LDS Genealogy Library in Salt Lake City

GEDCOM, an acronym for GEnealogical Data COMmunication, is a specification for exchanging genealogical data between different genealogy software. GEDCOM was developed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an aid in their extensive genealogical research. A GEDCOM file is plain text (an obscure text encoding named ANSEL, though often in ASCII in the United States) containing genealogical information about individuals, and data linking these records together. Most genealogy software supports importing from and/or exporting to GEDCOM format. The GEDCOM TestBook Project evaluates how well popular genealogy programs conform to the GEDCOM 5.5 standard. Additionally, many tools exist to convert GEDCOM files to HTML pages. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (3072x2304, 1963 KB) Summary Genealogy Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah by Ricardo630 Ricardo630 06:30, 21 April 2006 (UTC) Licensing File links The following pages link to this file: Church of... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (3072x2304, 1963 KB) Summary Genealogy Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah by Ricardo630 Ricardo630 06:30, 21 April 2006 (UTC) Licensing File links The following pages link to this file: Church of... LDS Genealogy Library in Salt Lake City The Family History Library (FHL) is a genealogical research facility provided and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church). ... In engineering and manufacturing, the term specification has the following meanings: Technical requirement A specification is a set of requirements. ... Genealogy is the study and tracing of family pedigrees. ... In general, data consist of propositions that reflect reality. ... This article or section seems not to be written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia entry. ... The Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the largest attraction in the citys Temple Square. ... Research is often described as an active, diligent, and systematic process of inquiry aimed at discovering, interpreting, and revising facts. ... A text encoding is a method of representing text as binary values in computer storage. ... ANSEL, American National Standard for Extended Latin Alphabet Coded Character Set for Bibliographic Use, is a character set used in text encoding, and may also be known as ANSI Z39. ... There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... HTML, short for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for the creation of web pages. ...

GEDCOM file structure

A GEDCOM file consists of a header section, records, and a trailer section. In information technology, Header refers to supplemental data placed at the beginning of a block of data being stored or transmitted, which contain information for the handling of the data block. ... In information technology, Trailer refers to supplemental data placed at the end of a block of data being stored or transmitted, which contain information for the handling of the data block. ...

Records represent people (INDI record), families (FAM records), sources of information (SOUR records), and other miscellaneous records, including notes. This article is about the data structure. ...

Every line of a GEDCOM file begins with a level number. All top-level records (HEAD, TRLR, SUBN, and each INDI, FAM, OBJE, NOTE, REPO, SOUR, and SUBM) begin with a line with level 0. All other level numbers are positive integers. Although it is theoretically possible to write a GEDCOM file by hand, the format was designed to be used with software and thus is not especially human-friendly. A GEDCOM validator that can be used to validate the structure of a GEDCOM file is included as part of PhpGedView project, though it is not meant to be a standalone validator. The integers are commonly denoted by the above symbol. ...

Versions

The current version of the specification is GEDCOM 5.5, which was released on 12 January 1996. A subsequent draft GEDCOM 5.5.1 specification was issued in 1999, introducing nine new tags, including WWW, EMAIL and FACT, and adding UTF-8 as an approved encoding. This draft has not been formally approved, but its provisions have been adopted in some part by a number of genealogy programs. On December 6, 2002 a beta version of GEDCOM 6.0 was released for developers to study and begin to implement in their software. GEDCOM 6.0 will be the first version to store data in XML format. This will further change the preferred character set from ANSEL to Unicode, allowing for example the storage of East Asian names in their original CJK characters, without which they could be ambiguous and of little use for genealogical or historical research. January 12 is the 12th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1996 (MCMXCVI) was a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... December 6 is the 340th day (341st on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ... Software development stages In computer programming, development stage terminology expresses how the development of a piece of software has progressed and how much further development it may require. ... The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language that supports a wide variety of applications. ... Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow text and symbols from all of the writing systems of the world to be consistently represented and manipulated by computers. ... CJK is a collective term for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which comprise the main East Asian languages. ...

