Kith and Kin Pro V3 in development

The old version of our genealogy database program.

Moderator: Nick Hunter

Nick Hunter
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Kith and Kin Pro V3 in development

Post by Nick Hunter » Tue Feb 17, 2009 3:04 pm

We are currently developing a new version of Kith and Kin Pro and would welcome any suggestions for features or improvements.

New features which have now been included:
  • Added Adobe PDF file export for all reports.
    Added Soundex and Metaphone searches. This allows users to search for similar sounding surnames.
    Added Soundex and Metaphone code calculator.
    Families can be arranged into selectable "Layers". This allows the user to "grey out" all families except the ones he wants to work on.
    Simplified the Search Window. As well as the V2 SQL queries, users will be able to carry out much simpler searches.
    Function to save SQL queries to file added.
    Several different picture records can link to the same image file.
    Pictures can be arranged into an order defined by the user.
    Pictures can be added to source references and source documents.
    Drag and drop pictures from Windows added.
    Option to exclude picture files from database copying.
    Web page export uses a CSS stylesheet. This makes the Web pages much easier to customise.
    Supplied with several pre-defined stylesheets.
    Living people can be excluded from Web page export.
    Multiple timelines are now possible and timeline management is handled within Kith and Kin Pro.
    Fields "Email" and "Web site" added to the source repositories table.
    The person/family data form picklist popup entries are saved between sessions.
    Importing a GEDCOM file from a different program now produces an acceptable tree on the screen.
    Option to add the same single source reference to every person/family imported from a GEDCOM file.
    The notes editor window can now be used for all multi-line database fields.
    Click the middle mouse button in the Tree Area to return to 100% zoom centered on the mouse.
    Option to automaticaly re-use P and F codes.
    Option to reopen databases at the last viewed position.
    Added a function to create a "clean" new database - ie. one without the current user-defined fields.
    Column widths in person and family selection forms are preserved between sessions.
    Options to include full names and marriage dates in the family rectangles.
    New status bar shows zoom %, current layer and current family selection.
    The "Tree Layout" report now adjusts the font size to fit the scaling.
    The program shut-down has been speeded up.
    The unsupported Borland Database Engine has been replaced with a new engine.
Sample screen shot showing layer display: Sample Web export pages; the same data but with two different styles: A beta-test version of the new V3 is now available.
Please see a later post in this thread.

Hopefully we will be able to release the new version by the middle of 2009.
Last edited by Nick Hunter on Tue Apr 21, 2009 7:19 pm, edited 8 times in total.

Richard Johnston
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suggestions for new K&K

Post by Richard Johnston » Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:55 pm

Hi Nick,

the undo button..if it can be done..huge improvement

clarifying and distinguishing the edit person area from the delete person area.....

I'm sure I have some more...but I'll look over some previous posts to refresh my memory

thanks

Richard J.

PS: will the new K&K have an easier way to add pictures to families/persons....

Richard Johnston
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Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2006 9:50 am

Post by Richard Johnston » Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:57 pm

Nick,

another suggestion I had was more room for burial info...allows for more specific referencing

maybe a way of adding a picture of the headstone?

R.

Richard Johnston
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Post by Richard Johnston » Thu Feb 19, 2009 4:00 pm

Hi Again

found anohter

automatic reusing of unused or previously used person family codes...saves the numbers getting really high and so on..

thanks

Richard

Richard Johnston
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timeline grid

Post by Richard Johnston » Thu Feb 19, 2009 4:02 pm

another good one for consideration...



Post Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2006 1:50 pm Post subject: feature suggestion - time line grid Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post
Hi again Nick,

I thought of this idea last night and was wondering what you and the forum thought of it.

I know the tree field is very big and doesn't really direct where to place each familky. I try to put all the parents a few inches above the kids and so on, but could there be a way to have a click on/off time line running vertically along the left side of the screen (one that moves where you do on the tree) that we could then position the marriage dates of the families within.

As part of this, maybe on the listing of the marriages in the family rectangle we have the marriage date as well. (I know you can right click for this info, but its not an option to the family rectangle to display) It would be great if K&K could then "snap to grid" the marriages in a timeline...then you could actually see the progression of the generations more clearly

..it would then be another quick reference guide for when families started as well

All my families rectangles obviously move up as the generations go back in time, but sometimes you get 3-4 generations of young parents and at the same time 2-3 generations in another branch (older parents) but they are on corresponding horizontal planes ...so when you look at corresponding grandparents one was married in 1940, the other 1899. I know this isn't a big deal, but I think it would be another great addition to a great program

any thoughts..I hope I explained it well enough

Richard Johnston
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last suggestion I had.....

Post by Richard Johnston » Thu Feb 19, 2009 4:08 pm

Just wondering, is there a way or could you add a way to have K&K go to where you last left off instead of just going to your "root" family. I know it would be great if each time I go back to work on inputting information it went to where I left off...saves me having to locate the family on the tree (which is quite big now)


maybe this could be an option... "root family or last family selected" for example...

thanks

Richard

Nick Hunter
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Post by Nick Hunter » Fri Feb 20, 2009 10:23 am

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the suggestions. We will certainly give them all consideration.

laschapas
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Post by laschapas » Fri Feb 20, 2009 6:21 pm

Hi Nick,

Here are my suggestions for version 3.

1. Save the size, position, column widths of the following windows for the next time the program is run; the "Select person to edit" window, the "Select family to edit window", the "Query" window.

2. Include the Notes database as an option in the "database list" on the Query window.

3. As the "SQL query" field on the query window can only save the last 20 queries I tend to save any special queries I use in a separate text file. Ideally it would only save the queries where I have completed the "Description" field.

