Creating a CD-Rom for the non-genealogist

[Ed McKie]

I am sure that this has been dealt with before, however the Key words I try do not produce an answer.

I am having family visitors to celebrate our wedding anniversary and would like to give those interested the results of our researches on a cd rom in some "easy" format. I have looked at gedcom to html as a possibility but this just produces an index of names, which then reference the data about one individual. I had more in mind the same format as the gene programme, like BK and Legacy, without the recipient having to install the programme on their own computer. Am I looking for the impossible ?

Cheers..Ed

[Guy Etchells]

Take a look at my website. That was produced using the Descendant Chart option in Brothers Keeper and saving it as an rtf (rich text) file. That file was then opened in a word processor and the images, background etc. added and saved as an .htm file
The finished file can then be burnt to cd and opened by anyone using the browser on their computer.
Cheers
Guy

[Ed McKie]

guy

Had a look at your site, but this is not what I had in mind, as I would then need to do a descendancy chart for each surname, plus all the subsequent editing, which I have done before. I tend to feel that non-genealogists would find it difficult to marry various descendancy charts in mind as it were. I have been down this road for my home page, and to be honest would not like to do it all again with the other "names"

Thanks for the suggestion anyway, and I may well have to end up doing it that way, but will avoid it if I can. Tempus fugit apart, I am also getting lazy.

Cheers..ed

[Dennis Harker]

I have produced exactly what you want but it is not entirely straightforward.

Use GenoPro Beta 2 (latest version can be downloaded for free at https://www.genopro.com/beta ). Import your gedcom. Use the create report feature and save this to a hard drive folder of your making/choice. Follow the advice on the genopro website about making a report.

Then go to https://www.singerscreations.com/AboutInstallIt.asp and download the free program 'installit'. This will provide you with the necessary autorun files for the CDROM that you are going to burn.

Burn the contents of the folder you saved your report to, including all sub-folders etc and also add the files produced by the installit program. Make sure these autorun files are on the ROOT directory of the CDROM.

The resultant CD, when inserted into an autorun CD Drive will run IE and present with a user friendly front-end which is easy to navigate and which covers everything in your gedcom. It even shows the tree as a picture which can be navigated (a bit like a multimap map). Photos, relationships, etc. are all displayed if they were in the original report. On a PC where autorun has been disabled - navigate to the CD and open the index file. This will run IE and the report will be displayed as above.

One drawback. To see the end result properly one needs to download the latest version of SVG viewer from Adobe. Users will be prompted for this if not already incorporated into their version of IE. SVC viewer is free from Adobe and the download is quick and self-installing.

I gave copies of such a CD to family and they have been very pleased with the result. It would take a gi-normous family tree to get anywhere near filling a CD and at about 10p each it is easy to burn and distribute updates as required.

[Dennis Harker]

I forgot I shouldn't make the post too long in order to avoid the repetition bug. Sorry about that.

Should you have any problems making the Genopro report (if you decide to follow that route) there is a very useful forum on the Genopro website. However, I found it straightforward and had no problems after reading the report advice from the website.

[arthurk]

First, which FH program do you use? - someone may have some specific advice or experience which might help.

My first thought was to create a set of webpages because these are what non-genies are more likely to be used to dealing with. Most, if not all programs can produce these without having to go through a third-party application, and these may give a more satisfactory result.

Another possiblility is that some programs can create a simple non-installing read-only version of themselves for sharing with others. RootsMagic can do this, as can GENViewer (a GEDCOM read-only program), and there are probably others too.

Arthur

[Ed McKie]

Arthur

I use Legacy and have used BK in the past. It is possible in Legacy to produce a CD which contains the programme and the data, but this instals the programme on the other computer. So again, not really what I had in mind. I had forgotten about genviewer (have looked at heaps of progs in the past) so will have another look at that. Thanks for the suggestion.

Cheers..Ed

[Mutley]

I have just bought the full version of FTM though you can download the basic program for free.
It says it creates a 'Book' (with the info you wish to include) and that book can be saved to CD, printed out or down loaded to a Website.
I have not yet gone into it but just off the top of my head...... Maybe the book could be put onto a CD to give your relatives or if downloaded to a Web site you would just need to give them the web site address.

I know someone on this forum has created their 'book' on a web page. It is in another thread and there was a link to it. I thought it was rather good and as I am not very computer literate I was hoping I could produce something similar for my family on a CD. It was one of the reasons I bought FTM but I am sorry I cannot remember the thread....
Regards Mutley

[Mutley]

The thread was Which Software?
Post 14 by Ed Bradford
His link was:
https://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~edbradford/

Regards
Mutley

[Ed Bradford]

FTM will allow you to extract the information from your database, create just about any kind of individual page and allow you to assemble them in a book in any order you want. You can go with a traditional format or something a little non-traditional like I have. The book can be as thick or thin as you'd like. The program will automatically create a table of contents and an index if you want one. Once you have the book assembled, you can export it to PDF format and post that to a web site, put it on a CD or send it in an email. I like the FTM program but I've used it from day one and I'm a little biased.

If you'd like to look at what I've done, my books are posted on my web site. Mutley is correct, the link to it is:

https://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~edbradford/

If you need help with putting a book together, we can communicate off-line. You can contact me through my web site.
..............Ed