[Gedcom-parse-devel] A release and a call for help

[Peter V. <Pet...@ad...>]

Hi all,

This week I've released version 0.17 of the Gedcom parser.

The main new feature is the addition of a C object model.  If you
would compare the callback parser to the SAX interface of XML, then
the C object model is comparable to the DOM interface of XML.  In
many ways, the C object model is easier to use, but it is a little
less flexible.

See the NEWS file in the distribution for some interface changes
(and backward incompabilities) that are caused by this.

My further objectives are (not necessarily in order):
  - support for modifying data (actually, this is already possible
    in the C object model, but it requires too much internal
    knowledge)
  - support for writing GEDCOM files, and maybe GEDML files
  - C++ object model (perl also ?)
  - more compatibility with other genealogy programs.

Now, my call for help...  It is in fact two-fold:

  - I'd like to see examples of GEDCOM files made by other programs
    (e.g. PAF, FTM, ...), to be able to enhance the compatibility
    of the parser with the non-standard GEDCOM syntax enhancements
    of other programs.

  - If you have a GEDCOM file with embedded multimedia objects in
    it (i.e. the BLOB tag) I'd like to see it.  I want to be able
    to decode multimedia blobs correctly, but I have the impression
    that this is one of the least standard-abiding features in
    GEDCOM, mainly because the standard is a little ambiguous in
    its description about it...

Any comments on the Gedcom parser are always welcome.  Also have
a look at Genes (genes.sourceforge.net) which uses this parser
natively.

Best regards,
Peter.
-- 
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Peter Verthez                                     Software engineer
Email:                             mailto:Pet...@ad...
WWW:                           http://users.skynet.be/Peter.Verthez
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