What's Wrong With GEDCOM?
A GEDCOM file is a generic genealogy file created by genealogy software specifically for sharing files with:
- another researcher
- a website
- another program used by the same user
The problem is that GEDCOM hasn't been updated in 14+ years, yet main stream genealogy software has added more useful bells and whistles. So a GEDCOM file now wouldn't handle those "newly invented" options very well. Examples of GEDCOM file sharing problems are well documented in:
What does all this mean for the average researcher?
It seems like we both need to get more detail on specific problems with GEDCOM and define what it is genealogists want to see for the future. This page is for detailing horror stories from working with GEDCOM files and detailing what sorts of things users want to see in their genealogy programs in the future.
One issue not necessarily apparent to lots of users is how strong an influence the GEDCOM standard has been in the development of genealogy software. The data model that GEDCOM uses is still the basis for almost every genealogy program available today. One major reason genealogy software has not become more flexible is that GEDCOM development simply stopped, making data transfer of new data types difficult if not impossible. For this reason, BetterGEDCOM discussions often revolve around data concepts that aren't likely to be in common usage for years. Nevertheless, given the kind of influence this standard can have, it is imperative we shoot for the moon.
So, what's wrong with GEDCOM? What won't it do that you want it to? What hasn't worked for you in the past? Please edit this page to add your ideas or contribute by posting your story using the DISCUSSION tab directly above.
GEDCOM Messes This Up
- Sources (specifically see "Supporting documents/images")
- GEDCOM 5.5 allows embedding of multimedia objects (e.g. BLOBs). BLOBs are generally deprecated and were proposed for removal from GEDCOM 5.5.1.
- Certainty Assessment: Current GEDCOM values 0 to 3 stand for unreliable or estimated (0); questionable (1); secondary (2); primary (3). This confuses two concepts - we can have unreliable primary sources. Some people might also like to record original or derivative as a 3rd concept.
- GEDCOM has no ability to provide citations and sources for why a child is believed to be in a particular relationship with its (birth or whatever) parents. The citations and sources are either for a family as a whole or for individual birth (or whatever) events that only mention the child.
GEDCOM Won't Transfer This
- Supporting documents/images (partly an issue of poor implementation). Where multimedia documents, images and other objects are linked, there is no overall protocol for how they and the GEDCOM that refers to them, shall be transferred. As a result, any user receiving them may need to edit the file references in the GEDCOM on receipt. The overall protocol must facilitate the transfer of GEDCOM and linked objects without manual editing.
- Sources (specifically see "Supporting documents/images")
- Structured information about places, for example multiple names, default prepositions for names, photos, maps, sources and links for access to geographic information services.
I Want My Genealogy Software And BetterGEDCOM To Do This
- Handle evidence and not just conclusions
- When I find a piece of evidence that is wrong, I want to be able to highlight the subsequent conclusions that are probably wrong because they depended on this error.
- "Round-trip" all my data
- Enable me to keep a basic history of organisations such as business partnerships, companies, regiments - link the organisations to people
- Enable me to keep a basic history of places so that the application can understand that "Warrington, Lancashire, England" and "Warrington, Cheshire, England" are the same town - just pre and post 1974 reorganisations.
- My perfect genealogy software would be like this... by testuser42
- Be easily extensible to allow user defined elements throughout(?). User defined elements should be able to inherit features - e.g. defining an event "Marriage - civil" that inherits all the programmatic logic applicable to "Marriage". (Illustration: Such an inheritance might be done through "type = Marriage" and "subtype = Civil"). Data within any user defined elements must be preserved by any recipient application even if the application does not have any programmatic logic for the user defined stuff.
- Distinguish between a group of people who live as a family (who might include informally adopted children) and biological or step-biological children who don't live with their biological or step-biological parents.
Extensions from Applications
- Genbox
- Separate information object for each place, containing structured info about the place, several names for the place (with time period), place type, level type, links to higher and lower level places.
- Citations, assertion, excerpts attached to virtually any piece of information, incl. names and parts of events, and also within notes.
- Research notes for most pieces of information (may be excluded from eg. reports)
- A coprehensive set of structures keeping track of planed/finished work/searches, projects, correspondence, and reseachers.
- Information about each media that can be referenced from all structures where a media is "used".
- Event participants have roles (incl. role classes eg. parent types, spouce types), event sub types, "prepositions"/prefix for places depending on place level, and events can have an event specific attribute.
- Multi level sources (eg. documents inside sources).
- Event classes (eg. birth related, death related, family start, family end, etc.).
- Sort dates
- Complex names
- "Proposed" extension: Person groups
- And most likely more
And the advertising on this wiki is really annoying.
Maybe we could extend the content of the "Guidelines For Posting & Editing" page with tips about how to use the wiki.
Do i edit the recovered draft or do I ignore it?
Well, I just closed the window and will try to edit later.