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Genealogy Software

The software I used for organizing all of my family history information is the shareware program Brother's Keeper, by John Steed. The software is available on the Web ($49 if you like it and register) [Download Now]

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Creating the HTML files

Brother's Keeper (BK) Descendancy charts were "printed" as ASCII text files, starting with the oldest ancestor and including four generations. The "Print BK index numbers?" option was selected.

Next, these text files were run through WordPerfect 6.0 or Word 97, where a macro I wrote automatically generates the html document. This macro strips out the BK index numbers but uses the ones for the 4th generation people to create links to later-generation "Descendants" pages. It also creates a list of all the BK index numbers of people for whom I need to generate these later-generation pages.

Then I go back to BK with this list and quickly create the next four-generation Descendancy chart files, process them through the WordPerfect macro (saving all files in ASCII format), and finally upload all the files to the UNIX machine on which my home page resides.

My MS Word 97 macro is available for downloading:

Download Word 97 macro to convert BK (Windows) Descendancies to HTML files suitable for your home page. Unzip the file (use PKUNZIP.EXE or WinZip) and follow the directions in the enclosed Word file bk2html.doc.