|
Post by lukluk on Aug 29, 2011 11:48:45 GMT -5
I would be very grateful if any here can suggest a good Chinese/English dual system Family Tree software for a totally inept computer moron who has time on his hand to record/tranfer an existing ancestral book going back all the way to Southern Song Dynasty. I need it to be dual system because family members are not only in mainland China but spread all over the world with some generations now not knowing how to read or write Chinese at all. For my sins I am also the holder/keeper of generations of family photos that need to be able to be uploaded to illustrate the named person.
The one single most big important factor is, that this software must be able to accommodate more than a single spouse and her issues (several wives living under the same roof). Further more it would be great if the data hence recorded by me, can be burnt to dvds to be distrubuted; and for individual family to be able to update later generations as necessary. Now at a young 74 years and if I can find such a software, I hope to input all the data to date of 43 generations before I kick the bucket. If not it will be lost in perpetuity, which is really rather ashamed. By the way, I have a very rare chinese surname 英 of Han origin decented directly from 英布 (not to be mixed up with that of same created during the Manchu Dynasty by the Dowager Empress).
So if you know of such a genealogical software please share with me and indulge this young man's fancy. I can be contacted by email at sarcceng@hotmail.com and from thereon we can chat further on skype, msn messenger, gmail, qq, etc. Thanking one and all in anticipation and in advance, I look forward to hearing from someone in the know. To all you wonderful and knowledgeable folks here, may your God be with you always.
|
|
|
Post by Doug 周 on Aug 30, 2011 1:49:08 GMT -5
I would be very grateful if any here can suggest a good Chinese/English dual system Family Tree software ….. this software must be able to accommodate more than a single spouse and …...can be burnt to dvds luluk, My recommendation is you obtain a Geni.com account and use their interface. They are capable of handling multiple spouses, and will store Chinese. From there you can print out the family tree and store it onto a dvd. If you are careful where you store your Chinese names and multiple names, you will be able to save your files on a GEDCOM. This allows you to transfer your information into another compatible software program. Lastly, you will be able to store photos and allow distant relatives to participate. There are multiple languages on the program. You seem to have your jiapu and about 46 generation in depth. I don’t know how ‘wide’ is your family tree, but a good number is that if you have over 500 profiles, you should then consider a more robust program. However, if you are computer uncomfortable, then work on uploading your profiles onto Geni and encourage collaboration amongst your relatives. One trick is to use a ‘disposable’ email address, since if you make a major mistake and want to start over again, your email address is your user ID. Doug
|
|
|
Post by christine on Aug 30, 2011 2:09:48 GMT -5
Hi luluk and Doug, I like(d) Geni too -- one tip: currently they are restricting the number of profiles you can add past a few generations from yourself unless you sign up for their "PRO" account. You can either pay for it, or take a free trial period and just hurry and get it done before it expires. I personally don't like the idea that I would need to pay to add my own personal info that is just turned about and sold to other paying customers. I really like Geni, I just don't approve of what it has been turning in to lately, so just proceed with caution and be sure you always have a hard copy on hand, as well as a private digital copy. Geni allows you to download your entire GEDCOM file, I suggest you do this as soon as you are finishing putting in your tree members, so that you have a backup on your personal computer. Understand that Geni now considers a certain level of ancestor, something like 5th great grandparent and further, to be "public", and so you will need to keep an eyeball on those further out and make sure another Geni user changing information in those profiles. That's why having a personal copy both hard and digital is very important. I am in the market for some new desktop software too (my Family Tree Maker software is not very good), after getting spooked by geni's changes.
