^C^IThe Basics

   Family Tree uses pull-down menus at the top of the screen.
Mouse users can pull them down by clicking on the menu names,
like "File", "Edit", etc.  You can also pull down a menu by
pressing Alt and its first letter (Alt-F for File, etc.). Select
a menu item by clicking on it (or releasing your mouse button
while on it), or by moving around with the arrow keys and
pressing Enter when the desired menu item is selected, or by
pressing the first letter of the desired menu item.

   Many of the functions of this program are also tied to "hot
keys" (such as function keys or combinations of Ctrl, Alt,
Shift, and a function or letter key) which can be pressed from
the main screen in place of pulling down a menu item.


^C^IHELP!

   Online help is available at most parts of Family Tree.  Some
help messages will be visible on the screen as you proceed
through the program, while others can be popped up by pressing
the F1 key.  Pressing F1 twice in a row brings up this text.


^C^IGetting Started

   This section assumes you are just getting started charting
your family tree.  If you are more advanced and have already
entered family data using an earlier version of Family Tree, or
another genealogy program that supports GEDCOM data transfers,
skip ahead to see how to import your data into this program.

   To enter your family tree into a file in this program, you'll
have to first gather as much information you can about your
relatives.  Talk to each relative and find out their full names,
birthdates, birthplaces, marriage dates and places, and similar
information about any relatives (living or dead) they know of.

   Once you have gathered information on some of your relatives,
you can start entering it into Family Tree.  First, you'll have
to create a new file.  Use the "New File" item from the "File"
menu to do this.  Give the file a name that makes sense to you,
such as your last name.  (Names can be up to eight letters, and
shouldn't have a file extension since Family Tree adds the
extensions automatically.)

   Now, you can start entering data.  When you create a new
file, you'll be immediately placed in data entry mode to begin
entering records.

   Enter the requested data for each field, pressing ENTER each
time.  Press F10 when you are done entering the record.  (See
below for more information on what you must type in each field.)

   You may not know all the information in the data record, and
some might not be applicable (e.g., death date of a living
person).  It's perfectly OK to skip a field without typing
anything in it, except for the name and sex, which are required
for every person.

   When you get to the fields for the mother and father of the
person you are entering, you can type the names of the person's
parents (if you know them), and, since you have not yet entered
records for these individuals, you will be asked if you want to
create them.  If you say Yes, records will be created for each
of them, containing only their name and sex.  You'll have to
edit these records later to fill in all their other vital stats.

   If the person you are entering is married or has children,
you can say "Yes" to the Marriages or Children fields, and that
will place you in the marriage or child editing feature,
described later.

   After you finish entry of a record by pressing F10, you are
then prompted for another new record.  Keep on entering as many
people as you wish, or press ESC to exit "insert" mode and go
into "browse" mode, which is the normal mode from which you
access your data file and the other features of this program.

   From here you can add a new record by pressing Ins.  Or maybe
you want to fill in the information on the parents of the first
person; you can press PgDn until the desired record is visible,
then press Enter (or click the mouse somewhere in the data entry
area) to edit it.


^C^IInformation on Data Entry

^C^1ID Numbers

   Each person has a unique I.D. number for identification
purposes.  These numbers are assigned automatically by Family
Tree, and are not editable.

   ID numbers are assigned in order, beginning with 1, unless a
record is deleted; in that case, the numbers of the deleted
records are re-used for new records entered later.

^C^1Names

   Names must be entered often in this program. When you start
entering a new record for a person, the first thing you'll enter
is his or her name. You'll also be prompted for names of
parents, spouses, and children of the person, and names will be
needed when you choose records to output in the various reports.

   When you enter a name for the first time, it must be typed as
you'd like it to be stored (e.g. "John Wilkins Smith, Jr."). It
is conventional to use the full name the person was born with
(this means the maiden name for married women). However,
Family Tree doesn't enforce any format, so you can enter names
in whatever style you want.

