CROCKER-L Archives

Archiver > CROCKER > 1998-05 > 0894847543


From: "Michael Crocker" <>
Subject: [CROCKER-L] Links, Big G, Book etc
Date: Sun, 10 May 1998 20:45:43 -0400


Regarding David's proposed centralized list of Crocker web pages, it seems
to me that the best place for a centralized list of Crocker links is the
Crocker Cousins web page, if Dean & Barry are willing to keep that updated.
But, David can always do his own if he wants to.

Andrea wrote:
>I still can't get Michael's Big G... in fact I tried four times this
>morning to send him a simple five line message explaining that I don't have
>a compatible database (like Family Tree Maker or similar), so the Ged Com
>is unavailable to me.

Andrea, I already know that you don't use a genealogy program and therefore
can't import the GEDCOM file. But you can read the GED2HTML pages that are
posted there with just your regular web browser. It's no longer in GEDCOM
format once it's converted to HTML (i.e., a set of web pages) by the
GED2HTML program. If you don't understand how to browse around the
GED2HTML pages, I doubt if any explanation I give would help, but...
Basically to make sense of the GED2HTML pages you have to have some idea of
what you're looking for. For example, if you want to look at descendants
of Anthony who died 1693 then look for him in the PERSONS index. Once you
find his link, you can follow the line of his descendants using the
hyperlinks. When you get to the end, go back to the index. That's it in a
nutshell, but like I said it probably won't help. :)

I could use a different program that would format the web page output
differently but I've tried most of them - none are perfect - and GED2HTML is
the best IMO. GED2HTML does have the capability to create the output pages
in the Family Group Sheet format that most everyone is familiar with, but
this feature was only added in the last update to the program and it has not
been fully developed yet. Personally I don't see what's so hard about
following the links in the standard GED2HTML pages, but if enough people
have a problem with it, I would be willing to use the Family Group Sheet
format. I may do the next Big G update output in both versions so you can
see the difference. But I may not continue to do both versions, so y'all
can decide which you like.

>I hoped he would recommend what I should buy. But all
>four times, the message I tried to send him bounced.

No problem with receiving mail at my end AFAIK. As far as recommending a
genealogy program, my preference may be different than yours. Family Tree
Maker (FTM) (latest ver 4.4) is the most popular, and is one of the best for
printing reports, but it's lousy for data management and analysis. It has
some very severe limitations that you may not notice until you become more
experienced with it and have entered a lot of data. The Master Genealogist
(latest ver 3.5) is the best at data management, but it doesn't do reports
and multimedia files as well as FTM. Family Origins is pretty well
balanced but it doesn't really excel at anything. Legacy has more features
than Family Origins, and the technical support is responsive to the users,
unlike Broderbund/FTM. Some people say genealogy programs can be divided
into two categories: event-oriented or lineage-oriented. I won't try to
explain the difference, partly because I don't agree with trying to
categorize all programs as either one or the other, but briefly FTM would be
a lineage based program and TMG is an event oriented program. Professional
genealogists generally prefer the event oriented programs whereas the
lineage based programs are usually more user friendly. But, the best all
around recommendation is try out as many of the programs as you can and pick
the one that suits you the best.

>Maybe he will see this on the List... Once we get our book... the Crocker
>lines will be segregated, so you won't have to figure out how to segregate
>them. I don't intend to go into "side lines," but I do intend, wherever
>possible, to include the descendants of the daughters... even though they
>give up their maiden names when they marry, they are still equally as much
>CROCKERS as their brothers... and their children and grandchildren carry
>the Crocker genes, as well.

You can do whatever you like with your book. And since I'm volunteering my
time, as well as web space from my ISP account, to put the master GEDCOM
together and make it available on the web, I am the one who ultimately gets
to decide what the scope of the effort is to include. If someone else
wants to do it, then they can make the decisions. But I personally am not
willing to spend my time or donate my web space for a huge file for anyone
ever descended from a Crocker. Like it or not, the Crocker surname is the
trunk of the tree that ties us together. We are not necessarily more
closely related to each other genetically just because there was a Crocker
ancestor somewhere way in the past. In fact, none of us know for sure what
our genetic ancestry is, and we never will know. So, I say let's keep the
tree trunk based on Crockers and then people can figure out where their
non-Crocker branches tie in. In fact, I came up an idea a couple of nights
ago for a simple way that we can allow these branches to be linked to, but
not part of, the Crocker master GEDCOM. I'll say more about that in a
separate post.

Also, I just want to make sure that everyone understands that The CROCKER
Master GEDCOM (a.k.a. Big G) is not in any way affiliated with Andrea's
proposed book. The two efforts are independent, and as far as I can foresee
will remain so. I'll have some more to say about this later, and I'm sure
some of you will probably want to talk more about it too, but I just wanted
to make the basic distinction clear for now.

Michael Crocker

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/233

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