Corrections or additions to the BK5 documentation as of 22-Mar-1992 The printed manual says you need the line FILES=20 in your CONFIG.SYS file. Actually, two of the programs require that you have FILES=28 in the file. The INSTALL program will do this for you as BK5 is installed. Brother's Keeper starts with a batch file called BK5.BAT. If you need to return to a menu system on your computer, you could add line to the bottom of the BK5.BAT file (if your menu system does not restart automatically). On group sheet, where is says "Print Today's Date Yes No Age", if you answer A for age, then it will print each person's current age, or age at death. To print mailing address labels for everyone that has them, first get the alignment of the labels correct in your printer by going to the Modify screen and displaying a mailing address and pressing CTRL-L to print some test labels. Then go to the main menu and pick N for names and then 2 for everyone or 3 and then 5 for everyone in alphabetical order or just the descendants of one person. Then print a custom report that has only a field of 95. In other words, the custom report would have 95 at the top and the rest would be zeros. Then press F1 to print the report. It will print mailing labels for all the selected people (if they have an address entered). The lines that print on the label, and the size of the label are set on option screen #3. In the Tree routine and the Box routine, you have the option to have the descendant's names changed to uppercase and the spouse's names changed to lowercase. If you answer "N" to that question, all names will print exactly the way you entered them. If you answer "Y", the descendant names are forced to uppercase and the spouse names will be changed to lowercase (unless the first part of the spouse names are already in lowercase, in which case the spouse names are not changed.) There are three new options for this question. These new options may be useful to you if you have entered people's names with the last name uppercase. For example, if you entered names like this: Gerald R. FORD. The new options are to enter "3" or "4" or "5" when asked if you want uppercase/lowercase. If you answer "3" then the descendant name will be forced to uppercase and the spouse name will be left as is. If you answer "4" then the descendant name will be left as is, but the spouse name will be forced to lowercase (even if the first part is already lowercase.) If you answer "5" then the descendant name will be forced to uppercase and the spouse name will be forced to lowercase (even if the first part is already lowercase). So the "5" option is just like "Y" except "Y" will not force a spouse name to lowercase if the first part (somewhere in the first 15 characters) contains a lower case letter. The field below marriage date and other date says "Marriage ceremony Y/N." You may leave that field blank if you wish. However, if you put an "N" in that field, then the couple will be treated as not married when printing the reports. For example, it will not print the words "husband" and "wife" on the group sheets, and it will not put "m." on the tree charts. The field for "End year" is the year the marriage ended in divorce or separation. In the Group sheet routine, where it says "Omit blank date/location lines" if you answer "N" then it will print all fields including the new "Marriage ceremony" and "Divorce" and "End" fields for the marriage information. If you do not want to print that new line if it is blank, then answer "3" for that qestion. If you do not want to print that new line whether it is blank or not blank then answer "4" and it will never print. Answer "5" if you only want to print the ceremony and divorce fields if they are not blank. When printing an index for the register report or the indented report, if you have too many names to be sorted while in the program, you can stop the program and use the line: SORTF BKINDEX1.DTA BKINDEX2.DTA /C /+1,30 and then restart the program, go to the BKREP5 routine, and pick "P" to print the sorted index. If you have over 15,000 names to sort, you can change the number 30 in the SORTF line above to 25 or 20 and that will let you sort more names. The Word search routine has a new feature added to search marriage records. The TREE report has been modified to allow sideways printing on wide carriage printers, and to allow faster printing on 24 pin printers. While on the bottom line of the Modify screen, you may press P to move to the previous person, or N to move to the next person (next code number.) There is a new program called BKCHART5 to display or print bar charts. To start BKCHART5, press * while at the main BK5 menu. There is a new program called BKTIME5 to display or print a time line of ancestors. To start BKTIME5, press + while at the main BK5 menu. In addition to the names in your BK files, the BKTIME5 program can also add names or events that you put in a file called BKEVENTS.TXT. The format of the BKEVENTS.TXT file is: beginning year, an ending year, and a name or event. For example: 1770 1827 Beethoven. Put the most recent events at the top of the file and the oldest events at the bottom of the file. Currently, the BKCHART5 and BKTIME5 programs run only in English. Version 5.0b of Brother's Keeper has a new feature that lets you display graphics. Versions of BK5 prior to 5.0b do not display graphics. It will