   When entering names of people already in the system, you have
some more choices. Since every person is assigned an entry
number, if you remember the number of the person you wish to
refer to, you may input it in the form "#n" (e.g. "#23") in
place of the full name to save time. Alternatively, you may
press F8 to see a full, scrollable list of names from which you
may pick one by using the arrow keys to move a highlight bar and
pressing ENTER to select the current name (or click on it with
the mouse).

   When entering a name for a new record, if the name you type
exactly matches an earlier entry, you'll be asked whether you
wish to edit that entry rather than create a new one. This
guards against accidentally entering a person twice. (However,
watch out for slight variations on a name; you might mistakenly
enter the same person as "William Jones" and "Bill Jones."
Periodically review the list of names you've entered to check
for such duplications.)  Since there might actually be two
people in your family tree with the same name, you always have
the option to say no and allow the two records to be created
separately.

   Conversely, when you enter a name (for a parent, spouse, or
child) which does not correspond to a record that has already
been entered, you'll be asked if you wish to create a record
with that name to be filled out in detail later.

^C^1Sexes

   One essential field in each entry is that person's gender (or
sex, if we are allowed to include that word in a family
publication). Press M or F when asked for this item. You must
make an entry for this field  When editing a record with a sex
already in place, any key besides M or F will toggle the gender
to the opposite value. However, if the person in question is
already indicated as the mother, father, husband, or wife of
another person, then changing of the gender is disallowed.
If somebody is entered mistakenly as the wrong sex, and is
linked as a parent or spouse, then these links must be unlinked
before the gender can be altered.

   Family Tree will not allow males to be entered as a mother or
wife, or females to be entered as a father or husband, and will
disallow any editing that would put a person in such a position.

^C^1Dates

   Enter dates in the format MM/DD/YYYY, like 04/01/1987.  You
can omit leading zeros; 4/1/1987 would also work.  Two-digit
years represent 1900 + year.  Precede years prior to A.D. 100
with zeros, like 1/1/0087.  Enter B.C. years as negative numbers.

   Question marks in any field means it is unknown; 4/?/87 means
an unknown date in April, 1987.  A date preceded by 'c', as in
c4/1/87, means it is approximate.  If you type the letter U
instead of a date, this indicates that the date is totally
unknown.  Preceding a date with a less-than (<) or greater-than
(>) sign means that the actual date is before or after the given
date, respectively.

   You can pop up a calendar by typing ALT-C.  While the calendar
is displayed, you can use the left and right arrows to step by
months, the up and down arrows to step by years, PgUp and PgDn to
step by decades, and Home and End to step by centuries.  Press
ENTER to leave the calendar; the month and year displayed when
you exit is transferred to the date you are entering.  ESC exits
the calendar without entering any date in the field.  Also, you
can click with the mouse on any day in order to enter that day.

   Dates from October 15, 1582 on are displayed using the
Gregorian calendar, presently in use worldwide. Dates before
this are displayed using the Julian calendar.

   If you enter dates after 1582 from countries that still used
the Julian calendar, weekdays will be incorrect.  Also, the
sequence of events may be inaccurate: a date of December 31, 1599
in the Julian calendar represents a later date than January 1,
1600 in the Gregorian calendar.  Hence, you may wish to convert
all Julian dates after Oct. 4, 1582 to Gregorian.  To do this,
add 10 days for years in the 1500's and 1600's, 11 days for the
1700's, 12 for the 1800's, or 13 for the 1900's.    

   Another note: all years are regarded as beginning on January
1, though some countries had other starting dates (such as the
spring equinox) as late as the 1700's.

^C^1Places

   Another thing that must be entered frequently is a place.

   You can basically type anything you want there, though the
standard is a city and its county and state or country.
Examples: Shreveport, Caddo, Louisiana; Paris, France. You may
want to use postal abbreviations (LA for Louisiana) to keep it
concise, but you may abbreviate however you wish; the syntax is
not checked.