Software limitations

The file structure handles basic relationship information very well. However, some genealogists feel that keeping track of records and events is just as important as keeping track of relationships. GEDCOM stores these as details under the individual and family records. This makes them more difficult to organize and add further details. Another problem is that it is not clear which record should "own" an event. For example, the record for adoption details could be associated with the child, the adopted parents, the birth parents, or the family of which the child becomes part.

Another perceived weakness of the GEDCOM specification is that it has not been adopted by any formal standards body and thus is still developed and controlled by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some believe this fact has contributed to infrequent releases and slow evolution of GEDCOM. Although a draft of the next version was released in 2002, further development appears to have stagnated.

As a result of the limitations of the GEDCOM format, some genealogy software incorporates the use of proprietary extensions to the GEDCOM format, which are not always recognized by other genealogy programs. Proprietary indicates that a party, or proprietor, exercises private ownership, control or use over an item of property, usually to the exclusion of other parties. ...

Example

The following is a sample GEDCOM file. The first column indicates an indentation level.

The header (HEAD) includes the source program and version (Reunion, V8.0), the GEDCOM version (5.5), and the character encoding (MACINTOSH). A character encoding consists of a code that pairs a sequence of characters from a given set with something else, such as a sequence of natural numbers, octets or electrical pulses, in order to facilitate the storage of text in computers and the transmission of text through telecommunication networks. ...

The individual records (INDI) define Adam (ID 1—@I1@), Eve (ID 2), and Cain (ID 3).

The family record (FAM) links the husband (HUSB), wife (WIFE), and child (CHIL) by their ID numbers.

 0 HEAD 1 SOUR Reunion 2 VERS V8.0 2 CORP Leister Productions 1 DEST Reunion 1 DATE 11 FEB 2006 1 FILE test 1 GEDC 2 VERS 5.5 1 CHAR MACINTOSH 0 @I1@ INDI 1 NAME Adam // 1 SEX M 1 FAMS @F1@ 1 CHAN 2 DATE 11 FEB 2006 0 @I2@ INDI 1 NAME Eve // 1 SEX F 1 FAMS @F1@ 1 CHAN 2 DATE 11 FEB 2006 0 @I3@ INDI 1 NAME Cain // 1 SEX M 1 FAMC @F1@ 1 CHAN 2 DATE 11 FEB 2006 0 @F1@ FAM 1 HUSB @I1@ 1 WIFE @I2@ 1 MARR 1 CHIL @I3@ 0 TRLR 

See also

• Ancestral File Number
• FamilySearch
• Genealogical numbering systems
• Genealogy software
• International Genealogical Index
• Personal Ancestral File

An Ancestral File Number is a unique identifier for everyone who has a record in the Ancestral File format. ... FamilySearch is a family history website provided by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ... There are several widely adopted genealogical numbering systems for depicting a family tree or pedigree chart in text format. ... This article or section seems not to be written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia entry. ... The International Genealogical Index (IGI) is a database of genealogical records, compiled from a variety of different sources, and maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ... Personal Ancestral File or PAF is a genealogy software from FamilySearch. ...

External links

• FamilySearch.org — Genealogy site operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that contains information related to GEDCOM including the draft of GEDCOM XML 6.0
• GEDCOM specifications are documented on the FamilySearch website: [1]
  • GEDCOM 5.5 Standard (Executable file in Envoy format)
  • Draft Specification for GEDCOM XML 6.0 (PDF)
• GEDCOM 5.5 specification (Paul McBride's HTML version)
• Overview of GEDCOM and its uses on Encyclopedia of Genealogy
• Annotated sample GEDCOM file
• Cyndi's List — GEDCOM
• Mapping GEDCOM to XML
• GEDCOM TestBook Project
• The GENTECH Genealogical Data Model
• on LDS Church's Adoption of the XML Standard