Heredis
Please note that the information is provided ‘as is’, without any representation or endorsement made and without warranty of any kind whether express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of satisfactory quality, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, compatibility, security and accuracy.
The opinions expressed here are those of the reviewer. We hope that you will add your views. Please see the note at the end of the review to find out how to.
| System requirements | Windows 95 or 98, Me, Windows NT4, Windows 2000, Windows XP; Pentium or equivalent processor; 16 Mb RAM (32 recommended); 20 Mb free disk space. | |
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| Website: | Heredis |
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| Publisher: | BSD Concept | |
| Price: | $69 – downloadable from the website; demo is also available. | |
| Data Entry: | 
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Heredis offers an innovative approach to the storage of data and movement
around your ancestors’ records. This is primarily based upon the
Navigation Square which hovers above most of the other screens.
This allows you to move to immediate relatives with ease. There
are buttons for the father, mother, spouse, child or sibling.
You can also drag and drop individuals to make them the focus
of the screen as the Primary Person. Another useful feature is
the ability to bookmark key individuals in your database so you
can move back to them very simply. An individual’s details can be viewed on four different screens. The Immediate Family view shows a person, their spouse(s), children and parents. The Family Tree is a left-to-right pedigree chart showing 4 or 5 generations. The Personal Data view shows all the events in an individual’s life. The events can be picked from a pre-defined list or you can name your own events. You can also add up to 10 fixed fields to this screen so that you can, for example, immediately see a person’s religion or note that you are yet to record that information. Events can be sourced although the headings for doing so are a little confusing and may have lost something in the translation from the French. Baptism and burial data is as visible as birth and death data and baptism information is used to calculate ages if a date of birth is not available. The Union screen gives details of marriage events and other types of relationships. One of the more unusual features available in Heredis is the additional ability to link people together for other reasons apart from marital or parental relationships. This is done by adding witnesses to events or by using the Links function to identify other connections such as godparents or heirs. Very helpfully, an automatic coherence control checks your data as you add it and flags unlikely information. For example, if you mistype someone’s birth date, the program will alert you to the fact they would be, say, 290 years old at the birth of their son. A sophisticated search function exists and can be used to identify individuals for exclusion or inclusion in file exports, reports and trees. Individuals can also be marked confidential which means only names (and in some cases only their gender) will be included in the output and no other personal data shown. A worksheet can be kept on screen as well as the basic genealogy view. This can be initially fairly confusing, but once you learn the function of each of the sections it provides a valuable extra aid to navigating around your database and viewing additional information. These sections include indented descendancy reports, other relatives and a summary of the Primary person’s details. |
| Multimedia: | Heredis can attach picture, video and sound files to individuals, unions and sources. Basic information can be added to these multimedia files, specifying the exact year and free text comments. The pictures can then be used in the production of charts. | |
| Charts: |
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Heredis provides a wide variety of charts including ascendant, descendant, mixed (ascendant and descendant) or phratry (ascendant with extended kinship). These can be presented using one of a number of graphic designs available to you. The charts can be manipulated in many different ways. For example, you can resize a tree to make it print out on a specified number of pages. Fan and wheel charts are also available and you can also tailor these to meet your requirements. |
| Reports: | A wide range of
reports are available. These do not, however, include most of
the reports available as standard in other programs, such as Family
Group Sheets. Reports are created in .rtf format, which allows
you to edit them further and print them out using your word processor.
Text can be printed in different colours to identify different
genders or to highlight a group of individuals. A particularly interesting report lists all surnames, together with where they were found, the oldest and most recent event dates and the number of events. The same report is also available ordered by place. This report is made more powerful by the ability to group together variant surnames and place names in their respective dictionaries. There is considerable flexibility to design your own reports - both contents and layout. Some interesting statistical reports are also available, for example charting the age at first union of individuals in your database. |
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| Web Pages: | There are simple but restricted options available for the production of web pages. The output provides a separate section per person with ancestral and children links to other records. Pictures, events and notes can also be included and you can export your whole database or select specific individuals to include. | |
| Help and support: | You can download the Heredis PDF user manual from the Heredis website.
This manual contains tutorials using a sample database which step
you through its principal features. You can email Technical support and there is also a Frequently Asked Questions section on the website. There is an email list available in the program’s native language of French, but none in English at the moment. |
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| Conclusion: | The English version
of Heredis was launched in late 2001 but the program has been
available in French for about 7 years. The approach taken with
the program will be unusual to those familiar with genealogy software
produced in North America but, as a consequence, it presents you
with a number of features which are very innovative and give you
different ways to explore your data. In particular, being able
to link witnesses to events adds an extra dimension to your family
tree. There are a few drawbacks, as with every program. The screens work well at an 800x600 resolution but if you have a higher resolution this means that much of the screen is wasted. The lack of standard reports may be a disincentive for some people and the webpage creation lacks the flexibility available elsewhere in the program. However, its many strong points make this program a serious contender and worth looking at more closely. |
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| © Ruth Selman 2002 | ||
