Re: GEDCOM by hand

On Sat, Jan 12, 2013 at 07:54:41PM -0500, Philip Durbin wrote:

> But back to editing GEDCOM files. LifeLines (the executable is
> called llines) from http://lifelines.sourceforge.net seems to be a
> decent console option. I was able to import my GEDCOM file with a
> couple tweaks. It opens up your $EDITOR with a section of GEDCOM but
> at least it helps you navigate around. Like GRAMPS, its source of
> truth is its own database, but it exports to GEDCOM, of course. It's
> growing on me. :)

LifeLines is nice.  Had I discovered it before starting Gedcom.pm,
Gedcom.pm may never have been started.  And had I known that it would
receive a new lease of life later on, I would never have written
lines2perl which converts LifeLines scripts to Perl scripts using
Gedcom.pm.

As far as editing GEDCOM files is concerned, my website claims:

  To store my genealogy I wrote a syntax file and use vim to enter the
  data, and Gedcom.pm to validate and manipulate it. I find this to be a
  nice solution.

That's still true, I suppose, though in practice I'm afraid that I don't
enter too much data nowadays.  However, a big advantage of editing in
vim (or any other decent editor) is that I find it much easier to keep
my data consistent.  I can use completion for names and locations.  I
can copy and paste. I can treat my GEDCOM file as the database and have
complete control over it.  And I can write short perl scripts to
manipulate it.  So in that respect I do still find it to be a nice
solution.

-- 
Paul Johnson - [email protected]
http://www.pjcj.net