Behold Future Plans

This page is basically my ToDo list and was last updated on Thursday February 25, 2010

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 0.99.8 beta, planned for February 2010.

  • Impr: Include the old GEDCOM/logfile that was in version 0.98.9d alpha, 27 Aug 2007 and was taken out in the next version. This item has been completed
  • Impr: Add the View Logfile command and toolbar icon. This item has been completed
  • Impr: Add a file summary to the log file. This item has been completed
  • Fix: Clicking a .GED file should load it in Behold when the association is set. (Bug preventing this introduced in 0.99.7 beta). This item has been completed
  • Impr: Add a message for GEDCOM lines that are indented. This item has been completed
  • Web: Get the Behold Newsletter going again after a long hiatus and send a new issue to all users. I am working on this now
  • Web: Contact all people who have expressed interest in Behold or in being a beta tester.
  • Web: Announce the price increase (from $20 to $30) for the beta.
  • Impr: Change where the sample GEDCOM files are installed from the Program Files directory to the user/AppData/Behold directory for compatibility with Vista and Windows 7 which will allow the log files for the sample GEDCOMs can be written there.
  • Impr: Use the program that is the default for .txt files to open GEDCOM and Log files.
  • Impr: Include all the old log file checks that were removed.
  • Impr: Add a message for GEDCOM lines with delimiters that are more than one space.
  • New: Add a facility to scan all log files and summarize info about them in a comma separated file.
  • Impr: Do not read all the data back in for operations that don't require it.
  • Fix: Eliminate some major memory leaks.
  • Fix: Correctly undo the deletion of a GEDCOM file when cancelling on the Organize pages.
  • Fix: Display the history links correctly in the Forward/Backward history after using a hyperlink going to a pair of people.
  • Impr: Check the link handling to ensure that nested links of any depth can be handled.
  • Impr: Reimplement the table-based Everything Report that was removed in Version 0.98.7, 22 Nov 2006.
  • Fix: Ensure that association and disassociation with .bho and .ged files works correctly.
  • Impr: Handle RootsMagic's _EVDEF tag appropriately.
  • Impr: Review and figure out the best possible implementation of the punctuation Behold generates at the end of lines as the GEDCOM level goes down, stays the same and goes up.
  • Impr: Do preprocessing "on the fly" where possible, i.e. don't do it at loading time, but delay it until display time.
  • Impr: Make inplace editing in the Organize pages more convenient by allowing the Enter key or arrow keys to move to the next or previous entry for editing.

Version 0.99.xx beta, to be released as needed until Version 1.0 is ready.

  • Fix: Correct all errors found by users/beta testers and any I find.
  • Help: Implement Context-Sensitive Help.
  • Help: Complete the rest of the Help File.
  • Help: Create the word index for the Help File.
  • Fix: Correct and/or improve what is found to be necessary while building the Help file.

Version 1.0, planned for April 2010. Full Release.

  • Web: Price increase and News release.
  • New: Create a translation file export and import to make translation to new languages easier.
  • Web: Request help from users in translating the tag text into other languages.
  • New: Get Windows 7 Certification

Version 1.1, planned for May 2010. (Portable Application / Married Names)

  • 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.

Version 1.2, planned for August 2010. (Behold Database, Saving GEDCOMs)

  • New: Develop a disk-based Behold database as a .bhd file instead of keeping all the data in memory.
  • New: Save to GEDCOM.
  • New: Export to a GEDCOM only the information displayed in the Everything Report. This way selected families and selected data types will be be included.
  • New: Export valid GEDCOM, even from invalid input.

Version 2.0, planned for December 2010. (Editing!!!)

  • New: Save any changed GEDCOMs along with the Behold file when Saving. "Save" will use the current Behold file, and "Save As" will prompt for a new Behold filename.
  • New: Powerful genealogy data editing capability directly through the Everything Report. Behold will become a Genealogy Word Processor.
  • New: Editing shortcuts
  • New: Autocomplete/correct capability
  • New: Undo/redo/repeat 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: Source Panel to provide instant access to and entry of the current source for each information item.
  • New: User-defined custom tags
  • New: Your own numbering for sources.
  • New: A capability for source-based data entry.
  • New: Task Panes or Ribbon to provide help on how to use and enter every possible type of genealogical information you may encounter.

