English Help and Language files

[Mathemagician]

Greetings to all, from Canada,

Still working on the English Manual... Not done yet, but enough so that I am releasing a Beta version for testing and use. There are still quite a few "incomplete" pages, but progress is steady. I welcome any comments or suggestions or criticism.

The files (and a goody for German users who may still have Familien-Chronik files 'kicking around') can all be found at:

http://members.shaw.ca/Mathemagician/

Enjoy! More progress in the future.

- Mathemagician

[SirJohn]

Hi Allen,

I haven't read your help file thoroughly, but what I read and looked at, has been utmost brilliant. Kudos to your work.

I'll try to have a look at it every now and then, and if I stumble across any spelling mistakes or typos I'll let you know :-)

(Just wanted to make sure, that you don't turn away under the impression noone is interested. As I tend to busy myself translating stuff the other way round, I can tell how much work you have invested here.)

Thx again,

John

[Mathemagician]

don't turn away under the impression no one is interested

Thanks for the encouragement! I am still working (off and on - life gets in the way...) on finishing the manual. I have a family entered (450+) and am also trying to build that up, but the Ahnanblatt stuff will be finished eventually (sooner rather than later). Right now, I have a few other little projects to attend to, but work is constantly progressing on the Ahnenblatt help file.

I did a bit of digging for freeware before starting to enter my family tree; Ahnenblatt seems the best (by far!) to me, but the lack of an English help file might be a deterrent to many, although it is fairly intuitive.

I will post to this thread when there is an update to share for the language file and/or help file. Stay tuned...

- Allen

[Mathemagician]

English Ahnenblatt users,

After a bit of a break, I have posted an updated version of the English language file (now "English-1.lng" - you can keep the original language file without overwriting) and English Help file (now Ahnblatt_1033.chm - see its readme file for renaming reason) to my small Ahnenblatt website:

http://members.shaw.ca/Mathemagician/

The newest help file (v0.2 Beta) has dropped the "incomplete" page count from 32 to 25; some small progress there. Additions worth noting are

• File/Printer setup... (now expanded and enhanced)
• Edit/Delete group... (completed, new pages added)
• Places Management added (completed, new pages added)

I will continue at a comfortable (to me!) pace until done. My break was due to other projects, but also due to a small surgery and recovery (grrrr! - but still warm and vertical, thankfully...).

Have a look at the latest help file, and don't forget to use the replacement language file (also embedded in the help file)!

- Allen

[Marcus]

Hi Allen,

I had a look into the new help and language file and I really like the new help file! It's already a great help for non-german speaking users and looks a lot fresher than the traditional german help file. I hope that slowly but steadily more and more people will use it.
One suggestion: The downloads here in the Ahnenblattportal are NOT limited to registered users. There should be not content here which is limited to registered users with the small restriction of the forums for the user introductions. So that they can talk about themselves without google and all the other data-collectors being able so grab the data there.
Thanks!
Marcus

[Mathemagician]

The downloads here in the Ahnenblattportal are NOT limited to registered users.

Thanks, Marcus - I guess I didn't do it right (download) before I signed up as a registered user. I have fixed this in 2 places in the English manual (next release).

- Allen

[Marcus]

If you stumble upon an download which doesen't work for guests I fear it's my fault ... so it may happen, but shouldn't.
Marcus

[Mathemagician]

To all English users,

Since I started this project - English help and matching Language file (±Dec 5, 2014) - I have been diligently tracking and posting bugs and oversights that I find in Ahnenblatt during testing, etc. necessary to do the documentation. I cannot document that which I do not know, so I have to learn what each function does and play with it, testing various behaviours as I go. Tonight, I discovered another (major) bug in Ahnenblatt, one that used to work, but has since stopped working. I know that Dirk has made changes (since I started) to the internal "database handling" (probably the culprit), as well as some bug fixes and new features.

But, I cannot hit a moving target, so to speak - Ahnenblatt has a number of bugs that I have documented, which probably used to work (some I am sure of), otherwise the features would not have been included. It makes my task much more difficult if I have to thoroughly test every function with each revision, just to see if something I have already documented has stopped working, and then report it!

As an old Pascal programmer, I understand well how bugs can appear - this latest one (011 - File/Save as/ Windows help file a.k.a. RTF, NOT WORKING!), however, is probably an example of what I call "the waterbed effect" - you push down here, but it comes up somewhere else! It also points, though, to something more serious - an apparent lack of thorough testing before releasing a new version.

