Genealogy software
Encyclopedia
Computer software
Computer software, or just software, is a collection of computer programs and related data that provide the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it....
used to record, organize, and publish genealogical
Genealogy
Genealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...
data. At a minimum, genealogy software collects the date and place of an individual's birth, marriage, and death, and stores the relationships of individuals to their parents, spouses, and children. Additionally, most genealogy programs handle additional events in an individual's life, free-form notes, and photographs and multimedia, and source citations. Genealogy software programs can produce a variety of graphical charts and text reports, such as pedigree chart
Pedigree chart
A pedigree chart is a diagram that shows the occurrence and appearance or phenotypes of a particular gene or organism and its ancestors from one generation to the next, most commonly humans, show dogs, and race horses....
s, ahnentafel
Ahnentafel
An ahnentafel or ahnenreihe is a genealogical numbering system for listing a person's direct ancestors in a fixed sequence of ascent...
reports, and Register reports. Some desktop applications generate HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
pages for web publishing; there are stand-alone web applications, as well. Most genealogy programs can import and export using the GEDCOM
GEDCOM
GEDCOM, an acronym for GEnealogical Data COMmunication, is a proprietary and open de facto specification for exchanging genealogical data between different genealogy software...
standard.
Features
Certain programs are geared towards specific religions, and will include additional fields relevant to that religion. Other programs focus on certain geographical regions. For example, having a field for the family's coat of armsHeraldry
Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of creating, granting, and blazoning arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms. Heraldry comes from Anglo-Norman herald, from the Germanic compound harja-waldaz, "army commander"...
is only relevant if the family comes from a part of the world that uses them.
Some programs allow for the importation of digital photographs. Others focus on the ability to generate kinship charts. Some programs are more flexible than others in allowing for the input of children born out of wedlock or for varying types of spousal relationships.
While most programs and applications are desktop-based, there are a number of web-based products in the genealogy software market.
Many genealogy applications focus on data management in that they allow users to manage all the information they collect on individuals, families, and events. Other tools available to the genealogist include research management tools, mapping tools, charting programs, and web-publishing programs.
Sharing
Most genealogy software allows export of data in GEDCOMGEDCOM
GEDCOM, an acronym for GEnealogical Data COMmunication, is a proprietary and open de facto specification for exchanging genealogical data between different genealogy software...
format, which can then be shared with people using different genealogy software. Some genealogy applications use GEDCOM internally and therefore work directly with GEDCOM data. Certain programs allow the user to restrict what information is shared, usually by removing information about living people for privacy
Privacy
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...
reasons.