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Software

The underlying genealogical information is maintained using the LifeLines, a program originally developed by Tom Wetmore and now maintained by the user community. This is running under the Linux operating system. Both LifeLines & Linux are freely available software.

Extracting the information to create the individual 'People' web pages is done with home-grown software written in LifeLine's report programming language. This extracted information is then post-processed by a custom program to produce the actual HTML pages.

Information on the included maps and photos is maintain in a MySQL database.

Index, Photo Album, Map room, and such were created using custom written Linux programs.

Scanned Images

Development History

• March, 2020
  • Support grouping images on Album pages.
• September, 2018
  • Flag distant yet blood relatives with a brown 'LED'.
• March, 2014
  • Generalized software to support companion site of Swedish genealogy.
  • Include image source information on map pages.
  • Ignore diacritical marks in the sorting of place names.
• February, 2014
  • Improved relational descriptions of how each individual fits into their family tree.
  • For baptisms, include any family relationship between baptismal sponsors and the baby or baby's parents. E.g., "... (the mother's sister)".
  • And, on the godparent's own page, include their relationship to the child. E.g. "Godparent when ... (her brother-in-law's son) ..."
• November, 2013
  • Allow inclusion of witnesses to events, even if we do not know their full name, if they can be described by their occupation.
• March, 2013
  • Support selecting photos for people's pages based address or agency of the event.
• August, 2010
  • Include GedCOM 'TO ...' dates in timelines as "Until ..." and include such dates in computing the residency date ranges shown on village pages.
  • Include any 'whole village' images in the timelines of people living in that community.
  • Express dates with full month names rather than 3-letter abbreviations (on newly updated pages).
  • Add "Siblings"/"Children" headings to the family group display on 'people pages' where ever there is no corresponding parent(s)/spouse listed at the top of the section.
• July, 2010
  • Improved placement of photos on 'people pages'
• March, 2010
  • Use new bookmark icon on updated pages.
  • Spell out full words 'Kreis' and 'County' for better search engine visibility on updated pages.
• November, 2008
  • Updated home page design.
  • Added research area entry for Eastern Mecklenburg.
  • Added family area entries for Hartig/Burmeister and Roloff/Glei.
• July, 2008:
  • Added more details to census information.
• June, 2008:
  • Updated the 'look & feel' of the internal pages, including making the navigation bar more visible and moving it to the left side of the screen.
  • Added occupations to pedigree chart entries.
• April, 2008:
  • Added a new family area for the ancestors of Charles Hartig, and expanded the Kreis Parchim section to be "Western Mecklenburg".
• November, 2007:
  • Include both 'create' and 'update' dates on page footer on any newly updated pages when both are known.
  • Improved wording on surname index pages.
• October, 2007:
  • Content improvements to 'A-Z' pages.
  • Improvements in how place names are presented in people's time-lines.
  • Made place names on photo pages hot links to maps when such exist.
  • Dates on photo pages now more 'human readable'
• April, 2007:
  • Add family's explicit child count (NCHI, as described below) to the mention of a husband or wife in the listing above the person's timeline.
• February, 2007:
  • Increased allowed size of displayed pictures.
• October, 2006:
  • Allowed descriptive narrative text to be inserted in people's time lines.
  • Add family's explicit child count (NCHI) to marriage description when either zero or greater than the number of included children shown.
  • Improved punctuation within time-lines.
  • Added 'LED' to top line of newly updated people pages to indicate their level of relationship to the family.
• September, 2006:
  • Improved the 'relationship description' algorithm so that a better choice of wording is chosen when a person may be reached by more than one path.
• June, 2006:
  • Improved grammar of imputed occupation displays
  • Removed 'pedigree' link button from any updated pages of people not specifically listed on a pedigree page
• May, 2006:
  • Improved display of date ranges on items in people's timelines
  • Improved computation of the range of years a person is a resident of a given location as reported on the 'village map' pages.
• April, 2006:
  • Improved estimates of person's ages on timelines when their date of birth is inexact
• March, 2006:
  • Included Education events in people's timelines
• December, 2005:
  • If a person has a known occupation and is associated with just one location, append " in ..." to the occupation shown at the top of their page.
  • For once-married women with no known occupation of their own, show an occupation of 'Wife of a ...' prepended to their husband's occupation.
• November, 2005:
  • Major reorganization of support software to decouple genealogy processing from Web 'look and feel' issues
  • Page 'Last update' dates have been enhanced to keep minor editing from affecting the update date of the contents. Minor editing now affects only a separate 'edited' date
  • Improved sorting of umlauted names and names with alternative spelling on 'A-Z' and similar pages
  • Improvements in bracketing which Time Line events should be included within the a person's estimated lifespan
  • BEF (or AFT) DATEs now reliably displayed before (or after) that same specific date; BEF/AFT inexact dates (year or month-year) now properly interleave between specific dates
  • Undated events folded into timeline in appropriate sequence
  • Various minor wording and linking improvments.
• August, 2005:
  • Generalized software to support companion Bayern - Thüringen - Austrian Silesia site
• March, 2005:
  • Improved calculation of ages of people references in other's timelines
• December, 2004:
  • Removed person's age from events that occurred after their death
• April, 2004:
  • Improved listing of person's home village(s) on A-Z index pages
• October, 2003:
  • Reorganized the three separate web sites into one consolidated site with 6 sub-areas: 3 focused on geographic research areas and 3 focused on family genealogy
  • Added new over-all home page for the consolidated site
  • Added new FAQ section
  • Launched web site under new http://ahnen.ctrpnt.com address
  • Added alternate village names to map pages and map index
  • Converted to using full state names rather than 2-letter abbreviations
• July, 2003:
  • Added cemetery pictures to people's time-lines when available
• May, 2003:
  • Added home village(s) to the names in the A-Z index pages
• December, 2002:
  • Eliminated obsolete HTML elements
• November, 2002:
  • Began adding Contact Author buttons to page footers
  • Added any Agency information to events even when Place is not specified
  • Improved reporting of stillborn children
• February, 2002:
  • Various minor improvements to the listing a baptismal sponsors, to the village map pages, etc.
  • Began adding pictures of the appropriate church to some time lines where a christening, confirmation, of marriage is mentioned.
  • Added local pictures to some village map pages
• January, 2002:
  • Converted to an SQL database for managing the maps.
  • Added any stated occupation and/or residence information for all sponsors in baptisms and similar events. (Previously, this was only included when the sponsor them-self was not in the database.)
  • Began adding blinking 'LEDs' to indicate the person whose page is currently being displayed.
• November, 2001:
  • Converted to an SQL database for managing the photos.
• October, 2001:
  • Increased the sizes of the images on the photo pages
• August, 2000:
  • Added new sister web area to document Uckermark ancestors
• July, 2001:
  • Added nick names and removed women's married surnames for pedigree chart listing and to assorted portions of newly updated people pages
  • Added nick names to people's listing in calendar pages
  • Merged this Development History into the Technical Details page
• May, 2001:
  • The 'LED' beads are now also included in the "Related Families" section of the village map pages.
• February, 2001:
  • Added 'rufname' aliases to people's names in the alphabetical index pages
• December, 2000:
  • Added time-of-day to some time-line events
  • Added 'ca' (circa) prefix where any approximate dates are expressed in the form 'birth-year/death-year' in A-Z indexes, people pages, and pedigree page.
  • Allow events with date ranges rather than just specific dates to appear in time-lines and changed display of time-line dates to make them more 'human readable' and less GEDCOM-ish
• November, 2000:
  • Added baptismal sponsorships and other cases of a person serving as an official witness to their own time-lines.
  • Trimmed time-lines shorter for persons with no events since childhood.
  • Changed Map Room to display smallest area maps first
• August, 2000:
  • Combined alternative spellings of surnames into single entries in the 'Related Families' section of the village map pages, as they are in the A-Z index
  • Added grave marker photos to 'people pages' where available
  • Suppressed non-informative individual 'people pages' for stillborn children, etc.
• July, 2000:
  • Added 'Agency' information to Time Line events on 'people pages'
  • Any undated burial details are now appended to death event in Time Line
  • Eliminated the pages for small, isolated groups of people not connected to the main tree
• June, 2000:
  • Added nickname/rufname to the person's name displayed at the top of 'people pages'
• April, 2000:
  • Now including META tags when updating pages
  • Improved syntax of place names appearing in time-lines
• March, 2000:
  • Replaced the single, long A-Z Index with a one-page Surname Index with a separate persons listing for each letter of the alphabet.
• December, 1999:
  • Added Map Room
  • Added wedding attendants to marriage events where known
  • Added new sister web area to document Pommern ancestors
  • Added additional detail to description of place names
  • For privacy reasons, suppressed exact birth dates of living persons from being mentioned in their family members Time-lines
  • Added new page of links to other genealogical information
• November, 1999:
  • Added new page containing a Pedigree Chart of direct, linear ancestors
  • Added names of Godparents to the baptisms listed in people's time-lines
• October, 1999:
  • Added a description of each person's relationship to the area's root person/people to the top of their 'People Page'. I.e., "Friederike's first cousin three times removed's wife"
• July, 1999:
  • Split calendar into separate Anniversary and Chronological sections.
• June, 1999:
  • Added maps for many of the ancestral villages. Clicking on any blue place name on a people page gets the viewer to a period map of the named place including a table of which surnames are associated with that place.
• May, 1999:
  • Chronological calendar expanded to include events where only the year or month and year are known.
• April, 1999:
  • To aid in navigation, there is expanded the use of the colored 'LED' beads to classify how closely we are related to each individual. Now yellow indicates a direct linear ancestor, orange indicates their siblings, red indicates the siblings children, and un-lit indicates anyone else. I.e., the brighter the color, the closer the relationship.
  • The 'LED' beads are now also included in the Calendar entries.
• January, 1999:
  • Added each person's occupation, if known, to the top of their People Page
• December, 1998:
  • Added Calendar pages
• November, 1998:
  • Initial version