[PAWriter version 81 was posted on Friday, 27 June 2008.]

About Personal Ancestry Writer II

"The Leading Edge of Trailing Technology"

Four Mice.MacWorld, July 2007

I have written a freeware genealogy program, Personal Ancestry Writer II (PAWriter II), for the Macintosh, one version for MacOS 9.x and one for MacOS X. It combines most of the features of the LDS Personal Ancestral File program (PAF) for the Macintosh (for which all development stopped a few years ago after release 2.3.1), with additional features that generate web pages (in HTML), word processing files (in RTF for, e.g., AppleWorks) and desktop publishing files (in MML for FrameMaker). The generated report files include genealogical dictionaries, registers, ahnentafels and lineages—such as appear on this site—as well as some interesting text files and pedigree charts.

PAWriter also provides flexible selection of subsets of people in a file by "tagging" them (marking them as members of the subset) using a host of selection criteria. Selections include inclusion (+), exclusion (-) and intersection (*) of the set of people meeting the criteria with those already tagged.

Consider PAWriter to be a possible next step in the development of Macintosh PAF had its develpment not been discontinued after release 2.3.1, i.e., "what might have been." PAWriter is not meant to have the bells and whistles that are in the current crop of genealogical programs. The emphasis is on maintaining a genealogical database from which the user can write books and/or post web pages about a family.

Importantly, the use of PAWriter differs from other programs in that each statement given in a person's vital statistics should be based on the evidence given or referenced in the notes for that person and/or for his or her relatives, and should represent the researcher's best current conclusions as to the true facts. For this purpose, the notes should contain all of the evidence, substantiation, documentation, background information, clarification, interpretation and/or other relevant commentary. It is in these notes that source citations are referenced through footnotes inserted at the appropriate points in the notes' text, as is normally done in books. (The footnotes will be included at the end of the printed notes in the generated reports.)

Click here to read more about why PAWriter was developed.

Here is a picture of the main window:

The program is written in REALbasic. Note that REALbasic is not really basic. It's a sophisticated and efficient object-oriented integrated development environment.

I am accepting comments, suggestions and reports of problems from other users. Personally, I am working with a very large file containing 42,700 people in 15,000 families and 1,100,000 words in notes.

Help is available for any item in the relevant windows by pressing the Shift key and rolling the mouse over the item. This is described by clicking the About Help button in the main window or pressing the Help key when in the major windows.

An extensive reference guide is available by clicking on the Reference button or choosing the PAWriter Reference item under the Apple menu (application menu in OS X) when you are in the main window. To use the reference guide you must download and place the folder named "Reference" in the same directory (i.e., same folder) as PAWriter. Images of windows in the reference guide are from the MacOS 9 version of PAWriter, but are quite similar to those in the MacOS X version.

I recommend a G3/G4/G5/Intel processor running at 300 MHz or faster (1 GHz or faster for very large files); MacOS 9.x (including MacOS X in Classic mode) for the MacOS 9 version; MacOS 10.x for the MacOS X version; and at least 64 MB of free RAM. I also recommend at least an 800 x 600 color monitor (at least 1024 x 768 when using rollover help).

A PAWriter data file may contain more than two billion people and each person's notes may contain more than two billion characters, although this would require more than a terrabyte of RAM and disk space and speed to match! The more pertinent limitations are that a person may have no more than ten spouses/partners, each with no more than thirty children. And the display of a list of people's names may be incomplete if more than 30,000 people have surnames beginning with the same letter. (This could happen, for instance, when a file contains more than a half-million people.)

The following download files are in disk image format:

You may download the MacOS X version of PAWriter (5.2 MB) by clicking here: PAWriterX.dmg. This disk image contains PAW2X and the Reference guide folder. Open the disk image and drag these files from the disk image to the same location on your disk, removing any previous versions. Please check back often since any improved/corrected versions will be posted here.

You may download the MacOS 9 version of PAWriter (5.1 MB) by clicking here: PAWriter9.img. This disk image contains PAW2 and the Reference guide folder. Open the disk image and drag these files from the disk image to the same location on your disk, removing any previous versions. Please check back often since any improved/corrected versions will be posted here.

