Frequently Asked Questions
When will Behold be ready?
The beta test version is now available, and I am working towards a version 1.0 release date of April 2010. On my Behold Future Plans page, I list what I am working on and what I plan to do towards future versions. If you want much more detail, there is my Behold Blog that is a unique documentation of Behold's development that you may find interesting and will give you a small insight into some of the difficulties that can occur along the way.
Why has it taken so long to get Behold out?
I had a prototype for Behold in 1995. It produced a nice text-based Everything Report. But then technology started to change. Everyone wanted to use Windows and see graphical based reports. The user interface was the hardest thing to create and it was only about 1998 that good tools started coming out for this. Then in 1999, Windows 98 finally took hold and memory management was not an issue anymore. In 2001, good third party tools became available. Then family and work and volunteerism and everything else that is part of life seemed to have its way of slowing things down. I have worked on and off on Behold since 1995, but to be honest the technology needed to make the version of Behold that I am releasing possible, only happened in the last couple of years. If nothing else, I hope when you try Behold, that I have made the wait worthwhile.
Can I try a Pre-release or Beta version?
Yes, the Beta is now available. I encourage you to try it, test it on your GEDCOMs and see how it feels to you. If you find any bugs or have any suggestions please comment on the Behold Forum, or use the Feedback page, or email me directly (my email is at the bottom of every page of this site). Go to the Download Page and download Behold and then fill out the form to have your trial key emailed to you.
How much does Behold cost?
Behold is a BUY ONCE WITH FREE UPGRADES FOREVER product. I won't go through the shenanigans that other software does by making you pay to upgrade all the time. I want you, as a user of Behold to remain a user of Behold and to always have the latest version available to work with. (Besides, that way I'll only have one version to maintain, which will be easier on me :-) The price of the product will go up over time for new purchasers, so buying a license early is to your advantage. I will price it at least at $40 US for version 1.0, and it may get to a final price close to $60 when version 2.0 is completed. But I have an early-bird discount for those of you lucky enough to have already discovered it (as I am not advertising it yet). While it is still early beta, you should Buy Behold Now for only $20.
What kind of computer system is required to run Behold?
Behold is a fully-compliant 32-bit Windows program. It will run on Windows ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista. RAM is the major consideration. Behold loads the whole file and all its indexes into your computer's memory and needs lots of it. Currently on most computers, Behold can load files of 1,500 people very quickly. Files of up to 5,000 people can be loaded taking a bit longer, but it is still quite usable. I've loaded files up to 100,000 people, but that takes a few minutes to do and you need lots of RAM (like 1 GB). I am working to make Behold faster, so I'm hopeful that its capacity will increase as time goes on.
What about Windows 98?
It seems to be the end of the road for Behold working on Windows 98. I haven't tested it, but the Unicode capabilities are sure to make it incompatible. If you still have Windows 98 today, you're going to find more and more programs that you can no longer upgrade to, and there will be a lot of capabilities you'll be missing out on - not just Behold.
Will Behold be Mac OS compatible (or even Unix)?
Well, not right away. I first need to develop the Windows version. But Windows emulation software is available that runs on a Mac. Behold should be able to run on a Mac under emulated Windows. For example check out Parallels or Guest PC (inexpensive) or Virtual PC for Mac (more expensive). For Linux, BSD and another alternative for Mac OS X, you can try using Wine, which is another Windows emulator. There have been whispers of Delphi (my programming language) being extended to include these other Operating systems. If that happens, Behold could potentially be available on any platform.
Can Behold work with different languages?
Starting with the beta version, Behold includes Unicode. This means it will display any character in any character set, given the right font. Unicode is not limited to notes or special fields. It is everywhere, including names, tags, and even the program itself. Once version 2 comes along, you'll be able to add text in any language mixing them as you see fit, for example including people's names in both English and in their native language, even right on the same line.
The text that Behold displays for each GEDCOM tag can be changed on the Tag page of the Organize window. And every other word that Behold writes to the Everything Report can be changed on the Report page. So with users help (since I am not proficient in non-computer languages other than English), I'll build up default language files for Behold that will be included with each release and/or downloadable from the Behold website. If anyone wants to volunteer to help with this, please .
