Geneal is a system for drawing family tree information on a PostScript printer. Geneal accepts family descendent trees as a text file, and draws the names and descent lines by executing within the printer itself, unlike most other programs that execute on a PC or some other computer. The family tree is output on standard computer paper as separate sheets for each family or group of families.

An example of a page from a Geneal tree is provided here. The text file example.ft produced this tree.

Geneal allows unstructured comments to be placed close to a person's name in a tree, and also accepts text anecdotes of any length that will be placed beneath the tree on the page. In this way, family history can be included directly with the ancestry detail. Text can contain visible layout marks for italic, bold, font, sizing or other text formating instructions. Being written in PostScript, Geneal can also accept embedded PostScript instructions, so document layout can be flexibly and precisely controlled. Scanned photographs can be embedded in the document.

The family tree document can be assembled using a word processor or editor. Alternatively, any database program capable of generating a GEDCOM format file can be used. In the latter case, a C program is provided to convert from GEDCOM format to Geneal format. A C program is also provided to generate an index to the pages of different branches of a family tree.

For people without a PostScript printer, an interpreter such as GSview, ghostscript or ghostview will be needed to process a Geneal document for printing.

Geneal is freely available packaged using TAR, using ZIP, or as a Unix self-installing script.

	Unix self-installing script	Packaged using tar	Packaged using Zip
Fetch via FTP	Geneal-install.sh (340K)	Geneal.tar (655K)	Geneal.zip (415K)
Fetch via HTTP	Geneal-install.sh (340K)	Geneal.tar (655K)	Geneal.zip (415K)

The individual files are also available separately.

Installation instructions are included.

Mail to Graham Freeman

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