Genealogy and backward compatability

Frand Ried's thread got me thining about backward compatability. Many
graphic and word processing software packages only go back one or two
versions. It is often a marketing tool to force people to keep their
software current.

However, in genealogy it is VITAL that the data be accessible forever.
Frank's situation is the perfect example. What if 50 years from now, a
descendent of mine comes accross an old CD? There's may not be
archived paper for the many hours work I'm doing now.

Kerry Raymond...

In 50 years, your descendents will probably think the CD is a Christmas tree
decoration or a small frisbee.

And if you print it all out, paper may disintegrate and ink may bleed.

And there is no guarantee that our descendants will be able to read as we
do. We have abandoned arithmetic in favour of calculators, maybe
reading/writing will go the same way (computers will talk to us verbally or
we will all jack straight into the matrix and our brains be directly
supplied with thoughts).

And perhaps even the notions of family relationships may have become
irrelevant in a world of babies carried to full term in a testtube from DNA
selected from computer-selected clones (like the movie GATTACA). Maybe
people in 50 years will be embarrassed to find out that their ancestors
engaged in physical contact to make babies and try to cover it up (like the
Isaac Asimov book The Naked Sun) just as some of our parents and
grandparents covered up their convict ancestry.

Hopefully we are now feeling motivated to get stuck into our family history
:-)

Charlie Hoffpauir...

It is VERY unlikely that your descendent will have access to any
hardware that will allow him to read that CD, even assuming that a
50-year old CD is still readable.

If you want your information to be available, printing to acid-free
paper is still the best approach. Many genealogy libraries will accept
a printed "book" and place it on their shelves. Clayton Library
(Houston) will accept the papers, bind them in a hard cover, catalogue
them, and place the book on their shelves. A donation of your data in
the form of a printed book to Clayton (and other libraries) will
insure that it is available for a very long time.

Lesley Robertson...

The CD is highly unlikely to be readable. Firstly, because they're not
enormously stable - I have a couple that failed after less than a year lying
in my office, and others that have failed after a couple of years. Secondly,
they're unlikely to have a unit that can read the format - for example I
imagine that your pc can read the 3.5 inch floppies, but can it read the old
5.25 inch, or even the old flexible discs (look like old floppies, but 21 cm
square), let alone cassette tapes or punched cards or tapes?
The only way to keep the data available over as long as 50 years is either
acid-freee hardcopy, or archival quality film.
Lesley Robertson

If genealogy software producers aren't making software packages that
will open the oldest versions, we need to insist. Especially Paf and
Gedcom files.

TomAlciere...

In building my GedcomIndex.com stuff, I have come across old GEDCOM
files that have longer tags, like 0 HEADER instead of 0 HEAD and 0
TRAILER instead of 0 TRLR. Newer software needs to be able to read
these.

Gedcom 5.5 is a perfectly good standard for compatibility. If you
export something, export it in Gedcom 5.5 even if you also export it
and publish it in another format.

I'm told the CD's I burn in my machine won't last as long as CD's
manufactured professionally. That's another concern. Maybe printing the
GEDCOM file on acid-free paper and packaging it in a box with labels on
it is the best solution. Then the pages can be fed into a scanner
without unstapling and ripping along the staple holes.

Tom Alciere
smart person
Nashua, New Hampshire

singhals...

Make CERTAIN there ARE paper copies which will be instantly
recognizable as a document and put a title on it that
suggests it might be interesting. Shove in a few decent
pictures, and any 12-yr-old assigned to sort trash from
non-trash will at least lay it aside to ask Dad about.

Hugh Watkins...

deposit copies at libraries

I reckon as long as they are making money
myfamily inc have a vested interest in keeping my stuff

Hugh W

Charlie Hoffpauir...

With the inconsistancies between different version of GEDCOMs as
produced by different genealogy programs, it's likely that at least
some information will be lost in the transfer of data from a "program
specific" file to GEDCOM then to program again. However, there's
still the problem of media. How do you insure that the media you
choose to put the GEDCOM on, is still readable 50 years from now? My
original genealogy data was on 5 1/4 inch floppy discs readable only
by my Apple IIe computer. I'm sure someone can still read that data,
but I can't. If I hadn't been around to convert that from the Apple to
a PC by emailing a file to myself while I still had a working IIe,
that information would have been lost. Fortunately, PAF had both a PC
and an Apple version back then.

Charlie Hoffpauir
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/

Hugh Watkins...

FTM 16 opens or saves in all older FTM FTW formats

and several flavours of gedcoms

best to use the default "Temple Ready"
which is IGI and familysearch.org compatable

html is pretty standard too

Hugh W