Fixing the bookmarks was slightly more complicated than I expected.

I had been using the generated ID, eg. FAM-43 as the bookmark. But I saw that was wrong, since those IDs are specific to the run, and reorganizing may lose them or they might point to incorrect places. So I changed this to use the ID from the GEDCOM instead. This way, the bookmarks can be remembered between runs, as long as the GEDCOMs don't change.

But I had to work through each type of bookmark (individual, family, source, place, etc.) one by one to get them working, so its taking time. I'm almost done though, and should be able to wrap this up and move on in a day or two.

Finally! There are now bookmarks for the spouse and the family information. The bookmarks now internally use the GEDCOM ID number rather than the Behold generated number. The hyperlinks and Forward/Backward functions seem to work as they should. The forward/backward locations will deactivate if they cease to exist after the file is reorganized. And the right-mouse clicks select the person at the cursor correctly. That seems to be done and I've fixed a few related bugs along the way. There may be one or two bugs in the new code that I missed, but I'll rigorously test for them during the upcoming beta.

I really didn't want that to take three weeks, but if I work hard, I still may be able to get the beta out by my self-imposed deadline of the end of October, if I'm lucky.

Next: to clean up the error and warning messages in the log file.

Next on my To Do list was to redo the error messages. The idea was that I was going to list each message every time it happened along with the GEDCOM line it happened at.

But what I have already done was nicely organize the messages so that (in most cases) each message is listed only once along with a list of all the places that problem exists. Thinking about this, it actually makes more sense to show a message once with 200 references, rather than to repeat the same message 200 times for each reference.

Since Behold makes an attempt to read and interpret every variation of GEDCOM there is, many people won't care about the problems with the GEDCOMs, and are more interested in the data.

That said, Behold is very good at checking the data. So although the Log file is out of the way, it is valuable. So I will at least try to a better indication of when problems worth fixing have been found.

Sam saw my post from yesterday. He asked: "Why are the reports separate?" He suggested that instead of using the Log File, I display the warning messages in the Everything Report with the related data. For printing, Behold can have a toolbar item to toggle them on and off. He said this would eliminate the need to look at the error log and then search for the error in the main report.

That's a great idea! Basically, I can get rid of the log file completely by including that info in the Everything Report. I never really did like having to create the log file in the first place. But Sam pointed out the obvious that I might never have seen. Thank you, Sam.

Time for a bit of an interlude. There are a few things I found that don't work exactly right. Any hidden items need the sources they contain to be hidden as well. Hidden items must be numbered differently. References to notes are not being displayed. Concatenated lines used for titles of sources and citations are not being processed correctly.

I could fix each of these individually by adding patches to my code. For the hidden items, that code is already in a dozen places and already has gone through several versions of improvements. That all happened while I was still building my final data structure. Doing the patching would take time and would have to be done case by case checking each one along the way. Rather than doing that, it's probably worth my time right now to rework two important parts of Behold.

The first is to rework my input routine so that the Concatenated lines are pre-concatenated. Then I won't have to check for them everywhere. This would involve pre-reading the next line, and that's a little tougher than it sounds because of the way I've "globalized" that routine. It should only take a day or two.

The second and more important task is to get my five different types of GEDCOM objects that I'm handling combined into just two, and have both of them use a similar data structure, thus merging the separate functions into single ones that will work in all cases. This will "formalize" my implementation of what I call Behold's "Extended GEDCOM" data structure. There are two structures involved: Records and Links. Each can have subordinate data. Records can contain Links. Links always point to Records and can contain other Links. When a Link contains subordinate data, it becomes a citation. Now that may all sound confusing to you, and you need not worry about it, but the exact structure has been eluding me up to last night. It took a bike ride, a 2 a.m. awakening, and a shower for me to finally figure it out.

The nice thing about doing this now is that the beta coming up will be perfect to ensure this improved implementation is all bug free. Nothing on the outside will change because of it. The Everything Report will look the same except some bugs will be fixed. The code will be simplified and generalized, hopefully becoming somewhat faster because of improved data structures. But future changes will be much easier, and Behold will be better prepared for the reading in of data directly from other programs, and later for GEDCOM output and editing.

If all goes well, this all could be done within a week or two. Then back to the show.

The retooling the two parts of Behold was tricky, but its going well.

Moving the CONC tag to the input stage led to a few other simplifications. My large test file of 33,000 people that I use for timings takes about 35 seconds. This improvement actually cut a half a second off that.

But changing the storage of each record's data lines from a linked list into a single long string had me worried. You can't get much faster than a linked list, but I already needed citations in a string and didn't want to continue to process data lines in two separate ways. I was relieved when it only added about a second of time on, or only about 3%. But it did reduce the RAM requirement by about 30MB down to 650MB for that file, or about 5%.

