Features

Geneaprove only has a limited number of features currently, but hopefully things will improve. Here is nonetheless a list of features that distinguish Geneaprove from other genealogy software (and the reason why I started development on this project initially):

• Web-based interface, local server

  Geneaprove provides a web-based interface, that is you use it through your web browser. This allows you to access it from a lot of devices out there (Windows, Mac and Linux PCs, but also tablets,...). No need to install it on all those platforms.

  But as opposed to some of the major-brand genealogy software, Geneaprove runs locally on your machine (or somewhere at a web-hosting company that you chose). You always have full access to your data. And since Geneaprove datamodel is documented, and the data stored in a standard sqlite database, you will be able to access it even if Geneaprove no longer exists.

• Unlimited number of generations in Pedigree

  For some reason, a lot of software limits you to displaying three or four generation of ancestors at most on your pedigree. To see more, you have to select another person and display her ancestors. This isn't convenient, and machines nowadays are easily able to display much more than that.

• Both ancestors and descendants on Pedigree

  Likewise, some software have two separate reports to show the ancestors and the descendants of a person (or in the best cases they display one generation of descendants along with the ancestors to ease navigation).

  Geneaprove, on the other hand, uses a single view that combines the two, and you chose dynamically how many generations of each you want to display.

• No family events

  Geneaprove gets away from the traditional notion of family in genealogy software. In some applications, if you want to see all the events for one person you have to see her personal events, then the events for each of the families she belonged to (with her parents and with her different partners).

  When you research data, on the other hand, you generally concentrate on one person, not on a family. So Geneaprove really focuses on the person, and does not show the notion of family. Of course, to show a pedigree, Geneaprove will look at the parent-child or spouse relationships that might exist in your database, and recompute what is necessary.

  A marriage is actually an event on which two persons have a principal role (husband and wife), and many others can have a witness role. This event is shared by all the persons, and only the roles distinguish the persons.

• Assertions

  Most genealogy software allow you to store conclusions (Alan was born on 28-02-1900), but not the reasoning that lead to those conclusions. For instance, it is possible that as part of your reasearch you have found two documents that indicate 27-02-1900 and 28-02-1900 as dates of births. Some other document lead you to chose the second one as the most probable date. This choice should be explained, and the reasoning stored for when you go back to Alan in a few months or years).

• Source based

  When we say that geneaprove is source based, we really mean it. You cannot input an event or an assertion without a proper source to indicate where you got that piece of information from (even if the source is simply a conversation with xxx). So you can go back years later and examine the source again.

• Citation templates

  Properly citing a source is for most of us a black art. I know I need to cite them so that I can find the source again a few years from now, but what amount of information is needed for that is not always obvious. Like several other genealogy software, Geneaprove therefore provides various templates to help. You select the type of the source, and geneaprove automatically provide input fields for the various citation parts, and from those computes the full citation.

  For now, these templates are based on "Evidence Explained!" from Elizabeth Shown Mills, as provided by John Yates

  Other templates can easily be added as strings, for instance ${Author},${title}

• Open Source

  This is open-source software, so feel free to contribute your ideas, bug reports or wishes.