README

jimmc.roots
v0.1.1 September 14, 2001

Contents

Introduction

jimmc.roots is a genealogy browser written in Java and distributed under the GPL.

Features

Documentation

The Demo Guide gives a brief walk-through of the program.

There is not yet a Users Guide for jimmc.roots.

The javadoc-generated API Reference provides detailed documentation on the packages and classes used in jimmc.roots.

System Requirements

jimmc.roots requires Java2, also called JRE1.2 (or JDK1.2 or later).

Installing Java

To install Java on your system, download JRE1.3 from Sun's Java web site and follow those installation directions.

Data File Format

jimmc.roots reads ASCII text data files with a simple structure, where each field is listed with as NAME:VALUE on one line, and blank lines separate records. For details, see the file format.dat in the dat directory.

Installing jimmc.roots

To install jimmc.roots from a zip file (.zip extension), use the unzip program or double-click on the zip file. This will create a directory called roots-N_N_N in the current directory, where N_N_N is replaced by the jimmc.roots version number.

To install jimmc.roots from a compressed tar file (.tgz extension), use the command

tar xzf roots-N_N_N.tgz
or, if your version of tar does not support the z option to uncompress, use the command
gzip -cd roots-N_N_N | tar xf -
This will create a directory called roots-N_N_N in the current directory, where N_N_N is replaced by the jimmc.roots version number.

Running jimmc.roots

If you have not already done so, you must install Java.

On Windows, double click on the roots.jar file in the main jimmc.roots directory, or run

java -jar roots.jar datafile
where datafile is the path to your genealogy data file. On Unix, run
java -jar roots.jar datafile
If the java binary is not in your PATH, you can explicitly specify the path to it. For example, if you have installed JDK1.3 into /usr/local/jdk1.3, you can run roots with the command
/usr/local/jdk1.3/bin/java -jar roots.jar datafile

On Solaris 2.6 or later, you can directly run roots.jar.

Bug Reports and Feedback

If you have a comment about jimmc.roots, or would like to report a bug, please send email to jimmc -at- nwlink.com.

Author

jimmc.roots was written by Jim McBeath http://alumni.caltech.edu/~jimmc