^C^1Marriages

   When you are entering a new record, on reaching the Marriages
field, you can press "Y" and Enter, and thus reach the facility
for entering and editing marriages.  When editing an existing
record, you can edit the person's marriages by pressing F8 while
the cursor is on the Marriages field.

   In a new record, there are no pre-existing marriages.  Thus,
you are immediately prompted for data on a marriage.  You are
asked for the name of the spouse, the date of the marriage, the
date the marriage ended (if applicable), and the reason the
marriage ended (a field which can be toggled between None,
Divorce, Annulment, and Death, by pressing the Space bar).

   If the spouse's name doesn't match any pre-existing record,
you will be asked if you want to create a new record.

   Press F10 to save this data once you have entered it.

   Once you have entered a marriage, or immediately if there is
a pre-existing marriage, you will be presented with a list of
the current person's marriages.  From here, you can press Ins to
add another marriage, Del to remove a marriage, or Enter to edit
the data on the marriage on which the cursor is located.  ESC or
F10 gets back to the main data on the person.

^C^1Children

   Editing children works much the same as marriages.  When you
are in the list of a person's children, Ins adds another child,
while Del deletes a child from the list.  (Note: this does not
delete the person's record itself, only the linkage that shows
that person to be a child of the current person.)

   Note that, since all links are bidirectional, once you enter
somebody as a parent, child, or spouse, the other person's
record will correspondingly show the first record as a child,
parent, or spouse. This is done automatically; you don't have to
manually create both links one at a time. If you later edit or
delete such a link, this too will be propagated to the other
end.

^C^1Biographies

   The "Biography" entry is used if you wish to enter more
information on the person.  Pressing F8 while the cursor is on
the Biography entry places you in a text editor where you can
enter up to a full page describing the person in question. This
is optional, and takes extra disk space; you might not wish to
use it often if you're running the program on floppy disk. The
biography editor is a simple text editor which should be
familiar in operation to you if you've used any text editor or
word processor.  Type the information in a free-form style,
using the arrows to move around the screen. You can merge in
text files by pressing F3; you'll be asked for a filename (with
optional drive and path), and that file will be read into the
biography file.  (If the original file is too big to fit on a
page, only the beginning part will be used.)  When you're done,
press F10.

^C^1Comments

   There's a line for a single-line comment; use it to enter
brief information on the person without requiring a full-screen
biography. (e.g., "Elected to U.S. Congress for four terms," or
"Spent last twenty years of life in prison." [I'll leave it an
open question whether many people in the former position deserve
to be placed in the latter.])


^C^IFile Conversion

^C^1Converting from Earlier Versions of Family Tree

   Select the "Convert" item from the "File" menu to import data
from the two earlier releases of Family Tree and Enhanced
Family Tree.  Next, press 1 to convert from the original Family
Tree (1.0), from BIG BLUE DISK #10 or BEST OF BIG BLUE DISK #1,
or press 2 to convert from Enhanced Family Tree (2.0).

   You will be prompted to select the file to import and the new
file to create.

   The old Family Tree data will not be disturbed; Family Tree
uses different file extensions from the older versions, so both
can coexist on the same disk.

^C^1Converting from Other Software

   Use the GEDCOM import and export features from the "File"
menu to bring in and send out family data using a standard
genealogical format that is used by many people and programs for
data interchange.  If you have entered data in another genealogy
program, the chances are it is capable of producing a GEDCOM
file that you can read into Family Tree.  Conversely, you can
output your Family Tree data into a GEDCOM file that others can
load into their own genealogy programs.

   GEDCOM was developed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints to facilitate genealogical data interchange, but its
use is not limited to Mormons; it is the de facto standard of
the field.  Many GEDCOM files are available on computer
bulletin board systems, where they are used by people swapping
their family information with other genealogy enthusiasts.

