Here is a description of changes from BK5 version 5.1 to version 5.2: (If you had version 5.1F, instead of 5.1 then you may already know about a few of these changes.) On the group sheets, you may print mailing addresses for people. On option screen #3 you may set up a print string to be sent before each printed report, and before the ancestor charts. For HP laser printers, set string 13 to be sent before each report, and set string 8 before the ancestor charts. For Panasonic 24 pin printers, set string 20 before each report. You may send any of the strings which appear on the print string menu (P from the main menu.) The last program disk of Brother's Keeper contains FONTS6.EXE and FONTS20.EXE. If you have an HP laser printer, FONTS6.EXE contains a font for the last page of the large ancestor box chart. (The report that is printed if you pick 3 from the main menu and then pick B.) FONTS20.EXE contains fonts for 20 characters per inch which can be used for landscape descendant box charts. If you are in the \BK5 subdirectory and then type A:FONTS6 and then A:FONTS20 with the last diskette in the A: drive, it will extract the files, including the batch files for sending the fonts to your laser printer. If you want to use these fonts, you must download them to the printer using the batch files before starting BK5. Version 5.2 includes the calendar program. Pick N from the main menu, then pick 6 and then choose birthdays or anniversaries or both. Select the people you want (you may combine descendants of several people.) Then sort the file and then pick 8 to print a calendar. When printing register reports, when it asks if you want to include the message lines for the spouse, you may answer Y for yes, N for no, or 3 if you want the spouse message lines to start on a new line. Also the register and indented reports can print the divorce information. Version 5.2 allows two new date types that European users may want to use. Date type 10 is in the format 1993-05-20 and date type 11 is in the format 1993.05.20. If you select one of those options for date types on option screen 1, then you would enter the dates as 19930520 and enter. Version 5.2 includes the program VSORT. It can sort larger files than SORTF. If you pick N from the main menu, then pick 0 it will print a list of all people that are not connected to anyone else. If you get any error messages when first starting BK5 such as: open STAT=2 person getlast STAT=2 or if you get any STAT= error messages when in any part of the program, it usually means that there is damage to one of your data files. The BK5 Utility routine will NOT fix these type of errors. A STAT error is an indication that the data file needs to be repaired and have the indexes rebuilt. The best way to do that is to use BTRHELP which is a shareware program. You may obtain a copy of this program from CompuServe, from the BK bulletin board, or from John Steed. The file name on the BK BBS is BTRHLP18.ZIP. The file FIXBK.DOC describes how to use it when fixing Brother's Keeper data files. There are a couple of STAT errors that you do not need BTRHELP to fix. If you get a STAT=4 error only for one person when modifying, you may be able to fix that error with the BK5 Utility program. The STAT=4 error means a record or link is not found. If you get a lot of STAT=4 error messages, then do not use the BK5 Utility program. Also, if you get a STAT=12 error when starting BK5, it means one of your data files is missing. You may have accidently deleted it. The name of the file will appear on the screen while the STAT=12 error message is showing. Hopefully you have backup copies of all your data files. If you get a STAT error message, read Appendix N in the BK 5.2 manual for more information. Name Matching: With version 5.2, when you type a name to find, it will show you a list of all matching names. In version 5.1 it would show you only one name at a time and you had to press TAB to see the next name. With version 5.2 you will be able to move forward and backwards through a list of names. The first person to match will display at the top of the screen, and a list of matching names will display at the bottom. As you press the up or down arrow, it will select different people, and the top of the screen will show you all information about the person you have highlighted. When you find the correct person, press Enter. If you are in the ADD routine and the person you are adding does not show up, but you feel the person is already in the file, then press ESC to cancel. (Perhaps you spelled the name incorrectly.) If you are in the ADD routine and the person you are adding is not on the list, and you want to add the name you typed as a new person, press F9. The routine is similar when you are in the MODIFY or PRINT routines. Version 5.2 of Brother's Keeper has six new reports that were not in previous versions. If you pick 6 from the main BK5 menu it will give you a new menu with the six reports. If you then type D it starts the direct lineage report. It will show the connecting people between a person and one of his or her descendants. For example, you could pick your great grandfather and yourself and it would show your great grandfather and your great grandmother, your grandfather and grandmother, your father and mother, and you. There are two ways to print the chart. It can be formatted like the descendant report (D from the main BK5 menu) or it can be formatted like the box charts (B from the main BK5 menu.) If you pick C from the new reports menu, it will print a report that shows how many descendants a person has. It will tell you how many children, grandchildren, and so on. This is useful if you are going to print some other report for a person and want to know how big the report will be. You can pick R from the new reports menu to do a reasonableness check of your database. It will find some common mistakes you can make when entering data. If you type in a date incorrectly such as 1990 instead of 1890, this report will catch it. You can set the limits for the ages, and it will print out the names of people who do not fall within the limits. If a birth date is blank for a person, it will not check that person for reasonableness. It will check the reasonableness of all people with standard dates (dates that are in the correct format based on what format you have set on option screen 1.) See date types on page 4 above. When you pick M from the new reports menu it will print a report showing which people have missing information. You can show people that are missing birth dates, death dates, birth places, death places, or show people that do not have a father or mother. You can choose the fields you want checking on, and it will show people what are missing information in any of the fields you select. If you pick L from the new reports menu it will make a list of all surnames (last names) in the database and give you the number of people that have that name. After it compiles the list of names, you can print the list alphabetically, or you can print the list in order of popularity. You also have the option of omitting names that only occur once. You can pick P from the new reports menu to print a report listing all locations, and what events happened at those locations. This is useful if you are going to a certain county and want to know what documents to look for to verify the events that occurred in that area. You can either print all locations alphabetically with the events for each, or you can print only the locations that match the word or words you enter. For example, you can type OHIO to print all locations in Ohio with their events. If some locations where entered with OH instead of OHIO then search for , OH or whatever unique letters match OH and do not match cities that contain the letters OH. You can also type a space before and after OH if you have a space before and after OH in all your locations. CHANGE DIRECTORY Normally, I suggest you keep all your relatives in one database. If you have children, then you should keep all your relatives and all of your spouse's relatives in the same database. The reason for this is so that when you print an ancestor chart for your children, it will show all sides of the family. Even though you keep all sides of the family in one database, the descendant reports will still print only the correct people when printing. Some people wish to keep separate databases for separate families. The program allows you to do this, but if you do so, you can not print a chart showing more than one database at a time. You may want separate databases if you and your spouse have no children, or if you are entering people who are not related to people in your other database. If you do want a separate directory for a new database, then create the directory using the DOS MD command. For example if you type at the C: prompt the command MD \BK5\SMITH it will create that directory. Then there are two ways to tell BK5 which directory to use. The old way is to go to Option screen 1 and type the directory name on the bottom line where is says "Path for data files". The new faster way, is to just type \ at the main menu of BK5. It will ask you for the directory name and then return to the main menu. If you want to change directories even faster, then create a file called BKPATH.TXT and type the directory names that you are using. Put one name on each line, such as: C:\BK5\SMITH C:\BK5\JONES C:\BK5\WILSON Then when you type \ at the main menu, it will show you the lines from the BKPATH.TXT file and you can press the arrow keys to select a directory and then press Enter. To create the BKPATH.TXT file, pick E from the main menu to Edit a file. Enter BKPATH.TXT for the file name, then type the names of the directories that contain your data files. When you are at the main menu, the current directory name will show in the lower left hand corner above the line that shows the number of people in your database. When you are in the Modify routine, if you make a mistake and accidently change information for a person, you can type ESC and a window will pop up asking if you want to cancel the changes. If you answer Y for yes, it will put the name back the way it was before you made the changes. When you are entering an address for a person using the F4 routine, you may press = in the name field of the address area to copy down the name of the person that you are adding an address to. In the Utility program Quality check you may press ESC to quit while it is displaying numbers, or you may press Q to quit when it asks if you want to fix an error. This is useful if it is showing lots of errors and you do not want to finish the routine. The gedcom import routine can read larger gedcom files if you pick choice 3 for CD-ROM type gedcom files. When you import or export a gedcom file, you can change the TAGs that the program uses. For example, if you use Baptized or Christened or something else for one of the dates in your data file, you can put the proper tag with the date. Also you can decide if you want to transfer certain information, such as sources or divorces. The tree chart can print marriage dates and can print the baptized date when the birth date is not known. When you have output set to screen, and you are displaying an ancestor chart, you can press - to return to a child. For example, if you type F F to move to a person's grandfather, you can press - - to return to the person you started with. The descendant report "D" can create an index now. On the register report, you can skip any number of the beginning pages. For example, you can start printing with the 20th page. This is useful if you had a paper jam, or if you only want to reprint a few pages. The big ahnentafel report (3 then L) can print up to 99 generations. It stops printing the ahnentafel numbers after about 1 billion, but will continue to print the names. That report can include almost every field for each person. The alphabetical list (N then 3) will let you print everyone, the descendants of a person, or the ancestors of a person. There are new fields for custom reports. Press PageDown on the custom design screen to see them. For a list of changes, include some not included in this file, be sure to read Appendix E in the version 5.2 manual. If you have not already done so, be sure to also read the README.DOC file. It contains changes to the 5.2 program that were recently made. Among other things, it tells how to print laser labels, how to print the collapsed ancestor chart, and how to use the pop up date calculator.