
   Genealogy, the study and charting of one's ancestors and
other relatives, has been a popular pursuit of mankind for
thousands of years.  The long lists of "begats" in the Bible
establish lineages from Adam and Eve onward.  The royal families
of several countries are proud to trace their ancestry to a
variety of famous conquerors.  Mormons (Latter Day Saints) have
an interest in genealogy, and have been actively charting lines
of descent for over 100 years.  More recently, Alex Haley's
"Roots," a popular book which formed the basis for an even more
popular TV miniseries, has many people searching for their own
roots.

   This program will help you chart your own family tree.  You
can enter all your relatives and ancestors, living or dead, that
you know of, and show their relationships to one another.  Then,
you can browse through this data online, or print it in several
different formats.

   Back in 1987 we published the first version of Family Tree on
BIG BLUE DISK (the former name of ON DISK MONTHLY) issue #10.
The customer response was immediate and enthusiastic.  Even now,
that early, primitive version continues to get "fan mail."  To
satisfy our customers, we greatly improved it in 1988, and
released it as a subscription renewal premium under the name
Enhanced Family Tree.  This proved even more popular than its
predecessor, but customers eventually reached its limits:  it
supported a maximum of 5000 names, and had no facility to export
or import data to other genealogy programs.  Thus, while Enhanced
Family Tree was popular with novice genealogists, it had
limitations which frustrated the more serious user, and we have
been receiving a steady torrent of customer mail ever since
asking for another upgrade.

   It's been a long wait, but you finally get your wish.  We have
vastly expanded and improved Family Tree, giving it a whole new
range of powerful features and enhancements.  For starters, the
5000 name limit is gone; you can now have up to 9,999,999 names
in your file, or the number that will fit on your disk drive
(whichever comes first).  Also, you can import or export data
using the standardized GEDCOM format, supported by most other
genealogy programs.  And, of course, you can also import data
from the two earlier incarnations of Family Tree that we have
published.

   In addition, the user interface has been made more friendly,
mouse support has been added, and the report formats have been
changed to bring them into greater concordance with genealogical
tradition and improve their appearance.

   To allow for nearly unlimited numbers of records, your family
data is no longer loaded fully into memory; it is kept on disk.
However, to keep Family Tree runing fast, a "cache" of data
records is kept in memory.  An alphabetical binary tree is
maintained of all the persons' names you have entered, making
searches by name quite fast even when you have thousands of
people entered.

   In addition, Family Tree supports the features you depended
on in the previous version, including our unique Family History
report that shows the events of your family's history in
chronological order.

   Online help is available at most parts of Enhanced 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.  Press F1 twice in a row for the full
instructions.


^C^IGETTING STARTED

   To start running this program now, press F10.  To run it
from outside the ON DISK MONTHLY menu system, you can type
FAMILY from the DOS prompt.  It is strongly suggested that
you install Family Tree to a hard disk, since it requires
lots of disk space if you enter a large number of data
records.

You can follow the name "FAMILY" with any of the following
command switches for special options:

     FAMILY /M          runs in monochrome mode.
                        [e.g., for LCD screens on which
                        the normal colors are hard to read]

     FAMILY /S          Starts with the sound turned off.

     FAMILY /Q          "Quick Run"; skips this text.

     FAMILY /NOMOUSE    Disables the mouse.  Use if you
                        are having compatibility problems
                        due to your system's mouse driver,
                        or if you just don't want to use
                        your mouse for whatever reason.

     FAMILY /?          See all possible command switches.

Anything you type after "FAMILY" that doesn't begin with a
forward slash will be interpreted as a Family Tree filename to
load.  (Don't include the extension.)  For instance:

     FAMILY SMITH

loads the SMITH family file.  This may be combined with other
switches, like:

     FAMILY /M /S SMITH

runs in monochrome, silent mode, with the SMITH family file.


^C^IFINAL NOTES

   Feel free to write us to suggest changes and new features
that might be incorporated into future versions of this
program.  Family Tree has always been one of our more
popular programs, so it is likely we will be making further
upgrades in the future.  You can help shape the direction it
takes.

   Press F10 to get into Family Tree now.  Press F9 twice in a
row to bring up this text again.
