Creating the safest electronic family album with which program?

Maybe someone here would know or maybe suggest where I can ask this
question.

Robert Heiling...

Since it's both a genealogy and a computing topic, I would say that you
picked the best place to post your question.

Would it be best to show photos and captions in a MS Word document and
archive the family album this way for future generations to easily access?

Robert Heiling...

MS Word is a proprietary product and should be avoided for that reason,
if for none other. Only MS has control over its definition, not the
public. There are certainly special Microsoft & non-Microsoft viewers
currently available, but the computer user must have taken the extra
effort to install them. The same principle holds true with Adobe and
their PDF format and the requirement of proprietary software to make
modifications.

Dave Hinz...

Nope. Even today not everyone owns Microsoft word (or even runs their
OS).

Advantages I see -
Can be easily printed as a paper copy of the album,
Can be password protected against accidental alteration,

Dave Hinz...

PDF was designed for this, is free, and platform-independant.

Disadvantages -
Word document file size will be big

Robert Heiling...

and requires a clunky bloated piece of software to read it that not
everybody has on their computer. I would stick with open public formats
that have wide current support and acceptance. Those formats include
plain text, HTML, and JPG.

Dave Hinz...

not everyone has it
real concerns about microsoft documents containing virus payloads
reluctance to open word docs from unknown sources
not a format that displays consistantly on different computers

Steve Hayes...

And also, most important, there may not be any program that will read a Word
document in 10-15 years time.

Have you tried reading a Multimate document recently? Or a DisplayWrite one?
Or a Wordstar or Electric Pencil one? Volkswriter?

Never entrust anything to a program that is copy-protected or has to be
"acvtivated".

In 15 years time you migth have the document, but scour the antique shops for
a copy of the program that will read it. But then, hey ho, the program has to
be "activated", and the firm has gone down the tubes, or been taken over by
someone else, or the phone as been disconnected.

Save them in JPEG.

Put them on a CD with a copy of Irfanview.

And copy them to DVD, and whatever supesedes DVD.

And your words?

Save them in Word by all means.

But save copies in PDF, RTF and Ascii too.

Hugh Watkins...

txt and csv

are the basics
a ged is just a txt file made according to rules

Hugh W

So, MS Word or some other program?

Robert Heiling...

Not that one and I wish that I had a strong recommendation for you, but
I'm struggling with this same issue myself. This is a complicated issue.
The commercial genealogy program world has let us down in this regard
and ignored our need to organize &nd catalog our family photographs
which are an integral part of our records. Yes, those programs will
point to and
display photos if we locate the images where mandated, but they don't
offer any type of slide show or browsing feature for the images. Then
all of this should
also be transportable via a sort of GEDCOM-like standard.

As also mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I believe that HTML is the
only real practical choice and good free browsers that are frequently
updated will be available for the foreseeable future. Likewise the JPG
format for images is commonly accepted and supported. I don't believe
that being a "lossy" format is a concern since saving as a JPG should
only be the *last* step in any series of image editing. I would keep the
images separate from the HTML and descriptive text.

That leaves us with the image-naming, image-location, and HTML-Text
generation exercises. I locate all of my working images in the same
master folder as my genealogy program(s) at the C: level as that keeps
the most programs happy; i.e. C:\GENEALOGY contains everything and the
Programs, HTML, and Images are in separate sub-folders of that. That
way, any & all programs can use the same images without conflict. I
continue to research and think about the best way to generate the
HTML-text files and include search and slide show capabilities.

Lesley Walker...

I tend to suspect that MySQL (or similar) and PHP may be of some use

Lesley Walker...

Further to this, I searched the web for "open source photo database" and found
this very interesting article, which tends to support my suspicion:

Open source helps Flickr share photos

I think there's a bit of a gap in the market here, as the search didn't
seem to throw up a lot in the way of applications. Any PHP developers
out there looking for something to do?

Robert Heiling...

Perhaps there's some potential there, but let's keep the OP's original
question in mind:

"Would it be best to show photos and captions in a MS Word document and
archive the family album this way for future generations to easily
access?",

and consider a couple of scenarios. The first is where a relative opens
the mail tomorrow and there is a DVD there. Upon opening that DVD with
the computer, that relative sees a number of folders/directories and
files. The second scenario occurs 10 years from now when a relative
receives a DVD or that day's equivalent storage medium with that very
same data on it and looks at it with a computer. In the package with the
DVD (or equivalent) were instructions.

If the instructions said to open "filename.html", would there be some
chance of success? Likewise for filename.doc? Likewise for a MySQL\PHP
output?

Lesley W.

here, but right now that's a "roll your own" solution and most of us
don't have the skills to do that. It's on my list of "things to learn
one day".

Oh, and I should have mentioned in my previous long-winded post, also
keep copies of the source code for any software involved.

Lesley W.

myths...

HTML or PDF

Dave Hinz...

I'd make a PDF. Adobe has a "print to pdf" feature on their website,
might be worth a try. If you have a mac, a linux box, or, well,
anything other than windows, PDF creation is built in. There's dozens
of options for Windows, probably some free ones. But, anyone with a
modern computer today can open a PDF, and if there's any sort of
"standard" for format for "display like this and don't let 'em mess it
up", it's PDF.

Dave Hinz