GEDCOM
Structure of GEDCOM
GEDCOM insists that each individual person is descended from a “family”
group. The GEDCOM “family” group is an entity that may
include a husband, a wife and children, any or none of these.
In reality the “family” group may never have existed. The only universal
truth is that each individual is descended from one male and one female; they
may never have been part of a “family”, nor is it guaranteed that
the recorded parents are the real parents; although it's more likely that the
mother is correctly recorded.
The GEDCOM standard has served well as a standardised method for exchanging
family tree data between different computer systems. However, the insistence
that individuals come from families is a fundamental, structural problem.
Expectation of information from GEDCOM data
GEDCOM allows many tags. At first they may appear useful to encourage full
recording of data, but who really needs to know (for example) that the TYPE
of death was “slow” and that the CAUS of death was “disease”.
All this sort of information is much better recorded in simple notes attached
to the person.
By allowing and encouraging little-used tags GEDCOM makes the data interchange
format much less useful. Possibly the only purpose of these detailed tags is
to enable collection of statistics.
Again, in reality, it's impossible to be sure how our ancestors lived and died.
Historical records more than a few hundred years old are rare and sparse. To
expect genealogists to populate every data field is asking for guesses.
XY Family Tree
Structure of XY Family Tree
The data structure for XY Family Tree is designed to be as simple as possible,
whilst still giving some important statistical data such as Date of Birth.
Individuals
For each individual:
- there are names (forename, family name or descriptive)
- there may be a known father (another individual)
- there may be a known mother (another individual)
- there may be a date of birth (the date is textual and may be approximate or incomplete)
- there may be a place of birth
- there may be a date of death (the date is textual and may be approximate or incomplete)
- there may be a place of death
- the individual may have associated notes (these contain all the other information)
- the individual may be linked to other information (documents, URLs, pictures and other media)
Marriages
For each marriage:
- there may be a known male (an individual)
- there may be a known female (an individual)
- the marriage may have associated notes
Other Relationships
For each relationship:
- there will be a known person A (an individual)
- there will be a known person B (an individual)
- there may be notes for person A
- there may be notes for person B
Expectation of information from XY Family Tree data
There is no expectation that a lot of information is known. As long as the
important fields of name and parentage (as far as this is known) can be given,
XY Family Tree can build a tree.
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