   GEDCOM input and output is fairly simple; you are prompted
for a file to load or save (a .GED extension is assumed), just
as with regular Family Tree files.  However, not all data may be
preserved in GEDCOM interchanges, due to the differences in the
formats.  Family Tree has no fields for such things as baptism,
so any such data in a GEDCOM file will be ignored.  Other
fields, such as comments and place names, may be truncated to
fit the length of the field in Family Tree.

   Conversely, in outputing data to a GEDCOM file, the
information in biography files will not be placed in the GEDCOM
file; GEDCOM export is limited to the basic vital stats such as
birthdate, birthplace, marriage date, parent and child
relationships, and the one-line comment in the main record.
Also, on exporting names, Family Tree has to try to figure out
which part of the name is the surname, to enclose it in slashes
as is the GEDCOM standard.  It will usually pick the last part
of the name, unless there is a comma like in "Smith, John", and
it will also skip over some common suffixes like "Jr."  It may
still misidentify an unusual name, so you may want to edit the
resulting GEDCOM file (it is ASCII text that can be edited in
any word processor) to correct such flaws if they exist.

   Since there is much variation in GEDCOM formats generated by
different software, it can't be guaranteed that Family Tree will
pick up all the relevant data in a particular file, but it will
try its best.  You may have to go through and manually edit some
of the data.

   When you select GEDCOM import, the data in the selected
GEDCOM file will be merged into the current file, just like with
the "Merge File" item to merge Family Tree data files.  If no
file is currently open, you will be asked to name a file (either
existing or new) to receive the GEDCOM data.

   Since GEDCOM ties children to a "family" record with husband,
wife, and kids, while Family Tree stores children independently
of marriages, when you output your Family Tree data in GEDCOM
format, Family Tree will output "phantom" marriage records at the
end to record the children of couples with no marriage on record,
or children of whom only one parent is recorded.  (No implication
of illegitimacy should be made; perhaps you merely have yet to
type in the details of the marriage.)  These can be distinguished
from the "real" marriage records because the latter have a
"MARR" tag line within them (and the marriage date and place, and
divorce or annulment, if these are on record).  Also, real
marriage records are given a GEDCOM ID of "Fnnn" where nnn is a
number, while "phantom" families are given ID codes with an "X"
in the middle, surrounded by the numbers of the father and mother
respectively (or zero for each that is unknown).

   Other GEDCOM notes:  Some GEDCOM features are not supported.
Character sets other than the IBM PC characters are not
translated, which may cause foreign characters not to be imported
correctly.  All lines must be terminated with carriage return and
linefeed as is standard for the IBM PC, so some files imported
from other systems may not work.  The GEDCOM feature of coding
the length of each line directly at its start is not supported.
Neither are the codes to set calendars other than Gregorian.


^C^IReports

   The "Print" menu lets you output various reports to your
printer. Available reports are Descendant Tree, Ancestor Tree,
ID Number Listing in alphabetic order, ID Number Listing in
numeric order, Search and Print Data, Print Current Person, and
Family History.

    For the descendant or ancestor tree reports, you start by
choosing one person as a starting point. A descendant graph will
show the starting person, his or her spouse(s), his or her
children (indented into the second column) with their spouses,
grandchildren (in the third column, beneath their parent) with
their spouses, and great-grandchildren (in the fourth column)
with their spouses. This continues for as long as will fit on
your printout; you can specify your printer width, which
defaults to 80 for normal printers, but can be set higher if
you've got a wide printer or it's set to compressed type. This
report will take as many pages as are necessary to get all
descendants up to the level of whatever generation is rightmost;
this may be quite a few if there are many children in each
generation. To continue beyond the last listed generation, do
additional descendant reports using the people in the rightmost
column as the starting ancestor.

    Conversely, an ancestor graph shows the original person on
the first column, his or her parents to the right, and
grandparents and great-grandparents further to the right, each
surrounding their child.  Siblings are not shown on this chart.
This chart will always fit on one page, at least on standard
printers.  To get the full chart, your printer must support at
least 66 lines and 80 columns.  If your printer can't go this
far (e.g., laser printers that only fit 60 lines per page),
enter the lower number in the apropriate field, and you will get
a report with fewer generations so that it will fit.

