GSP - Gedcom Service Programs

These programs are available as part of the "OFB Program package" as well as separate "Gedcom Service Program package".

System Requirements 01.12

The program has been written using "Microsoft Visual Basic.NET 2010". Therefore it is required, that the system software

• "Microsoft .NET Framework Version 3.0, 3.5 or 4.0" for Win XP, Vista and Win7 (should you have none of this versions, I recommend to use version 4.0)

By the following link "Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0" may be downloaded for free from the Microsoft download Center. After download install it by double click on the filename.

Alternatively the software may be downloaded and installed by the Windows Update Function.

Installation & Update

• the GSP - Start Center
• the 5 Gedcom Service Programs
• and all further required files

General Remark

MS "Vista/Win7" Operating system handles the access rights to the Programm folder "C:\Program Files\..." more restrictive than "XP" and all previous systems. Only "administrators" have the right to write to the program folders. With this setup as Data folder for "XP" the folder "C:\Documents and Settings\[YourName]\ApplicationData\GedcomSerPro\" and for "Vista/Win7" the folder "C:\User\[YourName]\AppData\Roaming\GedcomSerPro\" (or a similar one) will be created. To this folder all ini files and license files will be written by the programs. To this folder the user guides have to be copied by the Gedcom Start Center.
In case you are not working as "Administrator", you should use as Program folder e.g. the folder "C:\GedcomSerPro" or any other folder, but never "C:\Program Files\...". You also may do this as administrator. In this case no separate Data folder will be created, but the Program folder will be used as Data folder.
The actual path information of the folders will be listed in a window after pushing the "Info" at the right top of the Gedcom Start Center.

Installation

1. Download the installation file "gsp-setup.exe" from the Download area to any folder
2. From this folder start the file "gsp-setup.exe".
3. The setup will check, if all requirements (see above) are met. Are all requirements met, first the language selection screen to define the language to be installed, then the welcome screen of the setup assistant shows up to guide the further installation.
4. Setup checks if you have the rights of an administrator. As administrator the installation folder "C:\Program Files\GedcomSerPro" will be pre selected, as normal user "C:\GedcomSerPro" will be preselected (a normal user has no rights to write to "C:\Program Files\...".
5. A choose component screen allows the selection of following groups:
   • all programs and all required graphic and the 2 language files (ged-en.lng, ged-de.lng) will always be installed on the PC, the graphic files in the subdirectory "\img" and the language files in "\lng"
   • Desktop icons for "GSP-Start"
   • Quick launch icons for "GSP-Start"
   It is recommended to select all components.
6. Shortcut for all programs installed will be created in the program menu.
7. A link between the program "GedcomConv" and *.gcsd for the Conversion Definition files, "GedcomRedu" and *.grsd for the Reduction Selection files, "GedcomSort" and *.gssd for the Sorting Selection files and "GedcomValid" and *.gvsd for the Validation Definition files will be created.

Now the User Guides should be loaded by the "Update" function of the "Start center" from the server to your PC to be available when pushing the "Help" button of the programs. Prerequisite is to link the pdf-files to a pdf-reader.

USB Stick Installation

The programs may be executed, if all system requirements for the programs are met on the PC connected to the USB stick.

Update

Licensing & Copyrights

Without license the programs "Gedcom Conversion", "Gedcom Reduction" ,"Gedcom Sorting" and "Gedcom Structure Analysis" will run only the first 10 program starts using the full functionality. Thereafter no further program start is possible. For the "Gedcom Validation" only the first 20 errors of each group will be listed, for the comparison of duplicate persons only the first 5 pairs of persons will be listed for demonstration purpose and the storage of "No Duplicates" is not activated.

The full functionality of the programs will be activated by a "Gedcom Service Program" license or a bundled "OFB" license. Details for the bundle see "Our Family Book".

1. Send an email - addresses see menu item "Imprint" - to me with the information, which name for the license ownership you would like to get. This must be in the form "FirstName LastName, Location" and at least 10 chars long. Of course, middle initials, middle names and/or titles etc. may be included.
   For a better service please give me the names of the genealogy programs you are using.
2. I will send to you for Europe my Bank account data for the money transfer. "PayPal" may be used for non-European countries.
3. After receiving the license fees I will send to you by email a personal license file, storing the information about "License owner" und "License key". The name of the license file will be "ged-YourName.lic", where "YourName" will be created from parts of your name. This file will be packed to a zip-file.
4. Store this file on your hard disk in a save folder. Extract your personal license file from the zip-file.

The license fee for each user is:    15 EUR    resp.    25 USD.

Activation of the license

1. Call from the Gedcom Start Center the license management by pressing the "License" key. Now the standard file load screen will show up. Load the personal license file from the save folder. This will transfer the information about license owner and license key to a central license file "ged.lic" at the GSP-data folder. An appropriate message will inform you about the results.
   In case of error messages you may just run a copy of the personal license file, rename the file to "ged.lic". Now move this file to the data folder (see "Info" at the Start Center).
2. By storing your license data in the central file "ged.lic", the Gedcom Service Programs are enabled for you as license owner for unlimited usage.

