On Sat, Aug 06, 2011 at 10:20:30AM +1000, Ron Savage wrote: > Hi Folks > > This is the first time I've seen a GEDCOM XML 6.0 doc, although I > suppose many people are familiar with it. > > http://bettergedcom.wikispaces.com/message/view/Data+Models/32554704 > > Should we discuss it here, or join the other group?
I'm not sure it's worth discussing it at all really. At least not from the standpoint of using it to push forward newer work. However, some of the following projects may be of more interest: http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/GenTech_Projects http://gdmxml.fugal.net/ http://www.cosoft.org/genxml/ http://www.sunflower.com/~billk/GEDC/ Over the years there have been many initiatives aimed at improving on GEDCOM. As you can see none of them have really caught on. I believe this is because no one with sufficient clout has sufficient incentive to move away from GEDCOM. GEDCOM 5.5 is sufficient for the LDS church to do what it wants to do. And it is sufficient for software application vendors to create software that people will buy. Even if anyone does create a good new format, they will still need to support GEDCOM import and export, at least initially, so where is the benefit? That's not to say that this can't or shouldn't happen. We can look at document formats to see a case where formats can be improved (or, at least, updated) and trying to save in an earlier format can result in a warning that data may be lost. It's probably worth noting too, that somewhat contradicting what I wrote earlier, the LDS church has been active in this area recently: https://devnet.familysearch.org/docs/api-overview And finally, just a general note. Many previous discussions have got bogged down technicalities. Should we use XML? What date format? What character encoding? These matters are trivialities in the scheme of things. Once the actual genealogical model is clear the rest is just programming. Of course, most of us are programmers ... -- Paul Johnson - p...@pjcj.net http://www.pjcj.net