For most programmers, the recommendation is to always use more memory if you can save time. But Behold is a bit different in this regard. For very large GEDCOM files, it is often the memory that is Behold's limitation, so anything I can reduce from that is worth it.

Over the weekend, hopefully I'll finish this as I merge the display algorithms together and eliminate many inconsistencies and bugs during the process.

I surprised myself. After a few more fixes in attempting to merge the display algorithms, I realized that my Friday arguments weren't beneficial enough to go through that right now. So I left the input improvements and backed out of my data structure changes. Now back towards getting done what's needed to get to beta.

On the Internet, the competition for family networking and build-your-trees online sites is getting crazy. New sites are popping up every day. Almost all are free and "secure" and have the goal of linking everyone in the world into one big tree.

So how do you pick between: AGES-online, Amiglia, AprilTree, Distributed Family Tree Project, FamiliaOnline, Famillion, FamilyInHistory, FamilyLink, Family Pursuit, FamilyRelatives, FamilyTrackers, Family Tree Drillet, FamilyTree (for Facebook), Family Tree Guide, Findmypast, Genealogia, Genebase, Genes Reunited, Geni, GNTP, JotSpot, LostCousins, My Great Big Family, MyTrees Online, OneFamilyTree, One Great Family, Online Family Tree, PedigreeSoft, SharedTree, TreeX, TribalPages, WeRelate and Zooof? Then there's the 3 more I just found out about and added today: Famiva, Genoom and Kincafe to my Online Genealogy Programs section of my Genealogy Software Links page. Have I missed any?

If there's money to be made in this, then someone will step in and start to buy a few out and the others will fold. Maybe the general public and younger audiences like social networking. But I'm not sure if true family genealogists really want what they're offering. Go back to my March 25, 2007 post for my previous thoughts on this.

Dick Eastman yesterday wrote an interesting article titled "PAF on a stick". You have to be a Plus subscriber to see the whole article, but basically Dick was talking about using a Jump/USB/Pen drive (it has many names) to carry, not only your genealogy data, but also your genealogy program around with you.

The problem with putting a program on a those portable drives is that since Windows 98, Microsoft has encouraged programmers to change from using INI files to store program settings to using the Windows Registry. They wanted to allow different users to login to the same machine and each would have their own settings. So almost all programs, Behold included, have adopted the use of the Registry as Microsoft has wanted.

But the latest craze is to use these pen drives to take your software and data with you. This allows you to run your program with your data on a library computer, a friend's computer, a school computer or anywhere else, without the need to install the program or use or modify that computer's Registry (which sometimes is even locked out from you). The new tech term is "portable application".

Behold would be a great application for this. First it is simple and has just one .EXE file, one help file, and does not need its own DLL (system) files. Wouldn't it be great to take Behold and your data with you and use it anywhere? You'll be able to use it to display your data, wherever you are. When version 2.0 comes, you'll be able to edit your data too, wherever you are!

All it would require is being able to read/write it's Registry info from/to a special file instead of the Registry. I can get Behold to detect if the file is there to use that file, and if not, to use the Registry. Then I'll add a menu/toolbar item in Behold to export Behold to a pen drive (i.e. as a portable application).

All of this would not be that difficult for me to do. I might be able to squeeze it in before for the beta version. I think that would be the cat's meow.

As I use Behold to build my HTML webpage for my family research, I realize I will have to include thumbnails of photos. Up until today, I hadn't thought of a good way to do that.

GEDCOM files can specify IMG tags, which give the location of an image on the local computer. But TRichview, which I'm using as the engine for the Everything Report, does not yet properly wrap text around images. My plan was to wait until they implemented that.

But then I realized that I simply want to display a thumbnail (very small version) of each picture on its own line, with any descriptive text about it on the right. So an easy implementation would be a table with one row and two columns. In the first column is the image. In the second is the textual information. No word wrap around the image is necessary and it should look quite nice.

Now what about getting the full image. The idea was to click on the image to bring up the original. That would be possible from from the Everything Report in Behold, also possible from the HTML web page Behold produces, and probably possible as well from the RTF Behold can output.

But then I discovered something quite elegant. There is a really nice Photo-Zoom capability available for web pages. You just put your mouse over the thumbnail and the full size image instantly appears in the same window. No clicking or new windows required. It is very user friendly and useful!

What I'll do is finish up the current version, hopefully in the next week or so. I've only got 18 more days until this alpha version expires. But since I need the photos in Behold's output for my project, I'll add the thumbnail capability as the first thing after this version is released. And if it's not too hard, I'll try to add the photo-zoom as well. That will be a killer feature if add it.

So you won't have to wait for images until Version 3 anymore. It'll be in Version 1.

So first I was told that Behold was not detecting the new version when you "Check Online for New Version".

What had happened was I went from version 0.98.9d to 0.98.9.5. I changed from the letter suffix to the point number for Vista compatibility.

