In article <philipr.716995511 at extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU>,
philipr at extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Philip Rhoades) writes:
|> Does anyone know whether a DOS pedigree program exists?
|> ie I want to enter a whole lot of individuals (eg Queen Victoria's
|> offspring/relatives) and have the program produce a graphical
|> pedigree tree with male and female symbols (squares and circles)
|> with affected individuals showing as filled-in symbols (eg
|> haemophiliacs). It would be nice if this could be printed on HPLJs.
I am the author of just such a program, called Pedigree. Given the
non-commercial
nature of the network, perhaps I should mention the competition before I
plug my
own product. There are a large number of family history (genealogy)
packages on the
market, and many shareware ones too. I don't know of any which are designed for
biologists or geneticists, but many will be of use. A very popular program is
Personal Ancestral File, produced by the Mormon Church who are into
genealogy in a
big way. Because they aren't after profit, it is cheap. However, it can't draw
conventional trees and is quite inflexible. Others that spring to mind are
Brother's Keeper, Family Tree Maker and Roots.
Pedigree _can_ draw trees automatically. It is also very flexible in terms of
user-defined fields and output styles. You could use the IBM character
set to produce
squares and circles, I suspect, although you won't be able to reproduce
exactly what I
have seen in biology textbooks. The trees aren't inherently graphical -
mostly text
(which is what genealogists want) with IBM box-drawing characters used
to form the
branches of the tree. HP Laser Jets are ideal.
The program even comes with a sample database of the British royal
family - including
Queen Victoria and relatives. The program costs 50 pounds, or a nominal
fee for a demo
version which lacks printing and restricts the number of records. It is
available
from England - perhaps people should mail me if they want the address
and ordering
details. There is a dealer in New Zealand, and another in Australia, who
will supply it
in those countries. I can supply the addresses of those dealers if necessary.
