Re: GEDCOM by hand

On 1/13/2013 9:30 AM, Paul Johnson wrote:
> 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.
>
As A past user of LifeLines and a writer of quite a few of the LifeLines 
Reports that lines2perl converts I think there is lots of room for both. 
So thank you for Gedcom.pm. There are a lot of things that you can do 
with Gedcom.pm that fit cleanly into the Perl way of doing things that 
would not be easy to do with other tools.

I guess I should check out lifelines and see what they have been up to. 
I like using a windows app for data entry just because I don't have to 
think too much about the data entry process as it is well structured. 
But for all the cool stuff I export it as a gedcom file then you Perl 
from there on.

-Steve