jimmc.roots Demo Guide

jimmc.roots v0.1.3 May 31, 2002

Contents

Introduction

Although jimmc.roots is a few years old, it has only been released recently, so expect a lot of rough edges and a few bugs and tracebacks.

jimmc.roots is 100% Java, so should run on any machine that runs Java 1.2. Before running jimmc.roots, you must set up your machine with JRE1.2 or later. After doing this on Windows (or on Solaris 2.6 or later), you can directly execute the roots.jar file. On a Unix or Linux system, you must enter the command "java -jar roots.jar". See the file README.html for more information on setting up and running jimmc.roots.

The User Interface

jimmc.roots uses a pretty standard point-and-click user interface. Each window includes a menu bar at the top, with standard pull-down and pull-right menus.

There are two types of windows:

A Few Tips

Hopefully the UI is mostly obvious, but here are a few tips about things that are not obvious.

Simple Demo

A sample data file has been included in the standard distribution. This file can be found in the dat directory, and is called kingmacbeth.dat. It contains a genealogy of MacBeth mac Finlay, King of the Scots in 1040.

From the main jimmc.roots directory, start jimmc.roots with the following command:

java -jar roots.jar dat/kingmacbeth.dat
This will open the main roots window, which (after the program finishes reading the file) will list the number of records found in the file.

To get a list of all people named John, enter that name into the text box in the main window and press Enter. The key line of all matching records will be printed in the main window, and a new PolyView window with the list of matching records will open.

To display a single record from this list, right-click on the key and pick Select. This will switch the list to display only the selected record.

You can move around to direct relatives by clicking on the Select buttons.

The choice list at the top of the Select area determines what happens when you press on one of the buttons in the Select area. You can choose from the following actions:

  1. Replace Current Selection - replaces the selection in the current window with the specified selection.
  2. Add To Current Selection - adds the specified selection to the selected records in the current window.
  3. Open Selection In New Window - opens a new window with the specified selection.

When a new PolyView opens, it displays in list format. You can change the format by changing the Display selection in the Output section. You can choose from the following display formats:

When viewing data in a PolyView, the key for each record is displayed in square brackets. You can right-click on any displayed key and select the Select command to select that person. If you don't want to see the keys, click on the "Include Keys" toggle button.

You can save text information from a PolyView window by selecting "Save Output As" from the File menu. To save a graphical tree, use the "Print" command in the File menu, then use the option in the Print dialog to save to a file.

Other Documentation

More information can be found in these documents: