On Jul 17, 12:34 am, Lars Eighner <use...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Here is the problem: GEDCOM has become the de facto standard for family
> history and geneology data. And the problem with that is that the
Mormons
> own GEDCOM and thus it is rife with built-in religious limitations.
>
> As you might expect, GEDCOM does not allow you to enter a family created
by
> same-*** marriage or civil unions even where they are lawful. But there
are
> other limitations. For example, in GEDCOM 5.xx, an adopted child does
not
> belong to his family. When he looks up his family in a GEDCOM-compliant
> file, he is not there. How needlessly hurtful is that?
>
> If a guy marries his 14-year-old cousin as his fifth wife, GEDCOM has no
> problem dealing with that kind of family. But it cannot handle the
Brady
> Bunch.
>
> Now I suppose you could defend GEDCOM by saying it is supposed to record
> only genetic --- that is, biological --- relation****ps. And of course,
> there are im****tant scientific and especially medical uses for that kind
of
> information. But it is not really true that GEDCOM records biological
> relation****ps. It presumes that the husband of a woman who bears a
child is
> the father of the child, and we know since there is now DNA testing that
> assumption is untrue in a significant ****tion of cases.
>
> Which brings me to my point. I'd like to develop a family history
system
> that is as compatible with GEDCOM as possible (since it is, as I have
said,
> the de facto standard with tons of software applications), but with
> extensions to handle many diverse kinds of families that exist both in
> modern America and in many traditional cultures.
>
> So, I would be grateful for any pointers to existing software that
handles
> all families or suggestions for extensions.
>
> --
> Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/>
<http://myspace.com/larseighner>
> Countdown: 553 days to go.
> Owing to massive spam from googlegroups, I do not see most posts from
there.
Check out The Master Genealogist.
As an aside you should note that any program that depends on GEDCOM
for anything other basic BMD info will have serious shortcomings
depending on how the ex****ting and im****ting software follow the
GEDCOM "standard" - which, imho, should be scrapped in its entirety.
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