I hope "changes to the old ones" includes updating the present DNA material as well as upgrading to recognise recent advances.
The list of those involved in testing looks tired. Under "Tests Available", good luck with DNAH and Genetree. The former went belly up in 2011, public database suppressed by FTDNA, and Ancestry ate the latter 6 months ago. Where is 23andMe? If the intent was to list origin and data locations for the test entries, SMGF is notably missing too, as the website and database still function, though slaved to Ancestry. And in case no one has noticed, the BGA chips are an obvious game changer... Entering yDNA data by hand is tedious and liable to error, better a .csv file for 67 or 111 markers, and there's a case for entry in the native format with program translation to a standard one, logically FTDNA's order with any necessary data adjustment. Haplogroup is more useful than it was, but presently changes so frequently that it's probably inappropriate for a program designed to produce books. (Mine has changed about annually for the last 3 or 4 years.) Terminal SNP, as tested or as implied, is a stable solution, and it's trivial to convert to or from the latest haplogroup code if the entry instructions reference (currently) the latest ISOGG tree. "Confirmed" is another can of worms. My Hg shows as "implied" in all records, but that's because FTDNA has not bothered to update them after I had my current terminal SNP tested, and that's the general case. Then there's mtDNA and atDNA. It's probably well beyond the scope of Legacy to directly address these, but it certainly isn't to provide for entering kit or other ID number and database where information may be found. Further, for those who use Legacy as a research tool rather than for just recordation and presentation, atDNA is being successfully used to find actual or potential family connections out 5 generations or more. That's a strong argument for facilities to support concurrent work on unlinked individuals and families. One possibility might be to permit split screen to be used to display a tagged group present in the family file but unconnected to the principal tree. Another might be provisional linking across gaps, lateral or longitudinal. The confidence which may now be placed on yDNA matches, and the substantial time spans which may be involved, bring need to deal with cases where several generations may be missing but connection can be considered proven to at least comparable standards to those accepted using paper trails. Even mtDNA proved lineage recently for Plantagenet bones dug up from a parking lot. Reaching further back, the pure genealogist may have to give up, but the family historian may have much further to go regarding the questions, "Who, what are we, and whence came we?" In my case, I'm a Britton, and the origin of our family name goes back some centuries BC, certainly germane to a family history if immaterial to a genealogy. Adoption of it as a surname is much later, of course, but yDNA may reach back to identifiable family living in Norman times - genealogy as well as history there. Millennia may just punt and simply advise setting Report output to word processor compatible format, then heading "The Family History" with material written using that. Kind of a pain though with pagination, index etc. Is it impracticable to provide a report option which accepts reserved space blocking and index entries for such? Would it be impossible to extend timelines with perhaps a log time scaling? Or to link back across descendancy gaps with "Mr Gap" placeholders? Back when I was doing a lot of this with Legacy 6, I became an advocate for the Placeholder family. It's a surname which is easy to find and an unequivocal disclaimer of actual identity if it leaks into a report or chart. It's not just useful locally, as to permit linkage of siblings when the parents are unknown or when descent is known but not from which sibling etc., but it's also a solution for the longer linkages of the DNA domain. Placeholders can have remarkably long lives for timeline purposes, or be chained in estimated generations to facilitate lateral connection matching to other genealogies or display most probable family structure from STR based MRCA calculations. Given names beginning DNAxxx are also easy to find and informative. So is Placeholder as a given name, normally surnamed with the associated family name as in "Placeholder Pratt" for the case where descent was amply documented from brothers, but not which one. All of these propagated stably in anything I did with Legacy 6, needing no modification to the program and providing associated fields for information. Millennia may elect to punt in this area, leaving it to be revisited for Legacy 9, shilling for test providers rather than supporting the use of the new tools, but that may prove short sighted. Stepping in now perhaps offers a chance to set de facto standards for DNA data in genealogy - and to avoid Legacy 8 becoming rapidly obsolescent. Not DNA but related, there's also the predictable increase in genealogy interest, available data and exponential cross connecting of genealogies. Do we, or will we soon, need blocks, sutures and skeletons? Giant genealogies become unwieldy and have increasing connections with other work. For the family historian(s), local interest and media files may be more important than the "greater vision" when organising a get together. Most of that's clutter to the big picture, which also may not be helped by numerous small fiefdoms. One solution might be development of a standard system of segmentation to reduce things to manageable sub-units. That might be achieved by embedding blocks in databases to halt machine traversal for inspection, functioning as flexible boundaries to define content. Matching that, there would be needed standard sutures to connect elements so defined. The final requirement would be matching skeleton and "rich" data copies of segments, permitting "big picture" assemblies reduced to conventional minimal information but co-existence of more voluminous or private data where desired. In short, facilities for very flexible mix-and-match. kb ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sherry/Support" <she...@legacyfamilytree.com> Of course! Plus new Help files covering the new features and the changes to the old ones. 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