Nonstandard Multimedia Filelinks

Notes:

Comments on "Nonstandard Multimedia Filelinks" INDIVIDUAL Record.

File links in GEDCOM are created by having an OBJE structure with the path name to the file in a subordinate FILE tag and the format of the file in a subordinate FORM tag. It does not make sense to limit file links to the small set of file types mentioned in the GEDCOM standard (see INDIVIDUAL record "Standard GEDCOM Filelinks" for those file types). This INDIVIDUAL record has links to other types of multimedia files including movie files, other image file types, and some Macintosh file types.

What will a genealogy program do when in encounters to logical extensions to GEDCOM file links? Good programs will follow the links. Weaker programs will simply delete them from your file (it is bad manners to delete someone's data).

Some other possible multimedia file type not yet linked to this record are:
avi - Microsoft movie file
midi - sound file
mp3 - music file

Family/Spouse: Unknown. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Comments on "-Nonstandard Multimedia Filelinks" FAMILY Record.

The record is simply used to make family connections between records in this file.

1. Charlie Accented ANSEL was born on 15 Jun 1900; died on 5 Jul 1974.

Notes:

Comments on "Standard GEDCOM Filelinks" INDIVIDUAL Record.

The GEDCOM standard lets you link records to multimedia objects kept in separate files. When GEDCOM 5.5 was released, it only mentioned allowing links to a small number of multimedia files types and some of them are Windows-only file types. The recommended list is

bmp - Windows but map file
gif - Bit map, 256 color GIF files (common on the Internet)
jpeg - Bit-mapped files developed for photographs (also common on the Internet)
ole - Linked object
pcx - Windows paintbrush file
tiff - Tagged image format file
wav - Windows sound file

This INDIVIDUAL record has links to this limited set of multimedia files (except for ole). These links are created by having an OBJE structure with the path name to the file in a subordinate FILE tag and the format of the file in a subordinate FORM tag.

It does not make sense to limit files links to this small set of file types. It does not allow for future file types and, for example, it ignores movie files types. You can visit the "Nonstandard Multimedia Filelinks" record to see links to other types of multimedia files. You can visit the "General Custom Filelinks" and the "Extra URL Filelinks" records to see links to any file type and to universal resource locators.

NOTE: The path names for the linked files here are just the file names. A good GEDCOM program should search for the files and might look first in the same folder as this test GEDCOM file. A weaker program might be unable to locate these files and you will have to enter the full path names.

EMBEDDED Multimedia Object:
GEDCOM 5.5 has a method for encoding multimedia objects and storing them in MULTIMEDIA Records. This INDIVIDUAL has a link to such an embedded object. The object has encoded data, written using the GEDCOM 5.5 encoding algorithm, for the image of a small flower. To my knowledge, there are no genealogy programs that can actually read and decode such objects. The main reason for inclusion of the object here is to see how programs will treat this record. Good programs will leave them in the file (it is bad manners to delete someone's data). Bad programs will simple delete the object from the file.

Standard married Torture GEDCOM Matriarch. Torture was born on 12 Feb 1840; died on 15 Jun 1915. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Comments on "Standard GEDCOM Filelinks-Torture GEDCOM Matriarch" FAMILY record.

The children in this family test logical extensions to the GEDCOM method for linking to a multimedia file.