Family History

LifeLines – genealogy software

LifeLines is a genealogy program to help with family history research. It maintains genealogical records (persons, families, sources, events and others) in a database, and generates reports from those records.

The software has a curses interface, and a built-in interpreter for its own genealogical report language.

There are no practical limits on the number of records that can be stored in a LifeLines database, nor on the amounts or kinds of data that can be kept in the records.

LifeLines does not contain built-in reports. Instead it provides a programming subsystem that you use to program your own reports and charts. The programming subsystem also lets you query your databases and process your data in any way. LifeLines uses the terminal independent features to provide a screen and menu based user interface.

LifeLines records are stored in GEDCOM format; you organize, edit and maintain your data in this format. GEDCOM is a standard that defines a file format for moving genealogical data between computer systems. LifeLines has adopted this format for structuring the records in its databases.

Features include:

  • Information is stored in a GEDCOM format.
  • Easily import and export information in the GEDCOM format.
  • LifeLines can easily support databases of over 100,000 individuals with a total size of 30MB.
  • Powerful scripting language:
    • Generate ahnentafels (ancestor tables), ancestor/descendant reports, groff formatted ancestor reports, beautiful LaTeX books of all ancestors, PostScript fans of ancestors, vital records of all individuals in a format suitable for importing to palm pilot databases.
  • Internationalization and localization: English (default), Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, German, French, Polish, Swedish, and Kinyarwanda are supported.

Website: lifelines.sourceforge.net
Support: FAQ
Developer: Tom Wetmore, Matt Emmerton, Rob Fugina and others
License: MIT licence

LifeLines is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

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