Behold Future Plans

This page is basically my ToDo list and was last updated on Sunday January 29, 2012

Note: the dates shown below are my optimistic goal dates IEGP (If Everything Goes Perfectly). They may change, but I am striving for them.

Version 1.0.5, planned for February 2012.

  • Impr: Display children ordered by birthdate. I am working on this now
  • Impr: Display spouses ordered by marriage date.
  • Fix: Sort the source references within each source properly.
  • Impr: Enhance smart sort to include a check for "Date of Import: dd Mmm yyyy" and sort those dates properly.
  • Help: Update documentation to include 1.0.1 through 1.0.5 changes.

Version 1.5, (previously was Versions 1.1 and 1.2, but renamed to 1.5, since it's half way to editing!!! Yay!), planned for April 2012. (Behold Database, Saving GEDCOMs, 64-bit)

  • New: Obtain Windows 7 Logo Certification. I am working on this now
  • Impr: Update development system from Delphi 2009 to Delphi XE2, including upgrades of TRichView and ElPack 3rd party packages.
  • New: Develop a disk-based Behold database and save it in a .bhp (Behold Project) file instead of keeping all the data in memory.
  • Impr: Use Smart Sort to sort the source references by their titles within each source.
  • New: Export to GEDCOM.
  • New: Export to GEDCOM only the information displayed in the Everything Report. This way selected families and selected data types will be be included.
  • New: Export only valid GEDCOM 5.5.1, even from invalid input.
  • New: Ensure exported GEDCOM will read in without errors and will export again identically.
  • New: Create both 32-bit and 64-bit executables for Behold.
  • Impr: Use less memory for printing, print previewing and exporting by blocking the report, rather than generating all of it in memory at once.

Version 2.0, planned for November 2012. (Editing!!!)

  • New: Powerful genealogy data editing capability directly through the Everything Report. Behold will become a Genealogy Word Processor.
  • New: Ribbon interface
  • New: Editing shortcuts
  • Fix: Get selections larger than a few pages to work.
  • New: Add Undo/redo/repeat capability at the record level.
  • New: Auto-save to database after each record edit is completed so very little data can be lost.
  • New: Source Panel to provide instant access to and entry of the active source that any data entered will pertain to.

Version 2.1, planned for February 2013. (Evidence/Conclusion Modelling)

  • New: Add ability to add evidence directly into the Source Index and add extracted events to that and link them back to the people, families and places to which they pertain.
  • New: Possibly add a Search Source function to allow filtering by person (with spelling variations), place, date range, event type, or notes contents.

Version 2.2, planned for June 2013. (Virtual Merging)

  • New: "Virtual Merging": Allow identification of identical people in different files, and store this info in a Behold file. Possibly use the _UID tag for this.
  • New: Automatically treat individuals in all GEDCOMs loaded into Behold with the same AFN (Ancestral File Number) tag as the same person in the Everything report.
  • New: Combine separate data records about individuals in the Everything report. (e.g. to reconstitute pedigree GEDCOMs obtained from familysearch.org)
  • New: Add a custom tag to display a reference link to the input file, e.g. [F12], following the data it comes from whenever there is more than one input GEDCOM file.

Version 2.3, planned for November 2013. (Photos)

  • New: Display thumbnails of photos in Everything Report.
  • New: Display the IPTC metadata stored inside pictures.
  • New: Export thumbnails of photos (graphic files) to HTML.
  • New: Export thumbnails of photos to RTF.

More Things that WILL be included somewhere, somewhen, somehow ...

