways - that happens. But it does mean that synching is fraught....

My Heritage is teamed with FH but the costs of the full package are quite high. Is the investment worthwhile?
It would appear to solve some of the importing problems.