|
|
|
Post by Doug 周 on Aug 30, 2011 3:12:19 GMT -5
Christine, As you move out of geni, consider going to webtreesclick. I know you to be computer comfortable, and you can install it onsite in your local machine. When you get used to it, and are ready to go online, you will have a good handle on the program. This way you have control over the family tree. The programmers take security very seriously. Of course, the ultimate security is never sharing your genealogy with ANY relatives. Doug
|
|
|
Post by lukluk on Aug 30, 2011 6:07:47 GMT -5
Thank you so much Doug and Christine. I will take up both your recommendations and keep an eyeball out, cool. Well, I do not know about having them ‘in depth’ but when calculating at the given norm of 25 years a generation it takes the first official seed planted in Guangdong from Anhui to about +/-1130 AD the time of Southern Song. Within the book there are some narratives on prevailing conditions of given families. Of course the record book is only as good as when or if the families report in to central control in the village. There are lots of ‘missing’ issues recorded. It seems rebellious children are nothing new !!! Historically, high officials do have multiple spouses and so in that sense they are ‘wide’ but since only males are recorded they will not be as ‘wide’ as I would like it to be from now on (to be inclusive of all females and their families). Part of the family are now totally Nordic, blue eyed and blonde and part are, as they say totally ‘bananas’.
Since I am the last remaining rusty chain within the family links and hence this project, I will do my best to ‘encourage collaboration’ amongst them all; given the current climate of ‘independent traits’ amongst the young and middle aged in the West. As I am not very familiar with computer speak, may I be enlightened as to what is a ‘disposable’ email address?
In my quest and ‘research’ along the way, I came across something called ‘GenoPro’. I have no idea how it works but maybe this might be something that will interest you Christine. It could well be that you have eyeballed it already.
By the way, for you folks who like using Pinyin for Putonhua, there are also available Pinyin for both Cantonese and Fujian dialects on the net. Sorry, I am not a Pinyin fan in the least. For me it is bad enough to have to send Chinese sms on mobile but receiving them is great.
Thank you once again to the both of you. Will later, with great apprehension dive into Geni.com and in time I am sure will seek further advice here re how best to use it. Haha.
|
|
|
Post by Doug 周 on Aug 30, 2011 10:41:48 GMT -5
lukluk, Within the book there are some narratives... So you do have your jiapu! I call this family booklet the Holy Grail of Chinese heritage research. It seems like you can read Chinese. Make sure you translate these narratives for your relatives, since they give an insight to your ancestors. However, sometimes these narratives read more like eulogies. For others who do not have their jiapu's: this is an important key to finding the female side of Chinese genealogy. Many jiapu's will state the daughter's surname as well as their father's name and ancestral village. This link could lead you to the woman's family's jiapu. Genealogy software takes away one excuse for the male dominance of previous Chinese genealogy. No longer are reams of paper needed to record only half the family. This is why the Confucius family tree project has hugely expanded China celebrates fifth revision of Confucius' family treeMy Chinese relatives use this as an excuse not to study and record their family history. On the contrary, I find the more 'genetically' distant people are from their Chinese heritage, the more interested they will be in their roots. This makes recording and archiving your genealogy all the more important. your hotmail is considered disposable. Open another new free gmail, yahoo, or hotmail account. Yahoo allows multiple email subaccounts also. This came from the GenoPro site: Import multiple NAME entries per individual? GenoPro does not recognize multiple NAME entries for an Individual in a GEDCOM file?. Your jiapu will have the Hao and Zi and possibly the milk names of your ancestors. See twoupman's site for a good explanation: houseofchinn.com/ChineseNames.html. Your relatives will have their Chinese names as well as their home language name. Even Geni does not support multiple names, but read my older post: Topic: Handle multiple names safely in softwareclick. Whereas you can store these multiple names in the miscellaneous notes section, it makes searching for those names all the more difficult. Why would one need a robust search capability? Like Christine said, Geni feels that data above your 5th generation is public. See Kerry's post: Topic: Getting your family tree to a Chinese audienceclick. The goal is to let distant relatives, via an internet or an internal Geni search, find common ancestors and eventually link up to your research. I am not a heavy user of Geni, so Christine will have more 'hands on' information about Geni's current configuration. Write about your experiences with your project on the site rather than via private email. This will give more people a chance to learn. IMHO, Doug
|
|
|
Post by christine on Nov 4, 2011 16:13:15 GMT -5
Update: As of a couple days ago, Geni.com officially SUCKS. I can no longer recommend this site as a useful place to start your tree. Their recent changes have made it extremely limiting without paying at very minimum $75 to really use the site, and even at that rate you do not have full access to all the features (you must pay $119 for that). I am really considering purchasing the new Family Tree Maker software from Ancestry.com now that they have a feature called "tree sync" that will sync your desktop tree with your online tree, for $40, and probably $35 from Costco. You can choose to pay for Ancestry membership that actually gives you source material, on a monthly, tri-monthly, or annual basis. Geni charges you $75 or more just to add more than 100 people in total to your tree, which to me is not a tree, it's a twig!
|
|
|
Post by helen on Nov 4, 2011 16:48:34 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by douglaslam on Nov 6, 2011 0:18:46 GMT -5
Helen,
How can I get to Gwa Leng ? Time permitting, I'll make a trip to check it out. Is there anything of interest I should look out for?
Helen and Geoff please take note : I met the wife of Geoff's cousin Bill at a shopping centre earlier to day ( our time). She told me the Zengcheng Dongguan Society has been hi-jacked by the new arrivals from mainland China. These people joined the society with ulterior motives. They set out to line their own pockets. First, by stacking the society with new arrival members, they voted themselves in, one even as president. As the society is one of the traditional older ones, it has property holdings which yield about $7,000 in rental income weekly. They had the gall to represent the society and be an invited guest to China's national day celebrations in Beijing. The society is becoming political, used by these blow-in scabs and low-life as a tool in the reunification drive with Taiwan.
Then, they issued invitation to people from China on all-expense paid junkets to Australia, using the money from the society. Ultimately, they want to seize control, and sell the properties for their own gain. A very diabolical, dastardly act.
Geoff's cousin ( the family has been in Australia five generations, and members served at war time ) was caught flatfooted. He was furious because the peoperties were acquired by his ancestors' generation, lot by lot, over a century. They instituted legal action to stop further encroachment.
Zengcheng is not the first such examples. The Hainan Association has also been hi-jacked by an ultra left winger from Malaysia many years ago.
Helen don't let this happen to you people in New Zealand. Take all precaution before it is too late.
|
|
|
Post by helen on Nov 6, 2011 2:34:25 GMT -5
Thanks for the warning Douglas - I'll pass it on to our people in Wellington. I've sent you an email with regards to Gwa Leng. I hope you can get there. There are a couple of Parlow there. The village is built over the water. There is a bridge across the water, and the cemetery under the lychee trees. Are you on face book? www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.211606422191925.61212.194368383915729&type=3
|
|
|
Post by chansomvia on Nov 6, 2011 14:32:50 GMT -5
Helen, some lovely photos in the facebook site which captured the essence of village scenes. Worth looking at as shows a typical village. Also shows the younger generation enjoying themselves, are they your family?
Photos also raises interesting questions ....... houses seem to be unoccupied, municipality involvement in daily life - queries on how grave sites are maintained - and rubbish collection - road repairs and maintenance - common garden plots - who are the village chiefs -etc. Do the village children stay in villages after completion of studies - do villages have allocation of funds for providing recreation and cultural activities - etc.
