Last month, Louis Kessler released a pre-release beta of Behold 2.0, Behold 1.99 beta, and he’s been busy working on Behold, as well as mapping out his future plans for Behold, his Windows genealogy data viewer/database.
If you’d like to see the full list: Behold Future Plans (beholdgenealogy.com)
In the upcoming Behold 1.99.1, his focus is almost completely on working with GEDCOM files, including importing and exporting, as well as GEDCOM 1.0 and 2.0, something which is good to have around (GEDCOM 1.0 came out almost 40 years ago this year). With the 2.0 release, there’s still a focus on GEDCOM handling, but also relationships, filtering, and reworking the data structure.
Below are some of the highlights of the upcoming Behold 1.99.1 and Behold 2.0 releases.
| Behold 1.99.1 Plans |
| Add option to “Export GEDCOM same as input”, i.e. with custom tags and structures known only to the program that created that GEDCOM |
| Add option to “Export GEDCOM to standard”, i.e. GEDCOM 5.5.1 following the GEDCOM 5.5.5 recommendations so that all the data will be accepted by almost every GEDCOM reading program |
| Ensure GEDCOM 1.0 (1984) and GEDCOM 2.0 (1985) still work and will export to GEDCOM. |
| Ensure GEDCOM 5.5EL (Extended Locations) still work and will export to GEDCOM. |
| Ensure exported GEDCOM will read back into Behold without errors and will export again identically. |
| Behold 2.0 Plans |
| Determine which parent(s) are biological as best as possible based on the GEDCOM data. e.g. BIRT.FAMC, ADOP.FAMC, _FREL and _MREL tags can be used when available. Otherwise if a person has more than one set of FAMC parents, then the first is assumed biological and the others not. |
| Display all familial Relationships of every person to the main person in each family, even multiple relationships (e.g. cousins on two sides) along with the MRCA (most recent common ancestor) for that connection with an indication if it is not biological. |
| Display the likelihood of each person’s sharing autosomal, X, Y and mitochondrial DNA with the main person in each family, along with the expected amount in cM if they do share. |
| List all the living Y and mt-candidates for each ancestor with their current relationship and age. |
| Ensure Behold’s displays of GEDCOMs from MyHeritage, FamilySearch, Ancestry, WikiTree and Geni are optimal. |
| Add links from any included links to FamilySearch, Geni or WikiTree where possible. |
| Add a warning if any person has more than one link pointing to a FamilySearch, Geni or WikiTree person, since those trees should only have one entry for any person. |