Yesterday Louis Kessler released a beta/pre-release of Behold 2.0, his Windows genealogy database, although it’s more than just a database – it’s meant to be an efficient way to view your genealogy data and not just a way to enter and store it. This new version is Behold 1.99 beta (25 June 2024), and it’s a massive leap from Behold 1.2.7 back in 2021, including improved GEDCOM handling and error-checking (and keep in mind that Behold is GEDCOM-centric). It’s also moving to a more contemporary styling (Windows 10).
You can download a 45-day demo of the new beta here:
Behold Download Page (beholdgenealogy.com)
In terms of why a 2.0 pre-release, as he explains in a blog post on his site:
I wasn’t planning on releasing Version 2.0 of Behold until it was ready, and I’m still at least a few months away from that. But yesterday, a new user downloaded and tried Behold and asked me if the links in Behold’s exported html and rtf files were supposed to work. Yes, of course they were, but that was a known bug to me in the most recent Version 1.2.7. I already had the fix in my development version. Rather than fixing the bugs and releasing Version 1.2.8, I thought:
I’ll never get it perfect so I might as well release it.
Perfectionism is a leading cause of procrastination.
They say software developers should release early and release often.
So what the heck. This developmental version has been running smoothly for me for the past few months. I have been fixing any bugs I find as I encounter them. And there are enough changes and improvements … even though it’s not “finished” … that I thought it might be best to release it.
Behold has evolved from a genealogy editor into something more (not just a genealogy database application), as Louis said back in February:
I no longer need to convert Behold into a genealogy editor. MyHeritage for me is good enough for that. But I do like the assistance Behold already provides to be able to easily see what data I’ve got at MyHeritage and at all the other sites. I want Behold to do a bit more. I have some ideas and I’m working on it.
I’m not going to repeat the entire change list in the pre-release of Behold 2.0, as it’s such a major update of this nearly 20 year-old genealogy program, but I’m going to go over some of the highlights below.
Full Changes: Behold Version History (beholdgenealogy.com)
| Behold 1.99 beta – 25 June 2024 – New Features |
| Internal data structures: Changed and they should “handle any and all genealogy data in a generalized way.” |
| Dialog Boxes: Behold uses updated/modern Windows dialogu boxes where available. |
| GEDCOM validation: Adds comprehensive syntax checking to match the GEDCOM 5.5.1 specifications exactly, can help you see how accurate your GEDCOM file is, and any problems with it. |
| GEDCOM Export: The GEDCOM that will be exported will correspond to what Behold displays. You can filter the people you want, select fact types to include, etc. |
| Menu and Toolbar Changed: New functionality such as the selection of people and finding the next or previous data problem are available via the menu or toolbar or shortcuts |
| Relationships: Every person will have ALL their relationships to each of the selected family people displayed for you. |
| Searching: Add a box on the toolbar to allow search text to be entered directly. The dropdown will have a history of the last 20 searches. |
| Behold 1.99 beta – Improved Features |
| Only allow tags that are facts to be displayed or hidden. That works better than allowing data tags since the latter hides information within facts which is seldom wanted, especially for the tags that can be both facts and data (e.g. SOUR, NOTE or OBJE). |
| Check for illegal GEDCOM names (blank or wrong number of slashes) and correct them. |
| Add the current age (if living) and birth place to each person in the Index of Names. |
| Change the number after each entry in the Treeview to be the number of non-hidden nodes directly one level below, rather than the total nodes below any number of levels below. |
| Modernize the look of Behold from old Windows format to Windows 10 styling, including the Open, Save and Message dialog boxes. |
| GEDCOM Handling: Better detection of incorrect line structure in the GEDCOM. Grouped error and warning messages into 8 types: Character set, File type, GEDCOM line, GEDCOM linkage, GEDCOM ordering, GEDCOM structure, GEDCOM values, Invalid tag, and Non-standard GEDCOM. |
| Remove the GEDCOM checks in Behold that the HUSB is female or the WIFE is male to allow same-sex marriages without a warning. But if both the HUSB is female and the WIFE is male (which I found is in some GEDCOMs), then I’ll give a message and I’ll switch them. Marriages or partnerships with the same sex are still indicated in the report because that is an important fact. |
| For those who may need to load an older GEDCOM file, it will convert GEDCOM version 1 and 2 to version 5.5.1 along with a summary of the tags converted. |
| Behold 1.99 beta Fixes |
| Read UTF8 files that include illegal unicode characters. |
| Correctly handle the CONT tag in GEDCOM version 2 files which are placed at the same level as the tag they are continuing, not at the next level as in later versions of GEDCOM. |
| Other Changes |
| Remove the “Descendants Only” menu and Organize Numbering page option, as they are being replaced by the generations filter. |