Family Historian User Group

One of the real bugbears in most genealogy programs is the complete inability to get a decent narative printout of notes, particularly where they are both extensive and contain information that is best presented in a tabular format.

Whilst I'm not a GEDCOM or XML expert, I would have thought it a fairly simple excercise to define an XML schema that matches the GEDCOM structure, but that would then enable notes to be formatted, both within the database of a program such as FH, and on printed output.

Does anyone know if such a transition from the old-fashioned text GEDCOM format to XML is planned, and when it is likely to happen? It can't come soon enough for me!

ID:2144

Support for tables and other formatting is on the wish list.

Hi Jane

Table and formatting support on the wish list is good to know, but when can we realistically expect to see this implemented?

One of the main benefits of XML is that it is self-defining. Therefore, it should offer much greater flexibility to create, for example, custom event/attribute sets, and the implementation of such changes should be far more rapid. There are some of us, you know, who are not exactly in the first flush of youth, and we can't afford to hang around for Microsoft units of time [wink] .

Mezentia

There is an XML definition for Gedcom as written by the LDS. However, it's not been touched for years and is unlikely to be touched for years.

The XML def is here - http://www.familysearch.org/GEDCOM/GedXML60.pdf. Note the date - 2001!