Gedcom Start Center

See the GSP user guide 1 for further details.

Gedcom Conversion

Functionality

By this program Gedcom structures can be modified in a way to minimize or even eliminate data losses during exchanging ged-files between genealogy researchers using different genealogy programs.

The program (GedcomConv.exe) is used, beside the main task of the conversion, to create and manage the required definitions. 6 tabs are available and their content may be stored in definition files for later re-use.

During conversion the original file will remain unchanged. ASCII, ANSI, ANSEL and UTF-8 coded files will be handled.

See the GSP user guide 2 for further details.

Gedcom Reduction

Functionality

This program (GedcomRedu.exe) allows by selective extracting from any Gedcom file to build a new, reduced ged-file with the desired group of persons and the new file will have the same structure than the original file. For this a selection of persons and locations are available. For several persons the ancestors and/or descendants may be selected. Further options allow to control the volume of the new file. Partners, children, parents, relations and media may be included at the transfer. In addition "Privacy Protection" options are available to eliminate persons protected by the privacy protection rules or to restrict their data 01.12.

For considering program specific specialities of the genealogy programs, for several selection criteria the required definitions have to be specified, e.g. which tag is used for christening - CHR or BAPM - or how living locations, occupation, family name or relations are coded in the ged-file. These definitions and the entered selection criteria will be stored in files accordingly for later re-use.

If a demand exists to change the structure of the new ged-file, because the importing genealogy program only would transfer parts of the data correctly, the below described "Gedcom Conversion" program may help in most of the cases.

The original file will remain unchanged. ASCII, ANSI, ANSEL and UTF-8 coded files will be handled.

See the GSP user guide 3 for further details.

Gedcom Sorting

Functionality

• Sorting according the dates within the INDI and FAM data records. The sequence of the data records remain unchanged. All other data records remain unchanged.

  By this, identical events (e.g. occupation) are in chronological order.

• Sorting of INDI data records according Name and Birth date. The sequence of the data records will be altered. The sequence within every INDI data record remains unchanged. All other data records also remain unchanged.

  By this sorting 2 different ged-files may be compared easily by using the program "WinMerge" allowing to find duplicates or to simplify merging of persons.

• Sorting of FAMS and CHIL lines according date ascending.

  By this sorting you can for certain genealogy programs create a correct output sorting for children according their birth date and for marriages according their marriage date.

During sorting the original file will remain unchanged. ASCII, ANSI, ANSEL and UTF-8 coded files will be handled..

See the GSP user guide 1 for further details.

Gedcom Structure Analysis

Functionality

Various options allow to customize the level of details of the analysis as required, e.g. to check the conformance of all DATE lines to the Gedcom specification.

See the GSP user guide 1 for further details.

Gedcom Validate & Merge

Functionality

• People digitalizing Parish registers
  Collecting the data will be done separately for birth and death registers. By this program identical people can be detected for merging.
• Ancestor researchers
  Gedcom files, coming from other researchers, friends or from the Internet, can be compared with personal Gedcom files to find persons already stored in the personal data base.

• Single Gedcom files. In this case the check may include
  • Multiple occurrence of identical persons within the file (duplicates).
  • Logical errors for the date values (e.g. birth after death resp. marriage).
  • Various other potential problems (warnings or error messages).
  • Multiple found persons (duplicates) may be merged to a single person.
• Any two Gedcom files. In this case the check may include
  • Multiple occurrence of identical persons in both files (duplicates).

During validation following capabilities are available:

• Duplicates
  During validation the last names, first names, as well as date and location of birth/christening and death/burial of any 2 persons will be compared. The comparison of names and location names will be performed using phonetic methods. These are "Kölner Phonetik" and an improved "Soundex" method. For date comparisons ranges of dates may be defined.
  If during a manually comparison of duplicates found by the program someone discovered, that this is not a real duplicate, this decision can be stored in a file. During an additional analysis these stored pairs will no longer be counted as a duplicate.
• Date values
  During validation of logical errors of date data 6 fix comparisons (e.g. birth after death resp. marriage) are available. Here the date values will be compared 1:1. A second group of date comparisons using a flexible selection of ranges in months or years (e.g. birth of child after x years of birth of mother) are available.
  In addition date ranges may be checked for birth, christening, death and burial and missing dates may be found.
• Sex
  During validation of the sex symbol the erroneous swap of the sex from male/female and Mother/father will be checked.

In addition to the verification, the program allows a Merging of duplicate persons. In case of found duplicates within a single ged-file, these can be merged in a special screen. This screen is divide into 3 columns - left the "Original", right the "Duplicate", in the middle the result of the merging - and 2 rows for the persons data and the family data.

The layout of the screens for "Date Options", "List of validation results" and "List of duplicates" follows (enlarged by click on image):

See the GSP user guide 4 for further details.

 © 2005-2012, Diedrich Hesmer, Herrenberg (D), Saviese (CH)  -  last update