24 January 1998

GED2HTML Ver. 3.1a

GED2HTML is a program that inputs genealogical data in GEDCOM format, and outputs a collection of HTML files suitable for presentation on individual home pages. Most people who browse the web for genealogy are familiar with GED2HTML by Gene Stark. This is the program that has become the standard for genealogy pages across the World Wide Web.

The newest release by Gene was issued on 20 Aug. 1997. This release consists of minor bug fixes and changes he introduced in response to E-mail from users, plus a new experimental output format, ability to process LDS ordinance information, and a feature for automatic flagging of "living" individuals (a suggestion that I emailed him about early last year).

One of the nicest features of GED2HTML is the ability to create the ``include files'' for the individuals on which you have extra information, and you can maintain all your other data on whatever system you are using to produce the GEDCOM output. If you get an updated GEDCOM file, simply go to the directory where the individual include files are stored and run GED2HTML again. It will update each individual file with the new GEDCOM data and will automatically insert the additional HTML text from the include files.

Features of the newest release are:

• A true Windows user interface is now provided to make it easier and less confusing for most Windows users to run the program. The program also has a native Windows 95 version, as well as a Windows 3.1 version. The Windows 95 version is several times faster than the Windows 3.1 version.
• A sorted, hierarchical index can be created, with a hypertext link to each individual. A two-level hierarchical surnames index is now supported, to reduce the size of the surnames index files for very large databases.
• The program can be instructed to include ``pedigree charts'' with each individual, to facilitate navigation between individuals.
• Source records are included.
• Added a feature which will automatically presume a person to be living if they are born after a specified year and have no explicit death information.
• The new scheme calculates the particular directory and file in which to put an individual from the individual's cross-reference ID, so the same individual will always end up in the same directory and file as long as the same number of directories and number of files per directory are used. A new option (-D n) was added to allow the user to specify the number of directories to be used. This should make it possible to link to individual pages from external documents, and have these links remain valid when the GEDCOM is re-processed, even if individuals have been added to the GEDCOM since the first run.
• The program can also automatically insert additional HTML text into each individual file. This feature can be used to add additional text, images, audio, or whatever else you want to each individual.
• A new experimental template "famgrp.g2h" was added, which produces the individual data pages in "family group" format.
• Supports output in French, Dutch, German and Norwegian as well as in English.

As a final note, one of the best ways to judge a software program is by the support given it by the creator. This support is often lacking, or at least deficient in freeware and shareware programs. That is not the case here. I have written to Gene over the last two years for various questions and problems with the program. He has always answered and attempted to help me. Normally, within a day or two.

A good starting point for finding many of these databases (OTHER THAN BROWSING OUR LISTINGS! :-) is Gene's index server, which provides links to data pages on over 1.6 million individuals in over 600 databases, most of which were processed into HTML using GED2HTML. You can get there by clicking HERE.