display PCX files on a computer with a VGA monitor. You may use your scanner to scan pictures, documents, maps, etc. Save the graphics file as a PCX file. If your scanner does not save in the PCX format, read your graphics file with a program such as PC Paintbrush and then convert it to a PCX file. In fact, even if your scanner does save files as PCX files, you will probably have to read the file with a program such as PC Paintbrush and then save the file. This will place the correct information in the file as to your screen size. After you have created the PCX files, start Brother's Keeper and use the modify routine to call up the person you want to attach the files to. You attach PCX files the same way you attach word processing files. While on the modify screen with the person showing, press F5 to go to the message line area. On any message line, type $$ and then the name of the PCX file. For example you could type $$MYFILE.PCX if the file is in the same directory as the BK5 programs. If the PCX file is in different directory, then type the directory name also, such as $$C:\DESKSCAN\MYFILE.PCX. After the file name has been typed on a message line, then press F5 again to display the file. You can have up to seven PCX files for each person. (One file name on each line.) If you have more than one PCX file for the same person, use the arrow keys to highlight the file desired and press F5 while on that line. You must have the extension of PCX on the file name. (If you don't have .PCX at the end of the file name, the program will assume that it is a word processing text file and will try to read it as a text file.) In my testing so far, I have used an HP ScanJet IIc to scan in the photographs and maps. I have found that a black and white photograph looks almost the same in 16 shades of gray as it does in 256 shades of gray. The file is about 1/2 or 1/3 the size when saved as 16 shades of gray. If the BK program is not able to read the file you scanned, then use a paint program to read the file and then save it again. Note, however, that if your video card is capable of 256 colors, the paint program may convert the file to 256 colors or shades of gray (and therefore make the file much larger.) To avoid this, you can temporarily set up Windows to VGA 16 color and then read and save the file. I normally have Windows set up for 640 by 480 with 256 colors. There are some programs, such as the shareware program Paint Shop, which will read your scanned file and save it with the same 16 shades of gray even if Windows is set up for more than 16 colors. If you have a color scanner, you will want to scan a color photograph as 256 colors. If you have lots of disk space and a super VGA card capable of 1024 by 768 by 256 colors, that will give the best results (but the file will be huge.) In order to save the file in that format, I had to change my Windows setup to that type of graphics and then read and save the file with either PC Paintbrush or Publisher's Paintbrush. My scanner uses a scanning program called Deskscan. When I select to scan a black and white photograph, it uses the 256 shades of gray format. But when I select Custom from the menu, and then select image type, I can change it to 16 shades of gray in order to save disk space. When using Deskscan it shows the size of the picture in inches. I changed the default (select custom, then image size, then units) to show it in pixels (dots) so that I could adjust the picture to the size I wanted (such as 640 by 480). Normally it won't come out exactly to 640 by 480, so I make sure neither dimension exceeds the screen limits. Brother's Keeper should be able to display PCX files if you have one of the following types of VGA cards. If you have a super VGA card, you will need at least 512K RAM or up to 1 meg RAM for the highest resolutions. Normal VGA 640x480x16 width x height x colors Normal VGA 320x200x256 Paradise 800x600x16 Paradise 640x400x256 Paradise 640x480x256 Video 7 800x600x16 Video 7 640x400x16 Video 7 640x480x16 Video 7 640x480x256 ATI 800x600x16 ATI 640x400x256 ATI 640x480x256 Tseng 800x600x16 Tseng 640x350x256 Tseng 640x480x256 Tseng 800x600x256 Tseng4 1024x768x256 (SpeedStar with 1 meg) If you have a problem displaying a picture file: 1. If you hear a beep when you press F5, the file can not be found. Check the file name to be sure it is spelled correctly, and include the directory name also, such as $$C:\WINDOWS\MYFILE.PCX 2. If the screen goes blank when you press F5, the file may be in an improper format. Use a paint program such as PC Paintbrush, Publisher's Paintbrush, or Paint Shop and read the file and then save the file. 3. If all else fails, call John Steed at (616) 866-9422 evenings 8pm to 10pm Eastern time and describe the problem. Tell me what brand of VGA card you have (if you know.) I will put a file called STEED16.EXE on my BBS which is a scanned photograph of my grand-parents and family. It is 640 x 480 in 16 shades of gray, and you should be able to display it on any VGA monitor. After you download STEED16.EXE, type STEED16 and enter and it will create the file STEED16.PCX. My BBS number is (616) 364-1127 (any baud rate). Currently, the program does not print pictures. You can use PC Paintbrush or another program to print the pictures. The graphics routines are from Genus Microprogramming, Inc. Portions Copyright Genus Microprogramming, Inc. 1988-1991.