From: fr@compu.com (Fred Rump from home)
Subject: Re: Royalty GedCom and GEDCOM program
Organization: CompuData Inc.
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 17:51:11 GMT

hiscrp@nuscc.nus.sg (C R Pennell) writes:


> fr@compu.com (Fred Rump from home) writes:

>Then let me spell it out for you. Some people use cars to get to work
>others use them as a hobby. The one is not less valid than the other.

But hobby cars might not travel very well on the modern highway, correct. They 
may be little tiny toy cars with a 2 cycle engine. Or they may be overpowered 
racing cars that would not even be permitted to travel on the normal everyday 
road that the vast majority of drivers travel.

So it is with genealogical software. Your dissatisfaction of the design of 
such software has little to do with genealogy but much more with history. 

You need a product that would not be of much interest to the vast majority of 
genealogists. Yet, we (you and I) do not differ all that much and if you were 
to listen in on discussions in the lines-l mailing list (users of the 
Lifelines UNIX software for genealogists), you would find me and others 
constantly asking for more relevance by time and place in our databases. This 
has to do with history. To me the distinction is only that I'm recording 
the history of plain people (rather than kings and generals) thru time. The 
interest is in the fact that these were somehow my people instead of total 
strangers on the maps of history. 

Apparently you don't care if they are strangers and care more about painting 
history via their various connections and you wish software to accomplish 
that. I don't think it exists. 

>topic which attempts to USE geneological techniques, simply to get me
>from A to B, I PERSONALLY find the software to be inadequate.

As I said, no one would argue with you on that.


>: All those other strains which we can't find are the nameless people who simply
>: came and went - we latch onto some we can find and call it our genealogy. It
>: may be much more on the nameless side. Ideally you would not track the males
>: anyway.

>Who is "you" - me? or people generally. Why should there be only one
>"ideal" way to deal with genealogical information? Why can't I or anyone
>else decide what use I want to make of it

Most genealogists are amateurs as this is pretty much a hobby. To connect to 
someone famous has always been a goal of success. As genealogy becomes more 
scientific and proof is demanded, real research requires resources that many 
people will not be willing to give. One of these resources might be a $1000 
piece of genealogical software along with the hardware to support it. We have 
not yet arrived at such a demand. There are too few who are willing to really 
do the best possible work using the best tools on the market.



> Umbilical lines would make a bit more sense being that the child is
>: fairly certain to have the mother's genes at least.

>For what purpose? for tracing back a genetic line, sure, but suppose I
>don't want to? Who says I've got to?

No one says you must do anything. But if you're doing genealogy you should be 
dealing with the ancestry of people as is best possible. It would be history 
that is secondary not genealogy. If you're doing history there should be 
software for that purpose which would of necessity include socioeconomic
factors of the people of those times - but not their genetic connections.  The
emphasis changes.



>And yes, I know I used a generalising "you" also as in the extract which
>follows. But the import is different. I'm not dictating HOW anyone else
>sets about doing their genealogical research, or the uses to which they
>put it, I'm saying that everyone should be able to pick and choose what
>they want, direct their research towards what interests them, rather than
>have it determined by the software, or by other people working on the same
>field:

It is the impossible dream you are describing. Software represents a purpose 
of design to accomplish a particular goal. There is no software that lets 
anybody do anything without them first writing some specificity into the 
arrangement. Generic software would put the entire programming world, which 
spends billions of dollars annually to arrive at specific goals, into 
obsolescence.  It is called artificial intelligence and we ain't there yet.


>economic and educational life in Britain for  fifty-odd years have
>maintained themselves in power then an understanding of their marriage
>patterns (and perhaps their genetic patterns as well <grin>) IS important.

That is fine.  It is one family's genealogy.  It would be of interest to only
a few people and maybe a historian or two. :-) It is not in the mainstream of 
personal genealogy which involves millions.

Fred

-- 
W. Fred Rump 	office:	   fred@COMPU.COM     'mans feet have grown/so big 
26 Warren St.   home: fred@icdi10.compu.com  that he/forgets his littleness'
Beverly, NJ. 08010                          		Don Marquis 
609-386-6846    bang:uunet!cdin-1!icdi10!fr   
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