   In the above reports, birth and death years will be shown in
parentheses, like (1876-1951) or (1963-    ). For the descendant
report, marriage dates will also be shown, in square brackets,
like [1961-1982] or [1972-    ].

   In the Search and Print Data report, you are asked for a
"search string" which determines which persons are to be
printed.  Only those whose names begin with the given string are
included, unless you say Yes to the "Full Search" option, in
which case, the string is searched for anywhere within the name,
place, and comment fields.

   You can choose whether to output biography files in this
report, and you can also choose whether to output each record to
a separate page, or to run it all together without page breaks.
The latter saves paper, while the former produces a neater
report and can be separated out to give each person his or her
own record.

   ID number reports show all names and their I.D. numbers. You
can print this out in order by number, or sorted alphabetically.

   The Family History report searches through an entire family
file and sorts all dated events in order from earliest to
latest. It then outputs this sorted listing, which gives a
complete log of these important family events in the order they
happened. (Note: see discussion above re Julian vs. Gregorian
dates.)

   You can choose the starting and ending dates for your history
(or leave them blank for an open-ended report), and select what
kinds of events (births, deaths, marriages, and termination of
marriages) to report by toggling each of these on and off.

   For each of these reports (except for "Print Current Person")
you have the option of 'printing' to a file instead of the
printer.  Do this by pressing F3 when prompted.  You will then
be asked for a filename to save.  The extension .RPT (for
"report") will be added to the name you type.  Printing to a
file is useful if you want to edit the report using a word
processor, or send it on disk to somebody else.


^C^IOther Features

   ^1View tree of descendants:
   This option, in the Options menu, lets you see the tree of
descendents of a person on your screen.  The tree will be output
with lines connecting the current person and his/her children,
grandchildren and so on as far as will fit on an 80-column
screen. If the report takes more than one screenful, you'll be
able to advance a line with the down arrow, go to the next page
with PgDn, or return to the top with Home.

   ^1Delete this file:
   This option, in the File menu, wipes out the current file and
lets you start again. We all need a chance to start over
sometimes.  WARNING:  All data you have entered into the current
file, whether in the present session or in earlier runs which
used the same filename, will be lost. Only use this command on
files you're SURE you don't want!

   ^1Rebuild damaged file:
   This feature, in the File menu, allows you to rebuild a file
which has become corrupted due to a disk error.  Use it if a
particular data file causes problems such as program crashes or
hangs, or nonsensical data such as people being married to
themselves.  The Rebuild feature will read in any data that can
be salvaged, and regenerate the linkages between records as much
as possible.

   ^1Merge file:
   The "Merge" feature in the File menu lets you read the data
from another Family Tree file into the current file.  When
merging, if it comes to a record with an identical name and
birthdate to an existing person, it will assume it is the same
person and combine the data for the two records.  However, if
a name is misspelled or a birthdate is incorrect or unknown,
this detection will not work and you will end up with two
records for the same person which you will have to weed out
manually.

   ^1Searching:
   Several items in the Options menu let you search for
particular records.  "Go to ID #" lets you type a record number
to jump straight to.  "Find person" lets you type in a text line
to search for in the name, place, and comment fields.  "Quick
Search" is a much faster search that only finds exact matches of
a text line at the beginning of the name field.  "Next matching
person" repeats the last search (either a "Quick" search or a
full "Find") and goes to the next person record that fits the
search criterion.  (If repeating a "Find", the records will be
searched alphabetically or numerically depending on which order
is currently in effect; if repeating a "Quick" search, the order
will always be alphabetical.)

   Remember that you can also jump straight to the persons who
are directly related to the currently displayed person, by
pressing Ctrl-M to go to the mother, Ctrl-F to go to the father,
Ctrl-S to go to a sibling, Ctrl-W to go to a spouse (and display
marriage information), or Ctrl-C to go to a child.