4. As "Divorce" was a luxury for the well to do until the 1920s I have never used this field on the "Family" window, could this be a user defined field?

5. Include a WEB address field in the repository database.

6. I use the "ORDER BY" clause most of the time in SQL queries but I always struggle with the syntax. Could this clause be a field in the Query window?

7. I don't link pictures to people or families because the picture folder can become very large. I use Database -> Copy whenever I update the database to make a backup. This would create multiple large picture folders that I don't want. Could the option to copy the pictures be an option?

8. As Richard Johnston suggested an option of a timeline type layer to show each decade would be useful. I have the "Snap to grid spacing" set to 100 pixels and position family rectangles on the same horizontal level based on the marriage date decade.

9. As Richard, I also "reuse P/F code" whenever I create a new family or person. Reusing a P number ignores the option "Make a new people deceased".

The "Tree Area" view produced by Kith & kin Pro is my favourite feature and is unique to it. I now have over 700 families in my database and can quickly see where any of them fit into my tree. When I look at other Family History programs which do not have this view I always discount them as I could not work without it. There have been occasional comments about difficulty scrolling around the tree area. I find both holding down the right button, and the "Tree Area Control" sphere easy to use.

John Wood

donne
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Post by donne » Fri Feb 20, 2009 9:07 pm

I too like the family linkage representation of KKPro which suits my way of doing family history, but I would agree that ways of organising the space could be helpful when the number of families becomes large.

I would endorse the features suggested by Nick and my own additional wish list is as follows:

Better support for sources - I find there is a need for a more extensive extraction of the source in some cases, and this can be awkward typing it into that tiny scrolling window - can we have a full size edit window like in the notes section of the person input data form?

Support for Old Style dates - at the moment a date like 12 Jan 1732/33 can only be input as text.

Regards: Roger Donne

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Post by donne » Sun Feb 22, 2009 1:41 am

Just thought of another one:
Is it possible to have a more incremental zoom between 1 and 2? On my display, 1:1 is legible (of course), 1:2 generally is not. So zooming out generally is only useful to show tree layout.

Nick Hunter
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Post by Nick Hunter » Fri Feb 27, 2009 2:37 pm

Thanks for all these.

johno
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Another Idea for the release

Post by johno » Mon Mar 09, 2009 4:56 pm

This is a copy of my question from last year...hopefully to be added to version 3.:
When I look at my family tree, the last names for each family is shown. Can we not change that format to show full names? IE; Joe White instead of just White. Some of the families in my tree have same last names for husband and wife...would make it easier to understand a tree if the whole names were visible.

Nick Hunter
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Post by Nick Hunter » Tue Mar 24, 2009 9:16 am

Hi,

Development is now well advanced and many new features have been implemented, as you can see in the top post.

In response to specific suggestions:

Richard:
  • The Undo Button does not look feasible. Disk-based databases commit the changes to disk as soon as the "Update" or equivalent button is pressed. There's no going back.
    We have added the standard "Are you sure" dialog when deleting people.
    What would you suggest would make adding pictures easier?
    You will now be able to add headstone pictures to burial fields using the source reference. Additional burial details could also be added to the source.
    We will look at automatically reusing the P/F codes but this may slow things down every time you add a new person/family.
    We can add an option to scroll to the last Tree Area position when opening a database.
    We will look at adding the marriage date to the family rectangles.
    Although a few people have mentioned adding time data to the Tree Area display, I'm not sure that it would be an advantage. It would force the family rectangles of the same generation to be at the same horizontal level and that would both make the tree very wide and have a lot of crossing link lines. I prefer to keep the Tree Area freeform and concentrate on not overlapping, eg: http://www.spansoft.org/test/kkpro3scr.gif
John:
  • We will look at storing the column widths/positions for the person/family selection dialogs. It will not be possible in the SQL query results since the fields change on each query.
    We will look at adding the Notes table to the SQL query. This was not useful before because the database engine did not allow searches on multi-line text fields. The new database engine does allow this and so we have removed the separate "Text search" feature and combined notes searching into the new Search window http://www.spansoft.org/test/kkpro3search.gif Unfortunately it is not possible to display multi-line edit fields in the results but you do get a link to the data form.
    We have implemented a "Save to file" function for SQL queries.
    I don't think it would be useful to remove the divorce field from the family data form.
    We have added both Web url and email address fields to the Repositories table. Note that GEDCOM does not support these fields.
    We will look at adding an "ORDER BY" pick to the SQL search.
    We will also look at the option of not copying the picture image folders when using Database | Copy. This seems like a good idea for backing up as long as you have the image files backed-up elsewhere.
Roger:
  • You can now access the large notes editor window from any multi-line text field simply by double-clicking in the edit box.
    It seems unlikely that we will be able to implement old-style dates - they do not fit into our dating scheme. But we will look at the problem again.
    We will look at a smaller zoom increment between 1:1 and 2:1 but it may cause problems in the Tree Area Control.
Johno:
  • I think we can have an option to display the full names in the family rectangles. It will make them very long though.

johno
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Post by johno » Wed Mar 25, 2009 12:48 pm

Nick;

Instead of having longer family rectangles, can we have a second line option so the rectangles aren't too wide, but just an extra line taller? This might be a better idea.

Phil

Nick Hunter
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Post by Nick Hunter » Fri Mar 27, 2009 8:56 am

Yes, we can do that. It still makes the rectangles bigger but it will be optional.

I have been looking again at the older forum posts and this one: viewtopic.php?t=12 has some good suggestions regarding layers/selective Tree Area display which I think we might be able to implement.

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