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 "Extra URL 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 multimedia file types mentioned in the GEDCOM standard (see INDIVIDUAL record "Standard GEDCOM Filelinks" for those file types) or even to limit them to local files. This INDIVIDUAL record has a series of links with universal resource locators (URL) in the FILE tag and the file "URL" in the FORM tag.

The sample URL links include links to a web sites, a link to an FTP site, and a link to send email.

This extension of file links to URL links is non-standard GEDCOM. What will a genealogy program do when in encounters URL file links? Cleaver programs will find the file on the Internet using your default browser, FTP program, or email program. Weaker programs will simply delete them from your file (it is bad manners to delete someone's data).

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 "General Custom 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 multimedia file types mentioned in the GEDCOM standard (see INDIVIDUAL record "Standard GEDCOM Filelinks" for those file types). The INDIVIDUAL record "Nonstandard Multimedia Filelinks" has sample links to other types of multimedia files not included in the standard GEDCOM list. This INDIVIDUAL record has links to some non-multimedia files types.

What will a genealogy program do when it encounters such 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).

Notes:

Comments on "Charlie Accented ANSEL" INDIVIDUAL Record.

To represent accented characters, the ANSEL character set uses two-byte codes. The first byte is E0 to FB or FE (hexadecimal); the second byte is the letter to be accented.

These notes have all possible accented characters. How many of the characters are represented correctly? Even programs that fully support ANSEL will not draw all these accented characters correctly. Many of them correspond to accents that can not be found in any langauge and therefore do not correspond to any computer fonts.

code: E0 (Unicode: hook above, 0309) low rising tone mark