Ancestral Author Plus 3.1.13 was released yesterday. It’s a Windows (Windows 7 – 11) and macOS (10.13 or later) genealogy utility that allows you to create genealogical documents from GEDCOM files, images, text, etc. with a drag-and-drop interface. It generates PDF files or ODT (Open Document Text) file that can then be used for reports, books, etc.
It can be downloaded at Ancestral Softworks. Both the Windows and Mac versions have the same features and same version number.
Developer’s Note: “New phrases been added to the phrases file. If you have modified your phrases, you will need to update the phrases before creating a PDF or ODT file. To do so, select menu item Phrases – Update.“
| Ancestral Author Plus 3.1.13 Changes | |
| Added: Support for printing the age at death of individuals in Descendant, Ancestor, or Every Person reports. The age can be taken from the GEDCOM AGE record, if it exists, or can be calculated from birth and death dates. The Ancestral Author Plus phrase file can be customized to emit the ‘age at death’ text in almost any format. — To enable printing of ‘age at death’, press the Options button on a report dialog, then select the GEDCOM tab. — To learn how to customize the ‘age at death’ phrases to your preference, read the ‘Ancestral Author Output Phrases’ article in the help file (use the help search tab to find it). Scroll to the bottom of the article to find the ‘AGE phrases’ help. | |
| Fixed: In previous versions of Ancestral Author Plus, some children in an Ancestor Report were not put into the name index. | |
| Added: The ADDR_AND_PLACE phrase, which gives more flexibility in how the place information for events is formatted in the output document. This phrase is used when an event (e.g. birth, death) has both address (ADDR) and place (PLAC) GEDCOM records. These records are used in very different ways by different genealogy programs, so flexibility is warranted. For more information, read the documentation for ADDR_AND_PLACE in the Help article entitled ‘Ancestral Author Output Phrases.’ | |
| Added: Support for GEDCOM latitude (LATI) and longitude (LONG) place coordinates. These are disabled by default. To enable them, press the ‘Options’ button on a descendant, ancestor, or everyperson report, select the ‘Gedcom’ tab, and check the box to enable latitude and longitude. | |
| Improved error messages for missing or unsupported images. | |
| Fixed: Bug related to surname processing. Ancestral Author Plus will usually look at GEDCOM ‘name piece’ records (SURName, NICKname, GIVeN name, etc) to construct a name for output into a document. AA will always expect the NAME record surname to match SURN name piece. But in some cases the SURN name piece does not match the NAME record, specifically in cases where matronymic naming is used. Some genealogy programs have invented a matronymic name piece record (_MATN) to hold the mothers surname, while the surname record (SURN) is reserved for the patronymic name. The actual surname stored in the NAME record is a combination of the two. To resolve this conflict, AA will always defer to the NAME record to resolve the surname. Most users will not notice this change. | |
| Various other bug fixes. |