Tag: standards

The GEDCOM parser of Genealogie Online needed a rewrite. The code base had grown out of proportion, resulting in inefficient code and cumbersome maintenance. A big difference between the start of coding the GEDCOM parser and now is the number of GEDCOM files available: nearly 7 thousand. This gave me the opportunity to do some…

The GEDCOM 5.5 standard is described in a PDF document prepared by the Family History Department of the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dated 2 January 1996 (which in two days is 19 years ago). When you Google for the GEDCOM 5.5 grammar you usually end up on the HTML version by…

One can daydream about the ideal genealogical search engine for an archive. After this, you could e-mail your suggestions and wait until the archive (or their software supplier) to see the light and get the budget, you could complain, or just let it rest. Or you just take the challenge yourself. Based on a list…

When we buy 1 liter of milk we expect 1 liter of milk, because there are clear agreements about what 1 liter is. It’s a well documented standard. This way a producer knows how much to put in and a consumer knows how much he/she gets, no confusion. If you go abroad, a liter stays…