Family Gathering
By Bonnie Carter
Would you like to have a family REUNION with all of your relatives, living and dead?
You can, with the program REUNION by Leister Productions for both Mac and IBM.
REUNION allows you to keep track of your family tree for up to 30,000 individuals.
It uses a “card” concept to record information about each family member and his spouse(s)
and children. A helpful feature of the “card” concept is that it conveys information
quickly through graphics, something which a completely text-driven program cannot
do.
View an example of a family card (in a second window while
you read the article)
You can see that an individual appears on one side of the family card. (Male on left,
female on right.) If unmarried, the spouse’s side would remain blank, if married,
the spouse’s information would be filled in on the other side. The two boxes above
the individual are for the person’s parents. The boxes below a couple show the children.
The box in the center immediately above a couple is their marriage information. To
enter data for an individual, that person must be one of the two main people in the
center (or at the start, the card would be blank). You then would use a menu item
such as Enter–Add Husband or Wife or Enter–Husband’s Facts or Wife’s Facts to get
to a text-based empty form where you can enter data for a new person or can add data
for a person already listed. Most Menu items have a quicker access, such as clicking
on the information box for that person or clicking on one of the buttons across the
top of the family card. Entering parents or children for an individual, automatically
links their cards. When people are entered without links, they can later be linked
to the proper family in your family tree.
Each time a new person is entered, that person is assigned a sequential ID number
(bottom center, left and right numerals). Each family card is also assigned a family
ID number (bottom center numeral). These aid greatly in locating individuals or families
quickly.
__ One of the graphic “helps” is that male boxes always
have square corners, while female boxes have rounded ends. At a glance, you can tell
which box is for the husband or wife, father or mother, and which children are boys
and girls. Of course if the sex of a person is unknown, you do have to guess when
entering that person, but an incorrect guess can always be corrected at a later date.
__ The buttons across the top of the card are particularly
good graphic shortcuts for the menu actions. While you are learning and can’t remember
what a certain button is for, clicking and holding will bring up a “help” description
in the bottom left of the card or you can keep the quick reference card handy. By
the time you’ve entered a couple dozen relatives, you’ll know the buttons by heart
and use them constantly. Looking at each button will give a quick overview of many
of the features of REUNION and demonstrate the uses of each.
__ The first five buttons are grouped together, because
they are all means of making connections between people and navigating around the
family tree.
__ The Index gives you an alphabetical listing of all
the names entered in your family group (by last name). You can look at the names
in the entire alphabet or the names under just one letter of the alphabet. The greatest
use I’ve found for the index is to print it out (including individual ID numbers)
so that I can quickly look up that person’s ID and use it to get to that person’s
card quickly (click on one of the person IDs at the bottom and enter the ID of the
person you are searching for).
__ The Quick List is a running alphabetical list of
the names that you’ve entered or edited most recently. You can set it to hold the
last 10-150 names on a first in/first out basis and can add or clear names manually
as well. Since the quick list is shorter than an entire index, it can help you access
recent entries (or frequently used, manually added entries) more quickly than the
index, if your family tree has many entries.
__ The Calendar is an interesting “frill” which will
give you listings of birthdays, deathdays, and anniversaries in several different
ways–for a certain month, the entire year, or chronologically.
The Find feature allows you to look for someone by part of their name–for example,
if you want to use the index but can’t remember a last name or to find all the people
who have a certain name as one of their given names.
__ The Overview gives you a basic pedigree chart for
an individual on the family card showing. If there is both a husband and wife on
the card, the default is the husband, but a small arrow allows you to switch to the
pedigree of the wife or a child. Double-clicking on any of the ancestors showing
in the overview window is a quick way to jump to the card of that person.
The next four buttons are means of moving between the four information windows available
for each individual. The information windows appear directly below the names of the
two primary individuals on the family card.
__ The first button is the View Facts window. It lists
birth, death, and occupation information as well as the custom fields that you choose:
one event category and two fact categories. On the card shown above, baptism is the
custom event, while education and religion are the two fact categories. To enter
information into this window, either go to Enter–Husband’s Facts/Wife’s Facts or
just click on the information window of the person you want. Clicking Save then saves
the information entered and returns you to the card with the updated information
showing.
__ The second button displays the Miscellaneous Notes
window. It can hold 32,000 characters of text per person. It can be used to record
information that does not fit into either of the other two custom notes categories
and can include information that applies to only a few individuals rather than the
entire family. To enter information into this window, either go to Enter–Husband’s
Notes/Wife’s Notes and then make sure Miscellaneous Notes is marked, or click in
the miscellaneous notes window. When “writing” shows on the miscellaneous notes button,
one of the two primary individuals has information recorded in miscellaneous notes.
