The Gedcom parser library (release @VERSION@)
-------------------------
The Gedcom parser library is a C library that provides an API to applications
to parse, process and write arbitrary genealogy files in the standard gedcom
format.

Its main features are:

 - portable to any POSIX systems (libiconv is needed on systems that lack
   glibc 2.2, see below)

 - strict callback-based parser written in C (using lex/yacc), a C object
   model is also available (compare to the difference between SAX and DOM
   in XML).

 - supports the Gedcom 5.5 standard fully

 - supports the standard encoding formats (ASCII, ANSEL, UNICODE), but
   extensible (via a configuration file) to other encoding formats; by
   default ANSI is also supported.

 - all strings passed from callbacks to the using program are in UTF-8 format

 - internationalization of the error and warning messages

 - specific parsing of date values to a calendar-neutral date system (Julian
   days aka serial day numbers); the date parser can be called separately and
   dates can be manipulated

 - specific parsing and checking of cross-references

 - specific parsing of age values

 - support for writing Gedcom files (both in line-by-line format, or via the
   Gedcom object model)

 - "compatibility-mode" parsing, to allow for not-exactly-standard syntaxes
   used by other genealogy programs; currently, compatibility is added for
   (not necessarily complete):
     - ftree
     - Lifelines 3.0.2
     - Personal Ancestral File (PAF), version 2, 4 and 5
     - Family Origins
     - EasyTree

NOTE:
 - NO BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY is guaranteed for 0.x releases !

To do list:
 - specific parsing of other special values
 - compatibility with other genealogy programs
 - older/newer Gedcom standards ?
 - writing GEDML files
 - C++ object model
 - ...

For more information, refer to the documentation in the doc subdirectory,
or to the SourceForge project web site and summary page:
  http://gedcom-parse.sourceforge.net
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/gedcom-parse

Also, have a look at the 'Genes' program, from which this library is a
spin-off, and which uses this library:
  http://genes.sourceforge.net
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/genes


Requirements:
------------
For using the library:
 - either glibc 2.2 or higher, or libiconv

Note:

  The official libiconv package doesn't have ANSEL support, and is not
  extensible except by modifying its source code.

  There is a modified libiconv package available on the SourceForge project
  page, which is called 'libiconv-gedcom-1.8.x', based on libiconv 1.8.
  Install this if you need ANSEL support and you don't have glibc 2.2.

To compile the package, you'll need:
 - gcc

To compile from the CVS sources, you'll need in addition:
 - autoconf
 - automake
 - flex
 - bison (won't work with plain yacc)
 - perl


Installation:
------------
This is simply:

  ./configure
  make
  make install

If libiconv is not automatically found, you can give its path to configure,
for example, if the library lives in /home/mydir/lib:

  ./configure --with-libiconv-prefix=/home/mydir

You can also run some tests via:
  make check


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