You may have noticed that what was a constant stream of regular improvements to Lineascope.com has ended. Here’s why: I leaned a ton about how you do your research and how you use (and want to use) Lineascope. So, I’m re-writing it. The next release will be a 2.0 version with a simpler workflow that’s even more focused on information and evidence collection followed by analysis and proof writing. It will also be a desktop application for Mac and Windows as well as an Internet service. I don’t know yet whether it will be a simultaneous release on all platforms or come out on on of them first. I’ll tell you when I choose.

I released an update this afternoon. It implements title, author, published date, and published place fields for genealogy sources. The citation in your pre-existing source records are untouched. When you enter new sources you have the option of letting Lineascope create the citation for you.

It does this by joining the citation parts like this: “title, author, publish date, publish place.” This happens if you don’t supply a citation when creating or editing a source. If you want the citation formatted some other way, simply enter what you want in the citation field and Lineascope will leave it alone.

The addition of citation parts moves us closer to GEDCOM export of sources. I still need to add repositories, move some citation data out of the source, add some citation fields (like page number), and support using the same source for multiple records. Once all that’s in place I can get back to finish GEDCOM export of sources.

The export of individuals and their characteristics is already implemented in the software, but not active. If you would like to access this feature to try it with your conclusion database send me an email and I’ll set you up.

I got the export of individuals and characteristics working including any notes attached. I moved on to exporting sources and hit a snag. Lineascope isn’t capturing sources at a level of detail that the GEDCOM format requires.

One of my principles in creating Lineascope was not to design with the GEDCOM standard in mind because I think that’s a factor in why the current genealogy applications have similar short-comings (like not supporting evidence management). Instead, I’ve been guided by the GENTECH data model.

Sources in Lineascope are greatly simplified from the GENTECH model. I made that choice so that I could get an evidence management and analysis tool into your hands and get your feedback sooner. Now it’s time to make the source functions include citation parts (like title, author, etc,) and repositories. Your existing citation text will be preserved; although, you will need to populate the new citation parts for sources you want to export.

I’m a couple hours into adding citation parts to enable GEDCOM export of sources and it’s going well. I’m guessing it will be a couple of weeks before the new functionality is available in Lineascope.com.

I started work on the GEDCOM export of individuals in Lineascope today. My plan is to add an export link to the individuals page. Control-clicking (or right-clicking) on the link will allow you to download a GEDCOM file for that individual. It will include all the proven characteristics and events. Evidence won’t be exported because the GEDCOM standard doesn’t support it, but sources will. I’m thinking proof statements will go in notes.

This is the blog for the evidence-driven genealogy software Lineascope. It’s the place for enhancement announcements and ruminations on future features.

Since Lineascope is fashioned specifically for evidence-based research, this blog will also include articles about principles and methods for conducting such research as well as news from the field. The fan sites on Facebook and Genealogywise will remain. I’ll check in on them and make release announcements there, but their primary purpose is to provide places for you all to talk about Lineascope and evidence-driven genealogy amongst yourselves and to help each other.

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