A new HRE (History Research Environment) update/newsletter has been sent out, with a link to their presentation in front of the Roots Users Group of Arlington, Virginia (look for presentations on the https://www.rootsusers.org website).
10 years ago this month, Bob Velke announced The Master Genealogist would cease development (the last version, v9.05.000, would be released in December). Many TMG users stayed with TMG (judging by the mailing list/groups.io forum), some switched to other genealogy software. However some took a different path, and in 2016 started development of a cross-platform, open-source project, java-based project, the History Research Environment (HRE). historyresearchenvironment.org
You can research multiple areas (objects, places) and not just people. It aims to have most, if not all, of the functionality of TMG in a modern package, and will import TMG data directly. You can view screens here: https://historyresearchenvironment.org/screenshots/
HRE is meant to be an onward path for TMG users, to import existing TMG projects without data loss, to provide better functionality than TMG.With Java and an industry-standard SQL database, it will not be subject to the whims of any one company (as TMG was when Microsoft shut down Visual FoxPro). It also supports UTF-8/Unicode, something Visual FoxPro didn’t, and which kept it out of TMG.There will be a plugin system (like Family Historian?) and remote access capabilities as well.
Full Newsletter:
HRE Development:
Development has continued apace, although the completion of all Event add/edit/delete functionality has taken longer than we expected, due to the complexity.
We had expected to release a version covering all the Person add/edit/delete AND Event add/edit/delete functions for the Alpha testers to stress-test by now but have decided to delay this a little further.
This delay is due to the implementation of one of HRE’s original design principles – namely the ability to enter the full era, date and time of an Event’s occurrence. This will provide a major advance over the ‘date-only’ capability of TMG which has always brought out the creative spirit as researchers found interesting ways to sequence several events that occurred on the same day.
After this release to the testers we will start to address the final import phase for Sources, Citations and Repositories.
HRE screens:
- Further work has been completed on making screens multi-lingual and adding to the Help files.
HRE Presentations:
- A recording of the April 2024 presentation is available on the RUG website at https://www.rootsusers.org/ under ‘RUG Meeting Presentations’.