1 The Gedcom parser library (release @VERSION@)
2 -------------------------
3 The Gedcom parser library is a C library that provides an API to applications
4 to parse and process arbitrary genealogy files in the standard gedcom format.
8 - portable to any POSIX systems (libiconv is needed on systems that lack
11 - strict callback-based parser written in C (using lex/yacc), a C object
12 model is also available (compare to the difference between SAX and DOM
15 - supports the Gedcom 5.5 standard fully
17 - supports the standard encoding formats (ASCII, ANSEL, UNICODE), but
18 extensible (via a configuration file) to other encoding formats; by
19 default ANSI is also supported.
21 - all strings passed from callbacks to the using program are in UTF-8 format
23 - internationalization of the error and warning messages
25 - specific parsing of date values to a calendar-neutral date system (Julian
26 days aka serial day numbers); the date parser can be called separately
28 - specific parsing and checking of cross-references
30 - specific parsing of age values
32 - support for writing Gedcom files
34 - "compatibility-mode" parsing, to allow for not-exactly-standard syntaxes
35 used by other genealogy programs; currently, compatibility is added for:
37 - Lifelines 3.0.2 (not complete)
40 - NO BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY is guaranteed for 0.x releases !
43 - specific parsing of other special values
44 - compatibility with other genealogy programs
45 - older/newer Gedcom standards ?
51 For more information, refer to the documentation in the doc subdirectory,
52 or to the SourceForge project web site and summary page:
53 http://gedcom-parse.sourceforge.net
54 http://sourceforge.net/projects/gedcom-parse
56 Also, have a look at the 'Genes' program, from which this library is a
57 spin-off, and which uses this library:
58 http://genes.sourceforge.net
59 http://sourceforge.net/projects/genes
64 For using the library:
65 - either glibc 2.2 or higher, or libiconv
69 The official libiconv package doesn't have ANSEL support, and is not
70 extensible except by modifying its source code.
72 There is a modified libiconv package available on the SourceForge project
73 page, which is called 'libiconv-gedcom-1.8.x', based on libiconv 1.8.
74 Install this if you need ANSEL support and you don't have glibc 2.2.
76 To compile the package, you'll need:
79 To compile from the CVS sources, you'll need in addition:
83 - bison (won't work with plain yacc)
95 You can also run some tests via:
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