If you choose the miscellaneous utilities operation, LifeLines displays the utilities menu:
What utility do you want to perform? s Save the database in a GEDCOM file r Read in data from a GEDCOM file k Find a person's key value i Identify a person from key value d Show database statistics m Show memory statistics e Edit the place abbreviation file o Edit the user options file q Return to the main menu
This command saves the complete LifeLines database in a GEDCOM file. All person, family, event, source and user-defined records are stored. This command may be used to periodically back up your database. When you use this command, LifeLines asks you for the name of the file. If you have defined the LLARCHIVE shell variable, LifeLines will store the file in the directory named in the variable.
This command allows you restore a complete database from a GEDCOM file. When you select this command, LifeLines asks you for the name of the GEDCOM file. This command can also be used to import data from a GEDCOM file to an existing database. When LifeLines performs this command, it first reads the entire GEDCOM file and checks it for validity. If there are problems in the file, LifeLines describes them, writing them to the file err.log, and does not add any records to the database. If there are no problems, LifeLines adds all the records found in the file to the database (only header and trailer records are not stored in the database).
This command finds the internal key value of a person.
This command identifies the person that has a particular internal key value.
This command summarizes the contents of the current database. It displays the number of person, family, source, event and other records in the database.
This command is used by the author for debugging.
This command allows you to edit the place abbreviations file. This file defines the abbreviations that are used by LifeLines when it creates lists of persons for you to select from. Each line in the file has the format:
word: abbrwhere word is a word to be abbreviated, and abbr is its abbreviation. The word and its abbreviation are separated by a colon. For example:
When LifeLines constructs lists of persons for you to select from, it looks up the last component of certain PLAC lines in this file, and if it finds that component, replaces it with its abbreviation.
This command allows you to edit the user options file. The user options file is a record kept in the database that holds user selectable options. Each option has a name and a string value. Each line in the options file has the format:
option=valuewhere option is the name of an option and value is the option's string value. If the value is more than one line long, then the last character in each non-final line must be a backslash. The escapes \n and \t are also recognized in version 3.0.7 and better. In version 3.0.5there are nine options. Note that all of these may also be specified in the configuration file, to apply to all databases, but if specified in both places, the entry in the database (user options table) governs.
Person record edit template
Family record body edit template (NB: Unlike the others, this should not include the 0 level FAM tag.)
Event record edit template
Source record edit template
Other record edit template
String denoting code set in use in data. Special handling is provided for utf-8, which may be entered as "UTF-8", "utf-8", or "65001". (This is actually a code set issue and not a character set issue, as this only enables the processing of multibyte sequences, without regard to their semantic assignments).
String containing the GEDC block for the header record when exporting GEDCOM.
String containing the CHAR block for the header record when exporting GEDCOM.
String containing the SUBM block for the header record when exporting GEDCOM.
For example if you would like to replace the default person record template with the following:
you would edit the user option file to contain: or, using the \n escape so as to keep the entry on one line:This command returns you to the main menu.