Standard GEDCOM Filelinks

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.

Family/Spouse: 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.

1. Extra URL Filelinks was born in 1875.
2. Nonstandard Multimedia Filelinks was born in 1870; and died.
3. General Custom Filelinks was born in 1872; died on 7 Dec 1941.