XPost: alt.genealogy   
   From: tahiri2@tanygraig.force9.co.uk   
      
   On 09/02/2026 23:45, J. P. Gilliver wrote:   
   snip   
   >   
   > I'm very interested, as - seeing the writing on the wall for BK - Family   
   > Historian looks the best (for me) one to switch to; I'm interested to hear:   
   >   
   > what you found in moving from BK to FH - what went wrong (especially   
   > things you only discovered long after the change), what to look out for   
   > (including how to prevent the things that went wrong), and similar   
   > questions; (date formats especially)   
   >   
   > how you think the _support_ compares. In BK, there's a user group   
   > (mailing list), with lots of helpful people, and occasionally JS   
   > himself; he also provides minor upgrades free. As far as I can see, FH   
   > has just a support group (a forum) - no pariticipation from the authors,   
   > and no upgrades other than major paid. (But it is more in line with   
   > modern Windows conventions.)   
   >   
   >> and accepts quarter years as Q1 1900. All mine were as 1Q1900 which it   
   >> put in inverted commas and called a 'date phrase'! I have gradually   
   >   
   > Mine are mostly just year, with Q1 etc. among the comments for that   
   > event. (If I do have any in the date field, they'll be e. g. 1960Q2,   
   > which BK will just store as text.)   
   >   
   > I _may_ be able to get ChatGPT (or similar) to create something to   
   > extract those, though I suspect not as "Q2" etc. is often not the _only_   
   > thing I have in the comments (for example, I might have further address   
   > details for e. g. BMDs - I tend only to record the town/village in the   
   > location box, with house number and street name, or church, in the   
   > comment box - so my list of "locations with events" remains usable).   
   >   
   >> swapped them around so that it is now happy and the age calculations   
   >> work. I am still running Brother's Keeper as well because I am   
   >> continuing using it's reference numbers. Family Historian has many more   
   >> features but you don't have to use them.   
   >   
   > Hmm. (Have you ever gone from FH _to_ BK? If so, what problems?)   
   >   
   I still like BK because it is straightforward and simple, but FH has far   
   more options to set your preferences. The trial version has a sample   
   project(the author's family) included so you can see how the information   
   is laid out.   
   I hadn't previously been in the habit of creating gedcoms so I did have   
   a false start or two when transferring data. (my mistakes rather than   
   anything going 'wrong') I was taking the opportunity to split my   
   database into four (families of my parents and his parents) and my first   
   attempt lost various outlying relatives beyond BKs interpretation of   
   'family'. I also had to run through the database numerically adding the   
   ref number field to each of 12000 people so that it would be included.   
   I haven't used the support on either program enough to compare them. The   
   FH help file is reasonably good, and the program asks you straight away   
   if it thinks you may have made a mistake. I did take a preliminary look   
   round FHUG the FH forum early on, which seemed reasonably easy to   
   search. There are people on the forum making free add-ons to do specific   
   tasks in FH so they presumably have access to the underlying code? There   
   was a program update some time ago which was definitely free.   
   Using AI to make amendments sounds like overthinking the problem. A   
   GEDCOM file is only a text document. I would expect Find and Replace in   
   Notepad to deal with many data quibbles fairly easily.   
   I had previously tried a few free trial versions of other software,   
   which resulted in some frustrations with place names. I am happy to say   
   neither BK nor FH have ever told me a place name is invalid! (That was   
   particularly annoying when it was a Registration District name!) FH also   
   has auto complete available which saves a lot of typing. I try and avoid   
   making 'custom events' because I am never sure what another program   
   would do with them. I have yet to discover what FH did when encountering   
   BK's event 'military' which FH surprisingly doesn't have, but I expect   
   'occupation' will cover it.   
   I have lots of the various notes fields in use and haven't found any   
   problems or deficits in the FH version.   
   No, I haven't tried converting back. Yet.   
   What I have been doing is working up and down a section of tree in BK   
   extending addresses, adding information that was not available last time   
   I looked at that person, clearing things that aren't dates out of the   
   date field, and so on. Then I open FH and compare the two and fill in   
   any new points and corrections, before carrying on back in BK. They will   
   gradually end up both up to date and identical, but the result is that I   
   have not really explored the other things that FH can do as yet. (Not   
   enough hours in a day and too few of them available for family history -   
   a common complaint I'm sure!)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)