Individual

Gedcom information mostly revolves about individuals. That's you, your father, your children and any other ancestor or descendant. By clicking on the small symbol in the Control Center you can very easily enter new information for individuals you know about.

The creation asks for given, family name and sex. Then you can specify its relationship to your existing data. First select any family or individual in the Tree View or Table View. The radiobuttons below the indication of the selected entity allows to specify the new relationship. When selecting an individual the new one can be its Sibling, Child, Parent (if not already exists) or Spouse. When selecting a family the new individual can be Child or Spouse. Make your selection and click on Create.

When editing an Individual in the Edit View you should stick to the Gedcom standard as close as possible. A typical individual could consists of this kind of information:

@I008@ INDI
 NAME Nils /Meier/
 SEX M
 BIRT
  DATE 25 MAY 1970
  PLAC Rendsburg, Germany
 RESI
  ADDR 202-1241 Kilborn Place
  DATE FROM 30 JUL 1999 TO 2000     

Just work through the properties of your individuals and change their properties. When adding new properties choose from the predefined list or if necessary extend the schema by adding new property-tags for special user-properties.

An important feature of Gedcom is the capability to link entities. Individuals are normally not separate - they are married, have parents and children. Everytime you create a new Individual related to others, they are linked through properties. These properties for the individuals are FAMC (being a child in a family)or FAMS (being a spouse in a family). The properties refer to the family by its id. You can explore the relationship between individuals and families by following those links. Be careful when deleting or creating new links - keeping the overview of the referential integrity is not easy :).

Assume a special case as an example: You have your family tree and found out that an ancestors wife's sister married his brother. All those individuals are in your tree already! You can now create a new family for this newly discovered relationship. But then you don't want to create a new individual - you want to link existing entities! The solution: Select your ancestor's brother and add a FAMS property to it. Then change it to point to the new family by entering its ID. Click on the link-button and a HUSB property will automatically be added to that family. The circle is made.