Of interest to new users only, the disk images also contain an example data file and its related Scrapbook folder. You may open the example data file from within the disk image and exercise most features of PAWriter. (The disk image is locked so you can't save any changes you make to the example file.)

Of interest to FrameMaker users only, the disk images also contain the FrameMaker template file into which MML reports are to be imported. You may drag this file to any convenient location.

Please email me if you are using PAWriter so that I can add you to my mailing list to notify you of updates. Thank you.

I've started a forum for PAWriter users to express any thoughts about PAWriter you may have. Please feel free to post any relevant messages that may be of interest to other users and/or myself under the appropriate category -- tips, wish lists, problems, etc. You can visit this forum as a guest, or register for free to participate, by clicking here: PAWriter Forum.

Bonus #1: You may download a simple analog clock program for your desktop that I wrote by clicking here: SimpleTime.sit. It's in StuffIt format and works on both MacOS 9 and MacOS X. The clock has an alarm feature you can set.

Bonus #2: You may download a "Nest Egg" program that I wrote by clicking here: NestEgg.sit. It's in StuffIt format and works on both MacOS 9 and MacOS X. The program determines the optimal dollar draw that can be made each year from a financial nest egg (e.g., an investment in bonds, stocks, CDs, etc.) for the rest of your life. Version 2 posted 28 December 2007 adds more documentation to the About Nest Egg menu item.

The Usual Disclaimers

Personal Ancestry Writer II (also known as "PAWriter II") and the bonus programs (henceforth "THE SOFTWARE") are provided by Howard H. Metcalfe (henceforth "THE AUTHOR") "as is" and "with all faults." THE AUTHOR makes no representations or warranties of any kind concerning the quality, safety or suitability of THE SOFTWARE, either expressed or implied, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.

THE AUTHOR makes no representations or warranties as to the truth, accuracy or completeness of any statements, information or materials concerning THE SOFTWARE that is contained on and within the http://www.lanopalera.net or http://www.lanopalera.info web sites (henceforth "THE WEBSITE") owned and operated by THE AUTHOR.

In no event shall THE AUTHOR be liable to you or any third parties for any special, punitive, incidental, indirect or consequential damages of any kind, or any damages whatsoever, including, without limitation, those resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether or not THE AUTHOR has been advised of the possibility of such damages, and on any theory of liability, arising out of or in connection with the use of THE SOFTWARE.

Without limiting the foregoing, THE AUTHOR makes no warranty that:

i. THE SOFTWARE will meet your requirements
ii. THE SOFTWARE will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free
iii. the results that may be obtained from the use of THE SOFTWARE will be effective, accurate or reliable
iv. the quality of THE SOFTWARE will meet your expectations
v. any errors in THE SOFTWARE obtained from THE WEBSITE will be corrected.

THE SOFTWARE and its documentation made available on or through THE WEBSITE:

vi. could include technical or other mistakes, inaccuracies or typographical errors
vii. may be out of date, and THE AUTHOR makes no commitment to update such materials.

THE AUTHOR assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions in THE SOFTWARE or its documentation available from THE WEBSITE. THE AUTHOR may make changes to THE SOFTWARE or its documentation made available on THE WEBSITE with or without prior or subsequent notice.

The use of THE SOFTWARE downloaded through THE WEBSITE is done at your own discretion and risk and with agreement that you will be solely responsible for any damage to your computer system or loss of data that results from such activities. No advice or information, whether oral or written, obtained by you from THE AUTHOR or from THE WEBSITE shall create any warranty for THE SOFTWARE.

Personal Ancestry Writer II ©2002-2008 Howard H. Metcalfe. Nest Egg ©2007 Howard H. Metcalfe. All rights reserved. Macintosh and AppleWorks are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Personal Ancestral File is a trademark of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. FrameMaker is a trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated. REALbasic is a registered trademark of Real Software, Inc. StuffIt is a trademark of Aladin Systems. UniHelp is copyrighted by Electric Butterfly, Inc.