Updated: 2003.09.13

Windows Console versions of LifeLines

MS-Windows binaries for normal releases are available, with all other releases, on the main lifelines file release page (the .bin.win32.zip files).

gettext & iconv DLLs are now included in the windows binary releases. They may also be found at gettext for Windows sourceforge site.

Compiler

I personally develop with MSVC (Microsoft Visual C++) 6.0 on MS-Windows, or with the build environment included on cygwin, I build the distribution binaries for MS-Windows with the MSVC6. I build the distribution tarballs & rpm packages with gcc on a GNU/Linux RedHat 7 box.

UTF-8

Internal support of UTF-8 is somewhat incomplete, but it is currently possible to use UTF-8 as the internal (database) codeset. This is most easily done with a machine that handles UTF-8 natively, of course, but the next best thing is via icon (aka libiconv). See the docs/Install.LifeLines.Windows.txt.

Due to the availability of libiconv for MS-Windows, it is no longer necessary to use character translation tables to convert from the native codeset to UTF-8. For historic reference, conversion tables are still here. The following zips have two pairs of translation tables each, for use with a simple editor such as notepad.

Note that the versions here converting from UTF-8 do more than conversion of identical characters. For example, on my U.S. Windows system, I see Cyrillic names in Latin script, because the u-437.tt table converts Cyrillic letters to Latin (as MSDOS codepage 437 has no Cyrillic letters). This does not address the problem of actually editing Cyrillic letters on a system that does not support them, however. That is a problem that can be solved, via 1:1 translation to escape sequences, but we have not addressed this type of thing.

Rafal Prinke created these from the Konwert program, and did some cleanup, and then I have further converted them to be all ASCII files and not use tabs.

Reports

The reports are distributed in the source releases. If you don't want to download a full source release, and haven't got cvs to pull directly from the repository, then download a distribution from the files page under lifelines-reports. (The releases that were here until 2002.05.01 are now lifelines-reports-0.0.3 on the regular release page.)

Here is an index to the reports (whipped up by me in amateur perl). Check the links from the main LifeLines page for more reports not in the repository.

I welcome feedback or bug reports - please send via email to the username puddle at the domain name users.sourceforge.net (I'm trying to duck spam harvest robots).

diff

Now I recommend winmerge on sourceforge for diffing. I used to rely on RunWindiff and windiff (zipped) for diffing text files & directories.

Perry's work directions

Comments are more than welcome. Here is a recent snapshot of my TODO list.

Ethel, a Windows GUI for LifeLines

Perry's previous Windows GUI version

Ethel was my Windows GUI version of LifeLines. I used most of the LifeLines code, but added some Windows GUI code. I strove to maintain all the functionality and hotkeys of LifeLines, and to ad accessibility for users unfamiliar with GEDCOM (as well as making some use of the Windows common controls).

I've discontinued this Windows version, until we finish improving the separation of the UI in LifeLines. When that is accomplished, and I have some time, I will probably write a new version of this.

Old info that hasn't changed

This is a Windows Console Application version of LifeLines by Perry. This runs in a commandline shell, like a DOS program, but is technically a Windows Console application, because it is 32 bit and requires a Windows platform (eg, Win95, WinNT, etc). (I don't have any idea if it would work on Windows for Workgroups with Win32s installed, but it certainly won't work on DOS 5.0).

I quit including copies of the NEWS file. To see what has changed recently, you can browse the CVS repository directly on the web.

LifeLines source on the web

Check out the ChangeLog for the history of changes, most recent at the top. ChangeLog is a file about halfway down (and beneath all the subdirectory links).

If the link I gave above for the CVS via web does not work, the manual way to navigate to it is, from the LifeLines home page:
Click CVS along the top,then partway down on the far righthand side, under Browse the CVS Tree, click "Browse CVS Repository". Ignore the LifeLines-reports directory, it is old (reports are in the reports subdirectory of the LifeLines directory). Go to the LifeLines directory.

The fpattern pattern matching code is compiled in for database searches.

If you do not currently have LifeLines reports (*.ll files), you will want to download a set of them as well - see the downloads page from the LifeLines project page.

Return to LifeLines home page