Edit View

Gedcom suggests one file which consists of an unlimited number of entities. Every entity has an unlimited number of properties which can be nested in an unlimited number of levels. To edit an entity therefor GenJ shows a tree of its properties.

You can open as many Edit Views as you wish - they all listen to events on the file they were opened on. Once you select an entity in the Table or Tree view, it will be shown in this one. In case you want to have one Edit View stick to a particular entity, simply select it in one of the other views and click on the little symbol at the top/right. Now this view sticks to that entity.

You can browse the property-tree by opening and closing sub-trees and selecting individual properties. Once selected the property is also displayed in the bottom part - here you can edit it.

Note that there is a number of predefined editors for specific properties. Most properties are single-line but sometimes they have a special format. For example NAME : its format is NAME first /last/. If you select a NAME property a special editor will appear at the bottom that allows you to edit that information in to individual fields. If GenJ doesn't know an editor for the selected property or the data kept in the property is not well formatted (e.g. a wrong date) you still can change that value with the default editor.

A special case are also links between entities - for example if an individual is married he is a husband in a family. Gedcom keeps that information by adding one property to the family and one to the individual. The family knows the property HUSB - the husband or WIFE - the wife. The individual knows the property FAMS - the family in which he/she is a spouse.

If you select a property such as HUSB, WIFE, FAMS or FAMC an editor appears that looks different depending on the link's state:

  1. valid link - a button to jump to that linked entity
  2. broken link - a textfield to change the reference to a future linked entity and a button to perform the link operation.

The buttons at the top of this view allow you too add or remove properties. This applies to the currently selected property. You can also move properties up/down in the current level they reside in.

When adding a property a dialog appears that allows to choose from a number of known sub-properties (identified by tags). Select one of the properties and a description appears in the right window. If you need to add a property that is not in the list, select the 2. radio button and enter a user-defined tag. Please read about the discussion of Gedcom compliancy to understand that this has to be done carefully.

When you select one of the know properties by choosing the checkbox at the bottom you can tell GenJ to add the default sub-properties, too.