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DESCRIPTION
PAW2U is the universal binary version of Personal Ancestry Writer II, aka PAWriter. 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 example, 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.)
WHAT'S NEW
Version 91:
- Previously, the list of people displayed when the Find Person button is clicked (or command-F is pressed or Person menu > Find Person by Name is chosen) was limited to 30,000 people. If more people were on file, only those with the same first letter of their surnames were displayed, and it was necessary to type another first letter and press tab to see people whose surnames start with that letter. Now all people on file are displayed, regardless of how many there are. You can still type the first few letters (or more) of the surname and press tab to jump to the first person in the list whose surname starts with those letters.
- The same is true of the list of tagged people displayed when the Find Tagged button is clicked (or option-command-F is pressed or Person menu > Find Tagged Person by Name is chosen).
- The same is true of the list of names displayed when Edit menu > Copy Name, Tag menu > Tag People whose Names Contain, or Tag Menu > Tag People with a Place Containing is chosen, as well as for the list of citations displayed when Citation menu > Edit Citations is chosen.
- The Reference Guide was updated to remove references to the above list limitations, and to add an explanation of marriage intentions to the topic Basic Data Entry > Dates.
- As stated in the Reference Guide: "To ensure HTML reports, HTML web sites and Show Scrapbook in the file menu work properly, make sure your picture file names use only alphanumeric characters [i.e., plain ASCII letters and digits], dashes (-), underscores (_), periods (.) and spaces. It's also OK to use plus signs (+) and dollar signs ($), but their usage is generally rare." (See BNF definitions of alpha, digit and safe characters in a URL in http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt, page 19, to which is added a space character.) Now, if you add a picture file to a wallet whose name contains a character other than those specified above, or open such a picture file in a wallet, a warning will be displayed pointing out that character. Such a picture file may or may not be displayed when referenced in HTML.
- Titles at the head of HTML reports that contain non-ASCII characters are now displayed correctly.
REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.3 or later.
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| PAW2U User Reviews (6 posts) | Write A Review |
 | Nov 6 2009 |
TIANISSIMO This sounds great. I'll try it.
(Version 88) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| May 1 2009 |
NEALNT This program is designed with the Christian faiths in mind. The references to baptism for instance is nor relevant to many religions and I wish could be removed. How about making some of these fields user selectable? Maybe I want to include Bar Mitzvah date instead of baptism date?
(Version 85) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Feb 11 2009 |
HURTIG MacWorld posted a four-mice review of PAWriter in July 2007 at http://www.macworld.com/article/57840/2007/05/paw69.html
(Version 84) | |
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| Feb 9 2009 |
NIKONMD Any genealogist who ever used PAF knows it is an efficient way to save and document your genealogy research. PAWriter II continues the tradition. It may look a little old school, but the familiar layout is very easy to navigate and moving around your family tree is very straight forward. PAWriter has added some impressive tools to the old Mac version of PAF and for me PAWriter was a godsend and an inspiration to continue documenting my research. PAWriter II 84 is an example of how good the author is at keeping the program functional and stable. If you need more features then you can always export a GEDCOM file for use in another program, but for me PAWriter II does it all.
(Version 84) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Feb 7 2009 |
APPLEDOGX It is good to find a free geneology program. I do see some shortcomings, though. It does not provide for entry of same-sex partners in families, requiring partners to be a man and a woman. In this day and age, it would be more useful to allow different mixes in partners. It was also impossible to cancel entry of a partner, from what I could see. The user interface seems very OS-9, and the default color for the background is horrible. Fortunately, you can change it.
(Version 84) | |
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| Feb 1 2009 |
SJHA I am very impressed with this application. Having tried a number of genealogy applications this was the only freeware one that imported properly from a GEDCOM file (one that several non-free applications could not cope with). Highly recommended.
(Version 83) | |
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