Version 0.98.9d detects the new version okay, but 0.98.9c, b, or a do not. Those three previous versions checked to see that the running program's version is LESS than the online version. But that's a problem because "." is greater than "a" or "b" or "c" in a computer string comparison. I changed the check in the 0.98.9d version that it be UNEQUAL rather than LESS than. So it's not a problem if you previously had upgraded to 0.98.9d.

The bottom line here is that if you still have the 0.98.9a, b or c versions, you will not be able to use the "Check Online for New Version" to upgrade. Instead, you'll have to go to the Behold download page, click on the "Click Here to Download" and say "Run". That will run the new install file and put the newest 0.98.9.5 version on your machine. You won't have to re-register.

The second problem was that Behold stopped working in Windows 98. I didn't realize that I still had a user using Windows 98, but I do. It ended up being a memory call that I purposely changed so that more than 2 GB could be reported. Unfortunately that call causes an error in Windows 98.

So I found a way to make the correct call depending on the Operating System. Google searches do wonders. It found the method to do this in a forum, and it didn't matter that the forum was in German.

So if you are still running in Windows 98, let me know, and I'll give you a link to the fix you need.

My organization of my Romanian family is going to take about a week to complete. I plan to put the resulting Behold-produced page on my website so that my cousins and our researcher in Romania can all have access to the most up-to-date info at all times. Then, as new information comes in, I'll add it to the GEDCOM, and use Behold to produce a new web page.

I'll be organizing the photos for this project as well. Thumbnails, info about the pics, and links to larger versions of the pics will need to be included. That's what I want to add to Behold while I do all this. I better get to work and see how it goes.

About a week ago, my Mom took very ill, advancing into her final days with terminal lung cancer. So I have not worked on the new site or Behold and it will be at least a week before I get back to it.

My Mom is 84, has had a full and satisfying life and has said she is ready to go - it is her time. She is a strong woman and doesn't want anyone to be sad or worry about her.

It is always tough losing a loved one. But she'll live on in our memories. And as a genealogist, it is my plan to record as many of these memories as possible so that her future descendants and relatives will know about her and her soul will live on.

No further details available.

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[allAfrica] Cape Town -- "We are gathering to celebrate African innovators who are developing innovations that heal our planet, create local jobs, and safeguard our communities."

[Premium Times] A PREMIUM TIMES review of the relevant Nigerian laws and speaking with lawyers reveal a series of legal violations in the recent trial of minors arrested in connection with the #EndBadGovernance protest.

[This Day] When voices rise in waves of protest, deeper wounds are laid bare--truths woven into our laws and ethics, waiting to be unearthed. In Nigeria, one such moment emerged in the #EndBadGovernance protests, where voices for change faced harsh reprisals. The arrest and prosecution of 76 individuals, among them children, echoed like a somber drumbeat across the nation. The image--young souls accused of plotting to topple a government they scarcely understood--was not merely a misstep in justice, but a profound

[This Day] In line with the vision of the Governor of Bayelsa State, Senator Douye Diri to make Bayelsa a model for basic education reform and transformation, the Ministry of Education and Bayelsa State Universal Basic Education Board (Bayelsa SUBEB) have launched BayelsaPRIME@Home, an initiative designed to keep primary school children learning during the flood break.

[Nile Post] Former Prime Minister, Dr.Ruhakana Rugunda has said the time is ripe for youths to charge of the affairs of the African continent.

[Premium Times] "Tell me why you dey hate on your brother, why you dey stab am for corner, and why you wan push am for gutter. Why you dey hate one another, you suppose stick with your brother and stick with your sister."

Check out the day-by-day itinerary of this exciting tour.

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The post C & I Solar Systems the Way to Go in South Africa appeared first on Braves News World.

[Nile Post] A key part of the celebrations will be the "RUN FOR THE BLIND" marathon, which aims to engage the public in supporting mobility for persons with visual impairments.

[allAfrica] The 5th HIV Research for Prevention Conference (HIVR4P 2024) held in Lima, Peru, marked a significant milestone in the global fight against HIV, bringing together more than 1,300 scientists, advocates, community representatives, and policymakers. This dynamic gathering provided a platform for experts to share cutting-edge evidence and discuss the latest tools and strategies in HIV prevention science.

[Capital FM] Kisii -- The U.S Food and Drug Administration ( FDA) has confirmed the availability of lenacapavir, a two-yearly injectable HIV/ADS treatment as early as the summer 2025, a decision made by FDA after the completion of phase 3 trial of lenacapavir treatment.

[Leadership] Nigeria's youngest female lawmaker, Hon Rukayat Shittu, representing Owode Onire constituency at the Kwara State House of Assembly has traveled to France for the Organisation of Parliamentary Work programme.

[CAF] The CAF Women's Champions League officially gets underway this weekend with tournament hosts, AS FAR hoping to re-live their historic moment of lifting the CAF Women's Champions League in front of their highly vocal fans.