If you want to know if the entire user interface will be available in different languages, well that is a tougher task. There is a way to keep a resource file with Behold that tells it what text to put on each button and menu and screen. It gets tricky because in some languages the equivalent text may be too large for a button or too wide for a box. Translating it once to a language would not be too tough. Translating it to 20 languages would be tougher. What is most difficult is then maintaining it. Every time I make a program change, I then would have to make 20 translations as well. Also, trying to maintain the Help file in all those languages would double the effort. So right now, I can't see how I'd be able to manage this, but it is a long-term goal.
What do you plan to do with photos?
Hopefully your genealogy program exports links to photos into its GEDCOM. If so, then Version 1 should be able to display thumbnails of these photos, links to the full-size photos, with any information you have in your GEDCOM file about those photos. Later, after version 2 is out, I would like to add some powerful features to help you document your photos properly.
Do you plan to include in Behold any of the popular reports that other genealogy programs offer, like ancestor, descendant, and ahnentafel reports?
As far as reproducing those reports their way, no, I won't do that. The three reports only start with one person. Behold has multiple starts so you can include whoever you want. And Behold's everything report goes both back to ancestors and forward to descendents from the ancestors. Those reports don't. The ancestor and ahnentafel reports only go back and the descendant report only goes forward.
But you can manipulate Behold to do it almost like those reports. If you Instant Organize on a person, you basically are getting things organized in an ahnentafel manner for the one or two starting people (Families). Every group of descendants is one ahnentafel level. You can change that in the Numbering Options Page and order the descendant groups within each family either in ahnentafel, ancestral, or surname order. And Behold lets you add others related through marriage and/or everyone else. You can add other starting families in the report and reorder the families to get them exactly the way you want. e.g. If your grandfather had 9 brothers and sisters and you wanted each listed in their own Family section, you can add them all individually.
How about charting?
I've always felt that charting really only has a useful purpose for putting the family on display, e.g. for a reunion. It might be good as a one-time overview, but it does not help on the research side as Behold's display of the data is intended to do.
I definitely won't be adding charts directly into Behold. Maybe in the future, I'll team up with one of the companies that already makes a genealogy charting program and work with them to make our programs talk to each other and maybe offer packages of the two programs together. But those charting programs already do read GEDCOM, so if you want them, they are available now for you.
Will any upcoming version have the ability to open a text document and save it as a GEDCOM?
A text document with no structure whatsoever is impossible for any computer program to make sense of. It would take sophisticated artificial intelligence in order to determine where in the document the names of the people are, how they might be related, deciding which events are mentioned (e.g. birth, marriage, death, graduation, residence, occupation) and when they occurred and where. I am afraid you must go through the pain and use your human intelligence to properly decipher and enter your text documents into a genealogy program (any one will do) to get it into genealogical form that can be exported as GEDCOM.
How is it then that there are genealogy web browsers that can convert HTML on the web to GEDCOM?
That's actually quite different. HTML on the web is computer generated from GEDCOM. As a result, the generated HTML has a well-defined structure that is based on the original data. Building a program to read the HTML and converting it back to GEDCOM just involves understanding the structure, and reversing what was done to generate the HTML. A program to convert the HTML to GEDCOM would need to use different rules to convert depending on the program that wrote the HTML. That functionality will not be part of Behold. But Behold is a great tool to help figure out what is in that GEDCOM after you've got it.
So how will Behold compare with other Genealogy programs?
Behold is the only program that lets you view and work with all your data at once. When Editing is enabled in version 2.0, Behold will be the only program that will let you enter, view, edit, and work with all your data at once. This will be a new technology for genealogists that will turn your hobby around. You will be able to enter your data many times faster than before, no longer slowed down by the cumbersome and inflexible fill-in-the-field forms of other programs. Behold will be your Genealogy Word Processor.
I need a program now. Behold can't edit my data yet. What program should I get?
Recommending a program is like recommending a car. It really depends on what features you want and your personal taste. Over the last ten years I have always kept up-to-date on the state of Genealogy programming and the programs available. I maintain my Genealogy Software Reviews site which lists the hundreds of programs available along with people's ratings and reviews. I invite you to try out other programs and get a feeling for them. Almost all can export their data to GEDCOM, so your work will not be lost. Then when Behold version 2.0 is out, try Behold and see what you think.
