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1.1. INTRODUCTION

LifeLines is a genealogy program that runs on UNIX systems. It maintains genealogical records (persons, families, sources, events and others) in a database, and generates reports from those records. There are no practical limits on the number of records that can be stored in a LifeLines database, nor on the amounts or kinds of data that can be kept in the records. LifeLines does not contain built-in reports. Instead it provides a programming subsystem that you use to program your own reports and charts. The programming subsystem also lets you query your databases and process your data in any way. LifeLines uses the terminal independent features of UNIX to provide a screen and menu based user interface.

LifeLines is a non-commercial, experimental system that is use at your own risk software. I developed LifeLines for personal use and shared it with friends. Enough of a demand arose through word of mouth and internet, that I have made the LifeLines source code and other information freely available under an MIT-style license reproduced below:

" Copyright (c) 1991-1999 Thomas T. Wetmore IV Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. "

The source code, documentation and a collection of report scripts are located at http://lifelines.sourceforge.net/. You can also find binary kits for some platforms. If you are a developer and wish to contribute enhancements, please sign up on sourceforge and contact Marc Nozell who is currently managing the project.

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1.2. INSTALLATION

You may be installing LifeLines from a source distribution package or as an executable program already prepared for your UNIX (or MS-Windows) system. The source distribution comes with the readme, build script and make files necessary to build LifeLines. Follow the instructions in the readme file. A number of executables are built which can be put it in a directory in your execution path. If you get the program in executable form, follow whatever instructions came with it.

The source distribution package also contains documentation and some LifeLines programs. Included with these in the reports directory is a brief overview of the reports in the file index.html.

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1.3. STARTING LIFELINES AND CREATING DATABASES

You normally start LifeLines with the command: lines database where database is the name of a LifeLines database. If LifeLines finds the database, LifeLines opens the database and takes you to the program's main menu. If the database doesn't exist, LifeLines asks whether it should create it, and if you answer yes, does so. You may create any number of databases, but only one can be accessed by LifeLines at a time. If you built the LifeLines executable from the source package, the executable may be named llines rather than lines. You may either change its name or invoke LifeLines by using the command llines instead.

The full command line interface to LifeLines is:

        lines [-acdfiklnortuwxzCFI][database]
     

The following options are supported:

The -r option opens the database with read-only access. When in this mode LifeLines will not let you modify the database; no other operations are affected. The -w option opens the database with writeable access. If the database cannot be opened with the requested mode LifeLines quits immediately. When you open a database with neither the -r or -w options, LifeLines first tries to open the database with writeable access; if not possible LifeLines then tries to open the database with read-only access; and if this is not possible LifeLines quits. A LifeLines database may be open simultaneously by any number of programs with read-only access; however, if a database is open by a program with writeable access, then it cannot be opened by any other other program.

In rare situations the read/write mode mechanism can fail; when this happens a database may appear unopenable. If this happens use the -f option to force open the database; this will open the database and reset the mode mechanism. This is a dangerous feature; you can use it to open the same database with writeable access more than once; the results are unpredictable and generally disastrous.

The multiuser protection supplied by this reader/writer access mechanism is provided via a flag setting in the database, so both read-only and writeable access actually alter the database (read-only access only alters the value of this flag). For truly read-only access, e.g., for use with read-only media, the best solution is to lock (-ly) the database before copying it to the read-only media. This annotates the database itself as being for immutable access. Alternatively, to use a database already on read-only media and not so annotated, use the immutable (-i) flag.

By default lifelines supports a traditional family concept, that is, each family has at most one father and one mother. The -n flag relaxes this restriction. However, not all the code in lifelines supports these relaxations. For example, the default family browse screen will only display two parents, however by switching to one of the gedcom modes of displaying the family you can see all the data.

If you don't give the name of a database on the command line, LifeLines will prompt you for it. If you do not use the LLDATABASES shell variable or user options (described later), the name you enter must be the name of a LifeLines database directory expressed using normal UNIX absolute or relative path naming. If you do use the LLDATABASES variable, LifeLines will search for the database in the directories named in the variable; this can be very convenient.

If you would like to choose a database from a list of existing ones, enter a single question mark and press return when LifeLines prompts you for the database name. LifeLines will then display a list of all databases that it can find, and you may select one from the list.

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1.4. INTRODUCTION TO GEDCOM

LifeLines records are stored in GEDCOM format; you organize, edit and maintain your data in this format. GEDCOM is a standard that defines a file format for moving genealogical data between computer systems. LifeLines has adopted this format for structuring the records in its databases. This approach provides a structured yet flexible method for storing all the data you wish to record. There are few restrictions on the format, amount or type of information you may store in a LifeLines database.

GEDCOM is defined at two levels. At the syntactic level GEDCOM is a simple set of rules for organizing and structuring data into records, with no concern about the types of records, types or formats of information in the records, or the relationships between records. At the semantic level GEDCOM adds an additional set of rules that specify what record types are allowed, how records must be structured, how data within the records must be identified and formatted, and what specific relationships between the record types are allowed. In principle there can be multiple semantic versions of GEDCOM, though in practice there is only one, lineage-linked GEDCOM. Unfortunately this semantic version of GEDCOM is poorly defined, and every genealogical system has interpreted it in different ways.

LifeLines uses GEDCOM primarily at the syntactic level, though it does impose a few of the generally accepted lineage-linked semantic restrictions. This means some important things. It means that you can store all your genealogical data in your