  • New: Add navigation menu items and shortcuts for quick access to the previous person, next person, up to parents, up to older sibling, down to younger sibling, down to oldest child, and any others that may add convenience.
  • Impr: Allow those Organize settings that don't require data loading to only do a page refresh.
  • Impr: Ensure Behold gracefully reads random files that might accidentally be thrown at it.
  • Impr: Add cut, copy, paste onto the right-click menu.
  • Impr: Add a toolbar icon for "Close".
  • New: Add up, down, left (to parents) and right (to next generation) navigation as keys, menus and icons.
  • Impr: Get Print Preview for large files to display right away even while the rest of it is loading.
  • Impr: Work through all my user-supplied GEDCOM test cases and make sure that the Everything Report works properly and looks good for all flavors of GEDCOM.
  • New: Allow Behold to work as a portable application.
  • New: Add a menu/toolbar item in Behold to export Behold to a pen drive (i.e. as a portable application).
  • New: Add a Married Names page to the Organize Information, to allow selection of which spouses of each marriage do and do not take on their partner's surname.
  • New: Add a right-click option to specify that the selected married surname should not be (or should be) displayed.
  • New: Include support for Tamura Jones' Classical Genealogy Framework.
  • New: Add a right-click option to hide any event, and a right-click option to select events to unhide.
  • Impr: Allow the Shift key or Ctrl key or Ctrl-A shortcuts to allow multiple selections in the Organize Pages and maybe include a Tick/Untick all box.
  • New: Display custom events by their TYPE tag.
  • Impr: Add custom text of "- no details" for assertions (i.e. that an event took place but no details about it), instead of just showing "Y".
  • Impr: Make sure Behold displays multiple parents appropriately.
  • Impr: Ensure that copying to the clipboard includes rich text so that pasting to any application, e.g. Word or e-mail, includes hypertext that works.
  • Impr: Ensure Behold's windows and boxes look good in both the Large Font and Small Font Windows settings.
  • Impr: Ensure that everything works when multiple files are loaded using both GEDCOM and Family ordering.
  • Fix: Fix Richview's handling of wordwrap when multiple spaces are wrapped.
  • Fix: Do not pass highlight lines to exported RTF or HTML when the cursor is over it and highlighting it.
  • New: Create a Tools->Options menu item and build the Window for program options.
  • New: Finalize and Implement all Program Option settings, possibly including:
    • Different ways to display surnames.
    • Choice of Font and Font size and color.
    • Optional Title Page, and what to include on it.
    • Start with number 1 person in file as Main person.
    • Style selection of hyperlinks.
    • Style selection of the hidden tags when all tags are shown.
    • What to open on startup: a certain file, the last file opened, or no file.
    • Options on the History List; Ability to clear the History List
    • Option to print in black and white without underlining (to save your ink).
    • Option to expand places in the TreeView so that they expand level by level.
  • Impr: Rewrite of Print and Print Preview functions.
  • New: Allow find function to search without differentiating for case or accents.
  • Impr: Allow Families of both spouses to be considered to be one family.
  • Impr: Let InstantOrg optionally select both spouses as one family instead of two.
  • New: Allow specification of a "Home directory" so that relative paths for objects will work and so many full pathnames can be simplified. This home directory for each GEDCOM should be saved in the Behold file.
  • New: Allow a dropdown to select from recently accessed directories when Opening and Saving files.
  • New: Add a "User Reference Numbers" cross reference section.
  • New: Handle notes that use note indicators based on PAF conventions.
  • New: Add a "reveal tags" button to show the GEDCOM level and tag used in a manner similar to the way WordPerfect's "reveal codes" works.
  • New: Allow sending of personalized and customized trees to your relatives with one-click!
  • Impr: Add a toolbar edit box attached to the Find icon to allow direct entry of text to be found.
  • New: Add an "Open with Behold" option for GED and BHO files for right clicks from Explorer.
  • New: Display all Relationships of every person to the reference person (or couple), even multiple relationships (e.g. cousins on two sides) or relationships through marriage, e.g. wife of 3rd cousin.
  • New: Add an option to include the specific relationship, e.g. fm-ssd (father's mother's son's son's daughter) for a 2nd cousin once removed
