Ahnenblatt

The program is absolutely free (Freeware). It is allowed to be distributed as often as wanted.

I am a software developer and I wrote this program for my self interest to help me with my Genealogical hobby. As I like to use free software, I want to give back to the community. Geneological novices now have the opportunity to connect to this hobby without investing a lot of money. And last but not least: Competition is good for business.

This is highly welcome. You can implement a link to your homepage of "Ahnenblatt - free Geneological Software" (http://www.ahnenblatt.com). A link to the installation file is only allowed with an additional link to the Ahnenblatt homepage and by inserting my email address. (support(at)ahnenblatt.de)

Ahnenblatt is a free-time project. It is not made by a company, but rather by a single person, who is doing the programming of the software, the design of this web page and who is answering requests of users. An update can be made monthly and other times it can take up to half a year . The complexity of the program updates varies too. Some updates have completely new features, some only bug fixes.

Updates are very easy. Just download the latest version from my homepage and install it over the existing version. Because Ahnenblatt is storing the family data on a separate place, you will not lose data during an installation or during an uninstallation. Additionally, all program settings will be saved.

Ahnenblatt is supporting multiple languages and more and more languages are being added. Please check the Ahnenblattportal (http://www.ahnenblattportal.de) for new language packages. If your desired language is not on the list, maybe you want to contribute your language skills to the community by translating it. Please check the Ahenplattportal for the tool LanguageEditor, which makes it easy to translate Ahnenblatt.

No, Ahnenblatt is a pure Windows program. However, you can use Wine, a translation layer (a program loader), to run windows applications on other operating systems such as: Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Solaris.

Ahnenblatt was tested successfully with Linux Ubuntu 8.4. The only concern was that creating the graphics of the FamilyTree takes longer than on a Windows system.

Are you new to the Genealogy and would like to know more about your ancestors? Ahnenblatt is a program to administrate and display input of known family member. It does not help identify new ancestors for you. Register offices, churches and other associations can help you obtain ancestry information. The best introduction to Genealogy can be found via my recommended literature or on the Internet. The program help within Ahnenblatt offers a list of Internet links.

You can uninstall Ahnenblatt with the uninstall routine in the Ahnenblatt folder or under the Control Panel, 'Add or Remove Programs'.

The font size in the person frames is calculated by the program. It is dependent on the amount of generations per page (Family Tree) or by the size of your person frames (poster view) and the text, which have to be printed within a frame. Ahnenblatt calculates the longest row to be printed and selects the biggest available font. This font size is used due to optical reasons for all person frames. You can avoid small fonts by reducing the generations per page or by printing in a landscape format. (Printer / Format Output) before you print a page. Within the Poster layout you should enhance the width of the person frames. Also, you can print only the nicknames without all of the first names. (check mark the field "nick names"). Finally, you should choose a font type which is easy to read. (like Arial)

A display of all persons is not possible. Ahnenblatt tries to display all possible persons in a very organized manner. Thereby, some persons are omitted. Some enhancements might be implemented in future releases. In my opinion, a display of all available persons is not recommended due to clarity. (i.e. crossing lines, all persons of one generation next to each other... )