In addition, I cannot help but notice that very few (exactly 3 - 647, 1074 and 1072) of the German "wishlist" bugs have been fixed since v2.83 (Oct 14, 2014). And I also notice that not a single bug or oversight I have posted in English has been addressed. Nor has anyone else posted errors to the English portion - am I the only English speaking person using Ahnenblatt who sees bugs?

To sum up, I feel as though

• my time spent tracking oversights and bugs has been (so far) for nothing,
• Ahnenblatt versions are not being tested enough before release,and
• that my time doing documentation may be spent better than testing older functions of Ahnenblatt.

So, for now I am going to continue to use Ahnenblatt (to enter my family), rather than spend a lot of time testing and documenting. My little website (see first post in this thread) will stay (there are a few interesting tools there), but revisions to English Help may be a while in coming. I will wait until Ahnenblatt development is a little more stable. I am truly sorry to disappoint anyone.

I am not abandoning the project - I have put too much effort into it to do that - but will just "wait a while" and see how Ahnenblatt develops. This post may sound a little like whining, but I am disappointed. Ahnenblatt is an excellent tool, and has many innovative features, but it must continue to be stable. Dirk - I know that you cannot fix all bugs at once, but do not add features at the expense of functions that already work!

Waiting now...

[DirkB]

Dear Allen,

thanks for your feedback and your support.

First of all, this forum was founded to help me supporting other users, so that I can concentrate more on programming. That's why I am not ready very often in this forum. I read regularly the German wishlist and always the answers to my announcements about new releases. But believe me, I still get more support mails than I can handle.

So I never saw your bug list before and will have a look on that.

About moving targets ...

Ahnenblatt will always be a moving target. And if you would ask the users here in the forum, it moves too slow ...
There are a lot of users who are waiting for the next generation release 3.0.
What should I do ...? Reduce the programming to bug-fixing only ...?

About waterbeds ...

Yes, you are completly right - I know what you mean. But I can't absolutely exclude new bugs while doing new things. Testing could be better - perhaps ...
There is too many functionality in Ahnenblatt to test everything. So I only test the functions I change. Very often bugs show up only with special family constellations.

About bugfixing ...

When I hear about bugs which lead to crashing Ahnenblatt or destroying data, I hurry to publish a new bug-fixed release. They have mayor priority.
I fixed in the last releases only a few bugs of the German wishlist. But there are many more which were mailed - and some bugs were found by testing on my own ...
Since 2.80 I fixed more than 60 bugs and since 2.83 about 36 bugs were fixed. You can find them marked with "BUG BEHOBEN" in the newer announcements of new releases (e.g. here). I hope, I have fixed more bugs than I have added ...
There are 7 new releases in the last 7 months - mainly with bug-fixing things. I think this is not so bad ...
The new bug you've found, saving incomplete help file sources, is annoying ... but I think this help file function is one of the less used funtions in Ahnenblatt. That's why nobody else than you has found it so far ... you are a very good tester ...

I hope you see things better, when I work on your bug-list. I asked Marcus to integrate your english bug-list in the German wishlist. That would be more easy for me to find such things ...

By the way: you're doing a great job, Marcus is doing a great job here on the forum, all users who are supporting Ahnenblatt are doing a great job - and I try to do my best ...
Everyone is doing it for free in his spare time ...



- Dirk

[DirkB]

Right now I replaced the original English.lng by your translation. Only 10 phrases were missing, which I took from the old file ...

New English.lng but same Ahnenblatt version - still 2.88.

- Dirk

[Mathemagician]

Dirk,

Thank you for including my file - I think English users will be pleased. I have made additional changes (mostly minor) to the "next version", but it is not ready yet. Stay tuned...

[kthompsn]

Thanks to both of you. I was trained in German 50+ years ago, didn't use it much until i started working on genealogy. Every bit of help is greatly appreciated.
And as an IBM programmer for 45 years, i can really appreciate Allen's closing line.

[Mathemagician]

To English users (there are a few, anyway...),

I have posted a small update - current language and help files - to my site at:
http://members.shaw.ca/Mathemagician/

The site contains

• the Language file (in zip format)
• the Help file (in zip format)
• an installer for both (together)

The language and help files are updated to reflect the latest Ahnenblatt release (v2.94), including the omissions (in the official language file) mentioned in another post here. The help file is a little further along, but still not complete. I have spent the last several days writing a small tool to analyze the new help files from Dirk (as they are released), so updating my file in the future should be a lot faster and less work.

- Allen

[sfoehner]

Allen,

I just tried installing your English language and help files in my Ahnenblatt 2.94 installation. When I click on anything in the Contents or Index, I don't see any content in the main panel.