Version 3.0, planned for April 2011. (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.
  • 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.

Version 4.0, planned for August 2011. (Virtual Merging)

  • New: "Virtual Merging": Allow identification of identical people in different files, and store this info in a Behold file. Possibly use the RFN 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.
  • New: Add an export to email or export to PDF function.

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

  • Impr: Add a toolbar icon to change text size, like Internet Explorer has.
  • Impr: Change internal GEDCOM structure from line-based to record-based. for major speedup and memory reductions. The goal is to make Behold capable of processing over a million people with 3GB of RAM in less than 30 seconds.
  • Impr: Change internal B-Tree structures to Hash tables where required for speed.
  • New: Enable proper sorting of Unicode characters.
  • Impr: Sort the Name index using a case insensitive sort (so that "Keene" and "KEENE" are next to each other.
  • Impr: Review toolbar icons and shortcuts. Add what's necessary (e.g. Close)
  • Impr: Find a way to paste clipboard text to the various text boxes and combo boxes throughout Behold (especially in Find Files).
  • 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.
  • Impr: Change the GEDCOM and Add Family icons so they don't look like ugly grey blobs when they are deactivated.
  • Impr: Use Smartsort to properly order the citations within their source.
  • New: Display custom events by their TYPE tag.
  • Impr: Change the way Behold handles the DESI tag, so that it will not appear as an undefined structure.
  • New: Implement the remaining menu items on the Navigate Menu (Quick Navigation shortcuts). Remove the selection items (for now).
  • 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: 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.
  • Fix: Determine the cause and correct the situation where a Descendant section in the "Others Related Through Marriage" has no entries.
  • Fix: Ensure that parents of spouse when selected shows in all cases.
  • Fix: Repair small problems made apparent by the HTML web output.
  • Fix: Prevent error that occurs when dropping a file on the Behold program icon for non-registered versions.
  • Fix: Try to make sure that text does not continue to the right of the screen or to the right of the printed page in print preview.
  • 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 Behold looks good in High Contrast Black (special request by a visually impaired genealogist).
  • Impr: Check for and eliminate any memory leaks.
  • Impr: Ensure that everything works when multiple files are loaded using both GEDCOM and Family ordering.
  • Impr: Ensure that log file messages are consistent and accurate.
  • 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: Add Right mouse menus everywhere.
  • Impr: Ensure all tags and various text are included as tag text.
  • New: Ensure Windows 7 compatibility and get certification.
  • Web: Add the Help File / User Guide to the Website, attached to the FAQ page.
  • New: Create a Tools->Options menu item and build the Window for program options.
  • New: Finalize and Implement all Program Option settings, 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 Names and Surnames
    • Style selection of Places
    • Style selection of Event Names
    • Style selection of Structure Titles
    • 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 automatically open the exported RTF or HTML file after exporting.
    • Selection of the desired Auto Organize relevance level.
    • Option to print in black and white without underlining (to save your ink).
    • Add some conditional "show" options. For example, you may only want to display _FREL and _MREL if the value is not "Biological".
    • Add Report Options to select which warning messages should be displayed.
    • Add a toolbar item to toggle the display of messages.
    • Add an option to expand places in the Treeview so that they expand level by level.
    • Allow the display of a toolbar tip over each reference if the reference title is hidden.
  • Make Behold available as a 64 bit program.
  • Impr: Rewrite of Print and Print Preview functions.
  • New: Allow find function to search without differentiating for case or accents.
  • New: Add the months of the year to the Organize Reports page, so that their text can be changed.
  • Impr: Allow Families of both spouses to be considered to be one family.
  • Impr: Let AutoOrg and 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: Add an option to include the event date in the Place Index with each person reference and then sort them by date withing each event.
  • 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: See if I can add a drop-down directory history to Open and Close dialogs.
  • New: Add an "Open with Behold" option for GED and BHO files for right clicks from Explorer.
  • New: Add a right-click option to add the selected person to the Families page in the Organize window.
  • New: Enable ordering of the events about a person by event date.
  • 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 Filepaths, URLs and E-mail addresses embedded in notes and other text and make them hyperlinks.
  • 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.
  • New: Add other file formats to the Find Function.

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
  • 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