Talk:Personal Ancestral File/Archive 1

Macintosh version
Personal Ancestral File for the Macintosh® is 2.3.1 last released in 1996 before being discontinued by the Church -only runs on the Classic OS - OS 8.5 through OS 9.2.2 
 * Added to article, although the faq does not mention what version of the os they actually work on anymore (I tried wayback)gioto (talk) 05:51, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

forum
http://genforum.genealogy.com/paf/

Mailing list
http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Software/PAF-5-USERS.html

Merge Ancestral File number
Is there any good reason for having a separate article for Ancestral File number? A redirect should be sufficient. -SESmith 23:00, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The Ancestral File number was something intended to be used with the Ancestral File (yes, I know it is a red-link) computer software that was only intended to be used in the LDS Church family history centers. The two pieces of software are completely unrelated other than the fact that they shared the same name in terms of marketing.... aka trying to convince individual church members  that they are using the same software when in fact it wasn't.


 * There are enough differences between the two pieces of software, including the history, the reception among genealogists, and their usage that I believe they should merit completely different articles.... and the AFN information should be put into the Ancestral File article instead. The use of the AFN numbers in PAF was optional, and did not represent nearly so unique of a name identifier in PAF as is indicated in this article.  It mainly was a way to use fewer digits to enumerate hundreds of millions of people... which isn't a bad idea by itself.  The "AFN" spot in PAF GEDCOM files could be and often was used to store other miscellaneous information that had little if anything to do with the formal AFN number.  In fact, early versions of PAF even had a tool to put Ahnentafel numbers into this data field.  Now *that* could be somehow worked into this article, but the AFN otherwise doesn't relate to this software in a direct fashion.  --Robert Horning (talk) 02:23, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

juliefin history

I clearly need to find a source for this information, but it seems like PAF was originally written not by the LDS Chruch MIS department, but rather by a private church member who "donated" the software to the church. Furthermore, the original software was written for the Apple II computer... even though "version 1.0" was released as a PC edition. Is there any source that can be used to confirm this history?

I also know of an Amiga version of the software that was written, but I don't know of its distribution range... and that wasn't "officially" supported by the LDS church. At least something to try and look up and/or debunk. My sources for the Apple II version were pretty solid but would be considered "original research" by Wikipedia standards, which is why I'm leaving this in the talk page and not the article side. --Robert Horning (talk) 02:05, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
 * From my searching I was only able to find out about one of the developers for version 2.0. gioto (talk) 05:54, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Translations
It would be great if the languages in PAF 4 could be added to PAF 5 or the PAF people could make available the translation program! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.228.222.38 (talk) 03:48, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a great idea, but seems very unlikely to occur gioto (talk) 00:26, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Ancestral File Numbers "unique"?
I know that was the intention, but it's common to find individuals with multiple numbers, who can then be paired with different spouses and children. It's rather confusing. I tried an edit to explain it.

Another situation which isn't exactly the same, but which is also very confusing, is where families are listed on the Family Search website, which are obviously "impossible" constructions. I've been working on the Sayre family genealogy and have encountered several confusing situations, including this one that originates on this page and leads to this one:


 * http://www.familysearch.org/eng/search/AF/family_group_record.asp?familyid=6041249&frompage=99

Here we have one child - Thomas SAYRE (AFN:QF4L-H4) - born a year before his own mother's birth, and another - Daniel SAYRE (AFN:QF4L-J9) - who is born a year after his own mother's birth. Also the birth/death situation is impossible, as the family didn't repeatedly travel back and forth to and from England between births. All these children were born and died in New Jersey, AFAIK.

I'm hoping the planned wiki-style New FamilySearch mentioned here will enable users to clean up these types of messes. Anyone who has some help for me that gets off-topic is welcome to come to my talk page. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:57, 24 September 2009 (UTC)