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You will use the browsing modes of LifeLines most of the time. When in these modes you can quickly search for or browse through the persons and families in the database. When you find a person or family you are interested in, you can then edit their records.
The browsing modes also allow you to add new persons and families to the database, add spouses to families, add children to families, swap the order of spouses and children, merge persons and merge families, and perform other operations. The browsing modes also lets you remove spouses from families and remove children from families.
There are six browsing modes. The person and family modes concentrate on a single person and family, respectively. The list mode allows you to browse through a list of persons. The pedigree mode shows a four generation pedigree, the person tandem mode shows two persons at once, and the family tandem mode shows two families at once.
To enter the browsing modes from the main menu strike b. LifeLines asks you to identify a person or list of persons to browse to:
Please identify person or persons to browse to. Enter name, key, refn or list:
Enter either a name or partial name, or an internal key value, or a user-defined reference key (described later) or the name of a previously defined list of persons (described later), and strike return.
LifeLines allows wide flexibility in how to enter names. You may enter a name in upper or lower case or any combination. You may leave out all but the first given name, and, for given names, you may leave out any letters except the first. You may leave vowels out of the surname, and after four or five consonants have been typed, you may leave them out too. You must separate the given names from the surname by a slash, and if you enter given names after the surname (as in Chinese names), or any modifiers (such as Jr, Sr, IV, etc.), they must be separated from the surname by another slash. Here are a few of the ways I can enter my name:
Thomas Trask /Wetmore/ IV thomas/wetmore/iv t t/wetmr/i th tr/Wetmore t/wtmr/iv
You may browse to the list of all persons with the same surname by using the * character as the first initial. For example:
*/wetmore
matches all persons with surname Wetmore. This is the only wildcard feature supported by LifeLines.
After you enter a name, LifeLines searches for all persons who match. There are three possibilities: no one matches; one person matches; or more than one person matches. In the first case LifeLines writes:
There is no one in the database with that name.
and leaves you in the main menu.
If one person matches, LifeLines enters the person browse mode displaying the matched person. If more than one person matches, LifeLines enters the list browsing mode with the list of matching persons.
You may also identify a person by entering his or her internal, cross-reference key value. The internal key values of all person records are an I followed by digits. In the current version, when you enter a key value you must omit the I. If LifeLines finds a person with the key value you provide, LifeLines enters the person browsing mode displaying that person.
The browse command b is also available from most browsing modes. The command works the same way from those modes as it does from the main menu.
Some LifeLines operations need you to identify a person, not for the purpose of browsing, but for the purpose of completing an operation you have requested. For example, when you add a child to a family, LifeLines may ask you to identify the child. When this happens a panel pops up that asks you to identify a person. You respond by typing a name or key exactly as you would for the b command. If no one matches, LifeLines returns to the previous browsing mode. If the name matches persons in the database LifeLines displays something like:
Please choose from among these persons.
>Thomas Trask Wetmore, b. 1826, N.B. (42)
Thomas Trask Wetmore IV, b. 1949, Conn. (1)
Thomas Trask Wetmore III, b. 1925, Conn. (6)
Thomas Trask Wetmore Jr, b. 1896, Conn. (11)
Thomas Trask Wetmore Sr, b. 1866, N.S. (23)
Thomas Trask Wetmore V, b. 1982, Mass. (5)
Commands: j Move down k Move up i Select q Quit |
Use the j and k commands to move the selection cursor (>) to the correct person, and then use the i command to select the person. There may be more persons in the list than you can see at once. If this is so then you can use the j and k commands to scroll through the full list. If you don't find the proper person, use the q command and LifeLines asks whether you want to enter another name.
When LifeLines creates a list of names for you to select from, it tries to add extra information to the name; this helps determine which name to choose, and is important in databases where many persons have the same name. LifeLines also places the person's key value at the end of each menu line; this may be helpful in large databases.
Some browse modes provide the z command, which allows you to browse to a new person using the zip style of identification rather than the b style.
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