Family Historian User Group

After trash talk regarding software that uses GEDCOM as database Tamura Jones gave a very positive review for Family HIstorian and Simon Orde

https://www.tamurajones.net/ARealDatabase.xhtml

In the case of Family Historian, the use of GEDCOM as a database isn't a mistake, but a conscious choice by a developer who knows what he's doing. Family Historian is a fast and stable genealogy application that handles large genealogy databases with ease.

David

That is praise in deed from the likes of Tamura Jones!!!

Indeed!

Praise it might be, but begruding! Especially as she completely destroys her own argument by praising FH, and also saying "genealogy applications should really be using objectbases instead of databases". (I presume she means object vs relational databases). I don't know if any genealogy applications actually do use Object Databases? It's the design, what and how it is used for what purpose that matters. Not forgetting that the Gedcom file is a relatively small simple text file.

I find her comments on Zip files way out of date, perhaps she disagrees with Microsoft for using *.docx and *.xlsx files, which are simple zipped files (just try opening them with a zip program, very interesting) and many 'business' files will be way bigger than the biggest Gedcom files with a lot more to do in the zip extracting.

I remember when I was looking to move to FH (v5) from TMG and came across this
https://www.tamurajones.net/FamilyHistorian3.1.2.xhtml

Whilst the review was very extensive (but obviously out of date for my purposes), I was struck by the unnessesary slightly caustic and 'nitpicking' Style, e.g.
"It is rather annoying to get to see a patronising GEDCOM is... dialog box every time you import a GEDCOM. I know what GEDCOM is….."
to me this kind of comment spoils an otherwise 'much better than usual' in depth review.


Having said all that, Tamura is very much an online assett (taken as part of a controlled broad diet) that I like to read occasionally, and way way way better than most of the bland/gushing reviews, especially by a journalist with a good writing style but on a deadline; who plays with a product for a few minutes.

Thanks for the pointer to this article! I wouldn't have wanted to miss this quote by Tamura:

https://www.tamurajones.net/Deliberatel ... rams.xhtml

You should use real genealogy software that lets you record any marriage. You should actively avoid bigoted genealogy software. Genealogy software containing anti-genealogical misfeatures isn't real genealogy software, it is unfit for purpose.
If you are using bigoted genealogy software, you have a problem, and the only real solution is to get real genealogy software. If you paid for the bigoted genealogy software, report that it is unfit for purpose, and demand your money back.

I think the 'extended' (as opposed to moral) point is how flexible the software allows you to be, and as we have seen with 'sort dates' in FH it is whether the developer has the time/ resources/ inclination/ priority to build it in. We might be on the brink of people who have 3 or more genetic parents, I'm not sure how Gedcom copes with that, but even if it does, if the developer does not support reporting/trees etc it is not very useful. In a non genetic way we have that scenario now with adopted and step children, always a dilemma when keying up and subsequent report/tree production (mostly due to software limitations), and then there is always the 'are you sure your fathers fathers father is really that', hence many of our trees can be at best 'cultural', interesting none the less.

Just to avoid any putting of feet in it - Tamura is actually a "he". (Not sure whether his ancestry has any impact on that name....)

Thanks Adrian, I did ponder that but could not see anything obvious on the website etc, I even looked up 'baby names' which suggested female, and probably my old English preconceptions (Claudia, Georgina etc) with a smattering from my schoolboy Latin 'A' suffix for female.

Aye Jim,

Wikipedia "Tamura (usually written 田村), a Japanese placename and family name" and I believe that the Japanese language tends to be "gender neutral", it isn't a grammatical thing as there is no choice in the language, but more the manner in which the language is spoken by men and women.

And I find all "logic" to be inscrutable!

Good health and my regards, Bill

I was coming here to mention the article. Took a while to turn the attention to Family Historian, but when he does so it's in a very positive manner. (He's been a bit negative on FH and native gedcom format in the past.)

I experience no lag loading my 39k database. Not sure if I'd notice if it was reading GEDCOM text or some database soon to lose it's developer support. And it's super rare that auto-save hasn't already kicked in and saved my work, meaning I never need to save at all. (Just back-up regularly, of course, but that's just good practice.)

Nice to see credit given to the programming that makes it happen so well.