Kith and Kin Pro V3 in development

The old version of our genealogy database program.

Moderator: Nick Hunter

Nick Hunter
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Post by Nick Hunter » Sun May 03, 2009 8:15 am

Hi John,

Thanks for spotting the image display problem. It seems to have been a limitation in the compiler. We have fixed it in Beta V6 - now available for download. Please uninstall the previous beta first.

There is no message beep on Information or Confirmation messages, only Warning and Error. If you hear a beep when you open K&KPro and see the beta warning, then everything is fine. The small button should be depressed to hear sounds.

laschapas
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Location: Derbyshire, UK

Post by laschapas » Sun May 03, 2009 9:13 pm

Hi Nick,

More picture testing with version Beta 6 produces more, but different problems. Following your reply I have tested my large pictures which displayed correctly when the picture was double clicked. But I have found two other picture problems.

First I tried producing a web page which included the large photo. The photo was not copied to the web page pictures folder so trying to display it produced an error saying the file was not there. This was how I discovered the original problem with large pictures. Other pictures were copied correctly.

To test this further I did File -> Database -> New clean. I created a family. I added my large picture to the family via the picture icon. It displayed correctly. To have a comparison picture I added your return.gif file as a small photo. this displays correctly, but if I then try to display my large photo again I get a blank picture. Closing this blank picture and trying to display the return.gif picture I get "Access violation at address 10004C81 in module 'FreeImage.dll' Read of address 00000003". Closing Kith&KinPro produces another access violation error. So the display module is now happy with my large picture, which I can open & close several times without error, but does not like the return.gif picture.

I hope this is clear. Over to you,

John Wood

Nick Hunter
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Post by Nick Hunter » Mon May 04, 2009 12:31 pm

Hi John,

Thanks.

It looks like there was a problem with JPEGs and transparency. I have changed it so that all the images exported for Web pages are now PNGs. This has the added advantage that the transparency in the original image file is preserved on the Web pages.

Beta 7 now available...

laschapas
Posts: 74
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2006 9:48 am
Location: Derbyshire, UK

Post by laschapas » Mon May 04, 2009 1:59 pm

Hi Nick,

I have tested Beta 7 and all the picture problems I had are now working ok.

One area you may want to think about is the help file for adding pictures. I wanted to use the same picture twice. The help instructions section "Linking to an image file:" covers linking to a file in the current pictures folder but does not state that you must do this to link a picture a second time. If you try to link to the source file in its original folder you get an error message, with an audio alarm incidentally, that the file already exists, which of course you know. It is not made clear that to create a second link you must select the file in the current pictures folder. I spent quite a while trying to work out how to solve this problem. Perhaps it was just me.

John Wood

Nick Hunter
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Post by Nick Hunter » Mon May 04, 2009 8:00 pm

Thats great John.

I see what you mean about the warning message. I will make it a bit friendlier and change the help.

laschapas
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Location: Derbyshire, UK

Post by laschapas » Mon May 04, 2009 11:12 pm

Hi Nick,

More observations rather than faults.

I notice when installing version 3 that it gives you the option to change where the program is installed, but there is no choice as to where the database, the timeline files, & the html folders are installed. Is this a Vista requirement? I run Windows XP.

As part of my pictures test I created a new database and imported a GEDCOM file. If you export all the families of the Sample_v3 file, create a new clean database, import the sample_v3 GEDCOM file, the screen looks blank. The families have been created but are positioned off the top of the screen. This will probably be very disconcerting for a new user creating their first database. It is easy to find the families that have been created but your first reaction is that the import has not worked. When importing a large database the families are visible.

Over to you

John Wood

Nick Hunter
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Post by Nick Hunter » Tue May 05, 2009 8:04 am

Hi John,

Yes, Vista is very picky about where files are stored - but the same locations are recommended for XP by Microsoft. These are only the default locations and you can change them once you are in K&KPro except the location of the timeline tables and INI files.

I tried your GEDCOM export/import procedure and was able to see the resulting tree OK. I'll check again with some different settings.

laschapas
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Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2006 9:48 am
Location: Derbyshire, UK

Post by laschapas » Tue May 05, 2009 10:38 am

Hi Nick,

More on the import GEDCOM. My screen resolution is 1680 x 1050. Changing it does not change the problem. If I use the Tree Control Area to zoom out to 15% and try to move the imported families off the right hand edge of the screen they hit the limit by the right hand edge. If I create a new family before I start importing this GEDCOM the new family will go off the right hand edge at 15% zoom. If I import a GEDCOM of 800 families and your sample family they are both visible at 8% zoom. They were loaded at the top left of the display area. The new family I created before loading GEDCOM files is not on screen at the same time as the GEDCOM files at 1.5%. Any greater zoom out the family rectangle vanishes. How large is the system display area? If the system starts in the centre and loads imports top left it needs to jump to any new import after loading it. My system is staying in the centre which must be at least 1680 @ 8% away from the left edge, 12.5x1680 that's a lot of pixels.

Hope this helps.

John Wood

Nick Hunter
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Post by Nick Hunter » Tue May 05, 2009 11:01 am

Hi John,

We will just get the program to scroll to a family from the imported GEDCOM file.

The Tree Area is 2G pixels wide and tall.

Nick Hunter
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Post by Nick Hunter » Wed May 06, 2009 12:31 pm

Hi,

We have released Beta V9, available from http://www.spansoft.org/downloads/kithk ... hkinp3.msi.

The previous Web image export fix meant that the files were exported as PNGs and they were approx 5 times the size of the same JPEGs, which was too big for Web files.

Beta V8 changes the Web picture files back to JPEGs, with the picture quality (ie. the amount of compression) controlled by "Options | Preferences | Pictures | JPEG quality". This will cut the size of the Pictures folder right down again.

However, if a particular picture file contains any transparency the Web file will be exported as a PNG file instead of a JPEG. This preserves the image transparency when displayed in a Web browser. Only GIF, TGA and PNG files are likely to contain transparency.

We have also improved the performance of the "Link to image file", image file browsing dialog so that it displays a preview of large images correctly.

Nick Hunter
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Post by Nick Hunter » Sun May 10, 2009 4:26 pm

Hi,

Kith and Kin Pro V3 has now been released.

Thanks to everyone who gave us feedback on the beta testing phase.

Please post any new topics in the Kith and Kin Pro V3 forum.

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