Place Records - this version introduces place records. The first time you open a file, it will create a place record of each unique place listed in individual or family records. You will probably be motivated to use all the new place editing options to organize the place information in your file. The task may lead to new insights into your genealogy research.
A new "Place Advisor" window gives you access to a large data base of information on places specially designed for genealogy research. This advisor is a helpful tool for organizing your place information.
Book Style Records - this version introduces book style records that help you automate the process of running the Generations LaTeX book. Furthermore, all documentation on the book creation process is now within the internal GEDitCOM II help.
New Application Support Folders - GEDitCOM II has always had two folders for application support files. The main install or "System" folder was in the "Library" folder of your hard driver with full path name /Library/Application Support/GEDitCOMII. In the "Open Format" and "Scripts" menus, the resources in this folder were called "System Formats" and "System Scripts". The second or "User" folder was in your home directory with full path name /Users/(your user name)/Library/Application Support/GEDitCOMII. The resources in this folder were called "User Formats" and "User Scripts". NEW: starting in version 1.7, these folders are moved and renamed. Here is what happens the first time your run version 1.7:
The name of the "User" folder is changed from "GEDitCOMII" to "GEDitCOM II". The contents of your previous "User" folder will remain in the renamed folder.
An entirely new "System" folder is installed within the "User" folder as a subfolder called "System". In other words, the new "System" folder full path will be /Users/(your user name)/Library/Application Support/GEDitCOM II/System.
The "System" folder for your last version GEDitCOM II will remain at /Library/Application Support/GEDitCOMII, but will no longer be used.
To conform with MacApp store - GEDitCOM II may be in the MacApp store in the future, but first it has to be changed to conform to Apple rules. Namely, applications from the MacApp store may not write files at the System level. Hence the "System" folder had to be moved to the user's library. Second, an application may write into a folder in the user's "Application Support" folder but only if the folder name exactly matches the application's name. Hence that folder had to be changed from "GEDitCOMII" to "GEDitCOM II"
For easier installation - GEDitCOM II now maintains an internal copy for the "System" resources and installs them when needed. By this change, Apple's installation package is no longer needed. You can just drag GEDitCOM II to your Applications folder to install it. This change was also needed for MacApp store because it does not allow non-trivial installations.
Easy restore of resources - since all resources are held in the GEDitCOM II application, a new preference has been added to let you re-install the system resources appropriate to the running version at any time. This process can be useful if the resources become corrupted.
Since version 1.7 leaves the old "System" folder for versions 1.6 or earlier (at /Library/Application Support/GEDitCOMII), you can go back and run old versions of GEDitCOM II. Since version 1.7 changes the name of the "User" folder, however, the user resources will not be available in the old version. If you need any user resources, simple copy them from the new "GEDitCOM II" folder that gets created by version 1.7 into the "GEDitCOMII" that would get created by running the old version again. Hopefully there will be no need to every use an old version again. When you no longer have an older version, you may as well delete the old "System" library folder at /Library/Application Support/GEDitCOMII.
Family tree charts were improved to allow portraits to be either to the left of the text or above the text.
When you attach a child, the child's and parent's birth and death dates will be checked to alert you of possible errors when the dates do not seem consistent with that individual being a child in that family.
You can sort multimedia objects by their date in individual or family records.
Two new menu commands let you copy and paste events between records.
Note and multimedia object records can be designated with a distribution setting, which affects some options when exporting them from the file.
The process to export GEDCOM data was improved, has new options to work with new place records and book style records, and has new options for embedding GEDitCOM II-specific data. The scripting command to export to GEDCOM file was updated to allow the new options.
Many improvements to the "Default Format":
Pane bar shows number of events, multimedia, etc. available for that record.
Scaling of multimedia objects is more intuitive and has a "fit" option.
Pedigree chart in individuals and family group chart in families. These came from the former "Pedigree Format," which is now deleted because it is not needed.
More information shown in table of children in families