  • New: Add an option to include the common ancestor's name and a link to the ancestor.
  • New: Add an option to include the relationship information to titles.
  • New: Add an option to include the relationship information in the Index of Names.
  • Spinoff: Consider developing a utility program for Behold that would automatically retrieve all data for a specific person and all their relatives from familysearch.org.
  • New: Search and display (highlight?) possible matches of people, places, events,... in multiple input files.
  • Impr: Add various Richview features to the Everything Report.
  • New: Implement automatic detection of places in the Residence, Address, and other tags and give them hyperlinks and index them with the PLAC tag places.
  • New: Add Unicode Spellchecking
  • New: Estimation of all dates.
  • New: Allow assignment of people to one or more selectable "Groups", e.g. neighbors, friends, etc.
  • New: Allow Behold's organizing to handle groups just like they were families.
  • New: Add limits to families and groups so only desired generations above and below the selected people are included.
  • New: Show ages of living people and ages at selected events.
  • New: Auto-Verify dates and names for possible errors, marking them with a "suspicious" format. Allow the mark to be changed to "verified". This tag will be saved in the GEDCOM file. This will be done every run automatically. No need to use a "Verify Data" command.
  • New: Add many options to select rules to verify and age limits to use.
  • New: Exclude living people from display, reports and export.
  • New: Privacy filtering.
  • New: Data for and about Places
  • New: Allow Entry of Pets along with their Owner's Genealogies
  • New: Presentation of data as of a certain date.
  • New: Automatic generation of an RSS feed of changes made, customized for the reader's family. (This will blow your mind!)
  • New: Add functions to allow combining data from more than one file.
  • New: Check for a default.bho file in the Behold directory. If it exists, use that file for the Organize defaults. If not, go back to the program defaults.
  • New: Add ability to save Organize settings as default, or to delete the default settings and go back to program defaults.
  • Impr: Change show/hide tags icon as a drop box that allows choosing between "All tags" and "useful tags" ... or put this in the Status bar. This will make it more obvious as to the importance of this feature which many users may not use enough.
  • New: Include a box for the search phrase and its history.
  • New: Autocomplete/correct capability
  • New: Provide language keyboards for easy input of characters in different languages.
  • New: Snippet library for quick input of your more common entries.
  • New: User-defined custom tags
  • New: Your own numbering for sources.
  • New: A capability for source-based data entry.
  • New: Include Task Panes on the Ribbon to provide help on how to use and enter every possible type of genealogical information you may encounter.
  • New: Add an export to email or export to PDF function.
  • New: Add text/comments to bottom of photo.
  • New: Add face tagging.
  • New: Embed info into photo.
  • New: Add photo-zoom to photos in HTML and Everything Report.

Other Interesting Ideas. (But remember, Behold's main duty is to be an efficient genealogy data editor and viewer. Possibilities here include partnering with another program that specializes in one or more of the tasks below and getting Behold to share data with it.)

  • Make Behold available on Mac and Unix. This will be possible once this is included in the Delphi programming language ... and it's in their plans.
  • Internationalize Behold itself, allowing the program text to be various languages. Get users to do translations. (Possibly translate the help file as well - huge job, plus maintenance issues!)
  • Task / Todo list
  • Calendar Conversions
  • Data backup functionality
  • Ability to view HTML tags (bold, italic, links, etc.) embedding within GEDCOM, but this might entail building a web browser into Behold, which is overkill.
  • Printing Address Labels
  • Import from Online Genealogy Software such as PhpGedView and FamilySearch and whoever may make an API (Application Programming Interface) available.
  • Direct reading of data from many different Genealogy programs.
  • Timelines and/or Charting
  • Lookup place names on Google.
  • Support and generation of .kml files for input into Google Earth and other mapping tools.
  • Photo editing
  • Web info search or info match
  • Import and Export to/from alternative GEDCOM formats including XML variants.
  • Organizer type of functionality
  • Support for Smartphones and Handhelds
  • Speech Recognition
  • Text to Speech