From: Brian.Randell@newcastle.ac.uk (Brian Randell)
Newsgroups: soc.roots
Subject: Re:  Reunion
Date: 23 Aug 92 15:29:37 GMT
Followup-To: soc.roots
Organization: University of Newcastle upon Tyne,UK

In article <9208201913.AA20190@csoftec.csf.com>, cmanis@CSOFTEC.CSF.COM
(Cliff Manis) wrote:

> Will Reunion except data from a GEDCOM file ?

Yes - and I gather it has just received the LDS "Good Housekeeping Seal of
Approval" for its GEDCOM import/export facilities. (In fact when I came
across and reported an obscure bug in the GEDCOM export facilities a short
while ago, I was very impressed with the way that REUNION's developer
responded to my report, and within a week or so airmailed me a free upgrade
correcting the problem.)
 
> I would appreciate a note from anyone or all who are using it.  It seemed
> like a good package, as I read the ad on side of packaged box, but the
> people did not know anything about it.

> Do you like it ?

I like it very much. In almost all respects its facilities are more
comprehensive than MacPAF - the main exception is pedigree listing. REUNION
produces nice pedigree summaries, but not the detailed pedigrees (with
places and dates of birth, etc., that MacPAF does. On the other hand its
descendants listings are much better than MacPAF's.And unlike MacPAF it can
produce family histories (i.e. descendants listings with full notes
printed), questionnaires, and birthday calendars. It will calculate and
display relationships and direct lines, and help you find common ancestors.

> How about GEDCOM input of the data ?

No problem with GEDCOM from MacPAF, which is all I've tried. (The problem
with GEDCOM is that different systems support different variants/extensions
of it.)

> Will it accept text files which are in the GEDCOM data ?

If this means the notes fields then yes - if not, then I don't understand
the question.

Both REUNION and MacPAF are instantly attractive to a Mac user because of
the way that they make good use of the standard Mac approach to pointing
and selecting with the mouse, and to using cuta nad paste to minimize
typing. Their interfaces look somewhat different, but they similarly allow
one, say, to point at the name of a child and click, whereupon the relevant
record opens up in place of the parent's record. In general the REUNION
facilities for this are marginally better than those of MacPAF, but
MacPAf's facilities for moving up and down a pedigree are slightly better.

But REUNION scores heavily over MacPAF in that it also adheres to standard
Mac conventions for data interchange. Thus the various REUNION outputs can
in fact be fed into Mac applications such as databases, word processing and
desk top publishing programs. In particular the descendants listings -
which REUNION provides a fancy charting system for (producing vertical
graphical descendants listings, with neat boxes and lines and the ability
to incorporate digitized photos) - can  also be fed into organization chart
packages such as MORE. By such means I have produced very neat
laser-printed "wallpaper roll" family trees of all the descendants of my
earliest Randell ancestor.

To sum up with respect to facilities, REUNION has - for the time being at
least - caused me to abandon my use of the MSDOS emulator with which I
occasionally polluted my Mac in order to use some PC-based shareware GEDCOM
add-ons.

The other main way in which REUNION beats MacPAF is that it has much more
sophisticated facilities for searching and analyzing a family tree.

As regards performance, I would guess that REUNION is perhaps slighly
faster that MacPAF in data entry and in browsing. However it is definitely
slower in such things as importing or exporting GEDCOM. (The largest file I
have used on iot is the Royals file which is available by ftp - operations
on the whole of the file, as opposed to browsing and updating are best done
when you want a coffee  - or a three course meal!) It is Hypercard-based,
and makes great use of Hypercard facilities, while minimiozing Hypercard's
limitations.

There is a final reason why REUNION wins - that is that it is possible for
users to get at the code (written in Hypertalk - a high-level
object-oriented language) and add or alter things. Which is how Cliff's
question got started, because a student of mine is fitting an extra
facility to REUNION which will estimate missing dates.)

But for all this, I'm in fact - for the moment at any rate - continuing to
use both REUNION and Mac-PAF, though I'm careful to regard one as the
master, via which data entry is done. One of my main reasons for doing this
is that I'm collaborating with a distant cousin in my Randell researches,
and he uses MSDOS-PAF.

And I guess my advice to someone with (or with the taste to purchase) a Mac
who is starting to dabble with computer genealogy would be to commence with
MacPAF, which is very good and very good value for money - but then to
consider moving up when things get serious.

Cheers

Brian Randell

PS I have no connection with REUNION other than as a satisfied customer.

Dept. of Computing Science, The University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU,
UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell@newcastle.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 91 222 7923
FAX = +44 91 222 8232 
Newsgroups: soc.roots