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From: Lars Eighner <>
Subject: Beyond GEDCOM
Date: 17 Jul 2007 05:34:54 GMT


Here is the problem: GEDCOM has become the de facto standard for family
history and geneology data. And the problem with that is that the Mormons
own GEDCOM and thus it is rife with built-in religious limitations.

As you might expect, GEDCOM does not allow you to enter a family created by
same-sex marriage or civil unions even where they are lawful. But there are
other limitations. For example, in GEDCOM 5.xx, an adopted child does not
belong to his family. When he looks up his family in a GEDCOM-compliant
file, he is not there. How needlessly hurtful is that?

If a guy marries his 14-year-old cousin as his fifth wife, GEDCOM has no
problem dealing with that kind of family. But it cannot handle the Brady
Bunch.

Now I suppose you could defend GEDCOM by saying it is supposed to record
only genetic --- that is, biological --- relationships. And of course,
there are important scientific and especially medical uses for that kind of
information. But it is not really true that GEDCOM records biological
relationships. It presumes that the husband of a woman who bears a child is
the father of the child, and we know since there is now DNA testing that
assumption is untrue in a significant portion of cases.

Which brings me to my point. I'd like to develop a family history system
that is as compatible with GEDCOM as possible (since it is, as I have said,
the de facto standard with tons of software applications), but with
extensions to handle many diverse kinds of families that exist both in
modern America and in many traditional cultures.

So, I would be grateful for any pointers to existing software that handles
all families or suggestions for extensions.


--
Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/>; <http://myspace.com/larseighner>;
Countdown: 553 days to go.
Owing to massive spam from googlegroups, I do not see most posts from there.

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