__ The third button displays the window with the two
Custom Notes fields that you select. (We went with Medical and Hobbies–two categories
that apply to all family members.) Each custom notes field also holds 32,000 characters
of text. To enter information into one of these fields, either go to Enter–Husband’s
Notes/Wife’s Notes and then make sure the field you want is marked, or click in either
the top or bottom half of the custom notes window. The disadvantage to the three
notes windows, is that they are not labeled when in the card view. You have to remember
which one is which, or click in the box to bring up the data entry view and see which
category is marked. When “writing” shows on the custom notes button, one of the two
primary individuals has information recorded in at least one of the custom notes
fields.
The fourth button displays the window listing all of the primary individuals’ Spouses.
When the heart on the button is grayed out, the primary individual(s) has only one
or no spouses. When the heart is red, one or both of the primary individuals has
more than one spouse.
The next four buttons provide means of adding special information.
The Camera button allows you to add and link pictures to a card and allows you to
display those pictures when you are viewing the card they are linked to. A flash
bulb on the camera signifies that there are pictures already linked to that card.
__ The Envelope button allows you to enter a miniature
data base for addresses and phone numbers. It automatically picks up the names from
the card information, but since that is not the usual style for addressing envelopes,
you may wish to change the name line in the data base. The addresses cannot be printed
straight from REUNION, but can be sent to a word processor or a disk file for printing.
__ The next button is the Edit Children Button. It is
only active if there are children listed, when it shows up blue rather than gray.
It allows one to change the birth order of children if they were entered in the wrong
order, and also allows one to designate the status of the child if different from
the ordinary, such as adopted, foster, twin, etc.
__ The last button in this set of four is the Edit Spouse
Button. It is only active if one of the primary individuals has more than one spouse,
when it shows up red rather than gray. It allows one to change the order of spouses
if they were entered in the wrong order.
The next two buttons are pretty straightforward. The male symbol designates the Add
Male Child button shortcut and the female symbol designates the Add Female Child
shortcut.
The last button is a quick way to go back to the card before. It keeps track of the
path of linkages that one navigates from the home card. Once you return to the home
card, you start over.
__ The two little boxes immediately above the left corner
of the husband’s name and the right corner of the wife’s name are buttons allowing
you to quickly switch to the card(s) with a person’s other spouse(s) and to quickly
switch to the card(s) with a person’s siblings. The buttons are only active (and
colored red or blue) if the person has more than one spouse or has siblings entered.
__ Other features, such as marking cards to print just
portions of your family tree, can be explored as one gets into the program more deeply.
__ Once you’ve done all the work of entering your data
into REUNION, what can you do with it? Here’s where you can have fun with your data.
Three vital aspects of the program that allow you to do that are reports (and sheets),
the SuperChart side program, and importing/exporting data from other family tree
programs.
__ The Create menu option allows you to print out the
information which you’ve entered in REUNION. Printing “Sheets” gives you very professional
looking printouts. But, because they are coming straight from REUNION, they cannot
be edited. Printing “Reports” allows you to send the data to a word processor or
disk file. They are very basic in look, but do allow you to add or change the material.
You then can give the report the professional look you want through formatting and
style. REUNION gives you the opportunity to print the sheets and reports in either
normal (leaving out information spaces that are empty), questionnaire (leaving blank
lines for missing information fill-in), and blank (all fact lines are blank) styles.
__ SuperChart is the frosting on the cake of the REUNION
program. SuperChart is the means by which you can print out wonderful family tree
charts. You can print either Pedigree (ancestors) or Descendant Charts, which can
be printed in three different styles. It allows you to add double or single line
frames, change colors of boxes and depth of shadows, and add captions. Pictures can
be added to the charts as well. The charts can be printed full-sized or reduced in
20% increments. But, as with any kind of charts, trimming and taping together the
many pages of a large chart can be very time-consuming. Reduction can really help
save paper as well as the physical work of putting the charts together.
__ Importing and exporting data in Gedcom format is
vital if you’ve already started your family tree in another program or if you wish
to share your information with other members in the family who use other programs.
Though there may be some data loss when unusual categories don’t match up, in general,
main data and linkages carry across program lines very well. It’s probably not a
feature you will use often, but when you need it, it is crucial to save you the hours
and hours and hours of time that it would take you to re-enter data.
__ Though I do not have any other genealogy program
to compare this to (other than seeing a demonstration of an older version of Personal
Ancestry File), I am very pleased with all the capabilities which REUNION gives me.
As with almost any program, there are a few minor additions or changes that I would
like, but I rather doubt I’d find them in another program, and wouldn’t be willing
to trade off any of the current features to get them.
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