It would be a social area you could look at when you are there for a longer visit, facebook is blocked in China but if you are a heavy social media user there are ways around it. Joe
|
|
|
Post by helen on Nov 7, 2011 4:11:09 GMT -5
Hi Joe, yes my 3 children, and hubby - on our visit in April. There are few young men living there now - just the old men. The village is built over the water, and some of it has been filled in. This has caused a problem with the Fung Shui, and that has caused the death of many of the men in their 20s and 30s. Hence few children are in the village. The houses are unoccupied, as is my Father in Laws. They have built new houses in another part of teh village and abandoned the old houses. Some ae still lived in. The rest belong to the old timers who came to NZ. I'm pleased that the book was written. I sent a copy to James To's father. Perhaps you can borrow it from him.. and advertise the book for me in your community. Thanks Joe
|
|
|
Post by Doug 周 on Dec 19, 2011 22:20:37 GMT -5
Update: As of a couple days ago, Geni.com officially SUCKS... Here is another similar opinion on Geni and the recent changes: Tamura Jones Modern Software Experience: Geni ChangesclickChristine has a good software strategy: Use an on-line program and have a back up on-site (desktop or laptop). This way if something happens with the on-line program (raise subscription cost, close its business), she is already familiar and can always revert back to her on-site program. The compatible on-site program will synchronize the data with the on-line program, making double entry unnecessary. The advantage of an on-line program is easy collaboration with distant relatives and universal access to data (assuming Internet capability). The advantage of an on-site program is that you completely control the data and the ability to work on the family tree without Internet access. All propriety on-line genealogy programs must monetize their services. There are many ways this is done: via selling a-la-carte services, products, or subscription fees. If they fail to meet their financial expectations, they merge, go bankrupt, raise their subscriptions, or decrease services. My previous experience: Dynastree is kaput; needs of software programclickMy general advise is not to depend on a proprietary service as your main genealogy program. I still advocate using one of the free or low cost genealogy program (Geni used to be my first choice) TO GENERATE an initial GEDCOM file. GEDCOM is the name of the current standard to which the majority of genealogy programs read and write. With language as a metaphor for the GEDCOM standard, there are dialects and colloquialism which different genealogy programs have trouble understanding. Hence, GEDCOM is not a perfect standard. With these imperfections, I have previously written about work-arounds to make sure your data is accurately transferred to another program. I had also written how to check the quality of your GEDCOMclick. By using these on-line programs, you can experiment with building your GEDCOM and how to navigate the features of a modern genealogy program with no or minimal cost. If you make a mistake on your GEDCOM, you can start all over. Then you can experiment to make sure your information will be transferred to another potential program. The other desirable features of on-line genealogy services: - ease of research
- quick discovery of relatives who have also organized family trees on the same sites
- photo sharing
- facial recognition and photo tagging
According to Christine, with the current state of GENI, you can only input 100 family members before subscription frees are required. With MyHeritage.com you can input 250 family members before a subscription fee is required. Once you reach the quota of families, I recommend you consider migrating to a program over which you have more control. Generally this means an on-site program. If you lose your on-line program, you can manually reenter 250-500 family names into a genealogy program from your analog files. Above that number, the work load becomes too onerous and you need to use a computer file like GEDCOM to transfer your data. MyHeritage.com uses and synchronizes with Family Tree Builder as an on-site program. Ancestry.com synchronizes with Family Tree Maker. Both Geni.com and MyHeritage.com on-line services will generate a Unicode compatible GEDCOM directly. My past experience is that Ancestry could not generate a Unicode GEDCOM directly from the web site. Whereas all three will display Chinese characters on the screen via Unicode, MyHeritage and Ancestry do not need to use the GEDCOM format to synchronize with their respective on-site genealogy programs. I surmise that the programmers at Ancestry.com felt generating a Unicode GEDCOM may be considered superfluous with their ability to synchronize to their own on-site program. However, all on-site genealogy programs SHOULD generate a Unicode GEDCOM to your hard drive. This way, regardless of the status of the on-line site, you will later be able to transfer your data to a newer program. It is wise to be able to generate a good GEDCOM file as a ‘universal’ archive. Hopefully someone can advise if Family Tree Builder and Family Tree Maker can generate a good Unicode GEDCOM. My personal strategy is to use webtreesclick both as an on-line and on-site program. The advantage is: - No cost (except renting web space)
- Unicode capable
- Able to handle multiple names
- Commitment by the programmers to generate a true standard GEDCOM with minimal dialect and colloquialism. (Some of these programmers have 8k-20k profiles in their family trees. They have an intense desire to make the GEDCOM as pristine as possible.)
The disadvantage: - Some computer literacy
- No automatic synchronization
- Media & photo management not as modern as on-line programs
IMHO Doug
|
|