Talk:Personal Ancestral File

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Contents 1 Macintosh version 2 forum 3 Mailing list 4 Merge Ancestral File number 5 Early PAF history

[edit] Macintosh version

Personal Ancestral File for the Macintosh® is 2.3.1 last released in 1996 before being discontinued by the Church -only runs on the Classic OS - OS 8.5 through OS 9.2.2 [1]

[edit] forum

http://genforum.genealogy.com/paf/

[edit] Mailing list

http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Software/PAF-5-USERS.html

[edit] Merge Ancestral File number

Is there any good reason for having a separate article for Ancestral File number? A redirect should be sufficient. -SESmith 23:00, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The Ancestral File number was something intended to be used with the Ancestral File (yes, I know it is a red-link) computer software that was only intended to be used in the LDS Church family history centers. The two pieces of software are completely unrelated other than the fact that they shared the same name in terms of marketing.... aka trying to convince individual church members that they are using the same software when in fact it wasn't.

There are enough differences between the two pieces of software, including the history, the reception among genealogists, and their usage that I believe they should merit completely different articles.... and the AFN information should be put into the Ancestral File article instead. The use of the AFN numbers in PAF was optional, and did not represent nearly so unique of a name identifier in PAF as is indicated in this article. It mainly was a way to use fewer digits to enumerate hundreds of millions of people... which isn't a bad idea by itself. The "AFN" spot in PAF GEDCOM files could be and often was used to store other miscellaneous information that had little if anything to do with the formal AFN number. In fact, early versions of PAF even had a tool to put Ahnentafel numbers into this data field. Now *that* could be somehow worked into this article, but the AFN otherwise doesn't relate to this software in a direct fashion. --Robert Horning (talk) 02:23, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Early PAF history

I clearly need to find a source for this information, but it seems like PAF was originally written not by the LDS Chruch MIS department, but rather by a private church member who "donated" the software to the church. Furthermore, the original software was written for the Apple II computer... even though "version 1.0" was released as a PC edition. Is there any source that can be used to confirm this history?

I also know of an Amiga version of the software that was written, but I don't know of its distribution range... and that wasn't "officially" supported by the LDS church. At least something to try and look up and/or debunk. My sources for the Apple II version were pretty solid but would be considered "original research" by Wikipedia standards, which is why I'm leaving this in the talk page and not the article side. --Robert Horning (talk) 02:05, 18 April 2008 (UTC)