Rafal T. Prinke

HAZA-DATA
=========
The Nether Genealogy Program from the Netherlands

Lineage-linked database programs from European countries other than the United
Kingdom are little known in the USA. The reason is simple: their user interfaces
are in languages of the countries in which they were written and therefore 
English-speaking genealogists have no interest in using them. 
On the other hand, European genealogy software developers seem to have no 
interest in the large American market. They may take it for granted that 
because there are so many American program they have no chance of entering 
that market (and the fact that the English language PEDIGREE from the UK could
not do that seems to confirm it).

There is, however, an European program that is fully multi-lingual and already
available in several language versions with over 2,500 registered users in many
countries. The program is HAZA-DATA written by a Dutch programmer Hans van der
Zanden (in Modula-2 language) and distributed by Telapas Software.

I will attempt to describe some of its features and explain why American 
genealogists may like to consider trying it out. There is a DEMO version 
available which is fully working with the limit of 40 people per database 
(with unlimited number of databases).

Most, if not all, lineage-linked database programs use the familiar form-like 
screens with field names, fileds, buttons, pull-down menu bars, etc. It has 
become almost a standard in most database programs - not only genealogical - 
so that authors of new programs do not try to invent something new. But when 
one considers the clarity of display, it may be that for some people at least 
such screens appear "cluttered" with unnecessary information background noise.
If you are one of them, you may find the HAZA-DATA user interface much more 
interesting.

The basic concept is that only information itself is displayed. Any functions 
are accessed by pressing one or two keys which are always a mnemonic cluster 
easy to remembr. For instance to input a name you press "n", to input a date 
of birth you press "db", place of birth is "pb", and so on (in the English 
language version, of course, as in other versions these are different). And you
do not have to remember all of these abbreviations all the time - at any point
in the program you may just press F1 and a list of the keys active at that 
point is dispayed. After using the program for a short while you will learn the
most important key combinations even if you do not want to!
ADDING AND EDITING DATA
=======================
In HAZA-DATA there are three basic screens for inputting and editing data:
1. Family Group with parents above and children below a horizontal line, listed
   chronologically according to birth date. These are just names and the purpose
   of this screen is to move around the family and choose the person or marriage
   for editing or marking people for reports. To go to the family group in which
   one of the children is the parent, you just go to his/her position with the
   cursor bar and press RIGHT ARROW (there is a small right arrow displayed at
   each child who has a spouse or child to help with the choice). To move up
   the tree, place the cursor bar on one of the parents and press the INS key
   which takes you to the family group in which he/she is a child. You can also
   add new persons and marriages from this screen. To add parents of the husband
   you just press "h", those of the wife - "w". To add a new child do the 
   family press "c" and to add a person that is already in the database - "a". 
   You may equally easily add new marriages to both parents and unmarried 
   children. In the case of parents pressing LEFT ARROW adds an earlier marriage
   and RIGHT ARROW - a later one. 
   All this is simple and intuitive, yet powerful.

2. When the cursor bar is placed on a person and you hit ENTER, the data edit 
   screen appears displaying all the information you have entered so far - but
   not in the form-like way known from other programs. In HAZA-DATA everything
   is shown without field titles and without the fields themselves. Actually,
   what you see is not a record but rather formatted printout from the record. 
   Entering new data is made through edit windows which appear when you press 
   the required key combination. And pressing INS brings the current data into
   the window for editing. As always, F1 gives a list of all available keys and
   some options are very useful - as for instance marking the person as 
   "possibly" child of these parents. Others include such niceties as "found"
   instead of "born" or "killed", "murdered", "perished" instead of "died".
   All these choices immediately change the text on screen.

   Similar screen is displayed when pressing ENTER with the cursor bar on the 
   marriage horizontal line. In that case, the information being edited refers
   to marriage.

3. Finally, while in the edit screen "t" is pressed, you are moved to the text
   information screen, which allows notes of unlimited length with all basic 
   word processing functions. The text can be differentiated as research notes
   (between two # characters) or marginal notes (between two sqare brackets), 
   which may later be included or excluded from printed reports.
FORMAT OF NAMES, DATES AND PLACES
=================================

Different genealogy programs use different formats for the basic pieces of data.
In HAZA-DATA names of individuals are input with joining characters for groups
so that all forenames and all parts of a multi-part surname are joined with an
underscore, and patronymics are preceded by a tilde. When entering any name or
placename, the program automatically changes the first letter into upper case, 
unless it is a word you specified in your configuration file as "always lower 
case" (e.g. "von" or "de" in names). You may also force lower case by preceding
a name with back slash. All these special function characters do not appear on
printed reports.

With place names there is an option of enclosing names of regions or states in
parentheses which can be then searched separately. When inputting the same place
name again, one can enter only the first few characters and press TAB to get it
into the edit window. If there are more than one matches, pressing TAB again
brings the next match.

Dates can be input in a variety of formats and the format prefered for display 
and printout can be defined in the configuration file. All the standard date 
modifiers such as "before", "after" or "between" are supported.


SEARCHING OPTIONS
=================

Another aspect of HAZA-DATA that is an innovation in genealogical software is
the fact that there are no RIN or ID numbers. As the authors of the program say
"genealogists are not accountants" - and they are right, even though some people
like to have unique numbers assigned to key persons in their database. So how 
does one find a person or persons without RIN? From the first edit screen - and
several other screens in report preparation options - you can just press "s" 
and the search options screen appears, on which you can give as many (or as 
little) information about the person you want to find as you like.
The options to use vary from names and dates to occupations, names of ancestors
or descendants, etc. You may specify just one letter or you may give several 
possibilities separated with the bar "|" character. You may also specify "none" 
and get a list of persons missing some of the data pieces. The search criteria 
are remembered by the program, so that you can use them many times. If you hit 
ENTER without giving any information, you get a list of all individuals in the 
database. 

An interesting feature of HAZA-DATA is its ability to cope with any number of 
synonyms or spelling variants of names, which - when enabled - are also searched
for matches.

Once in the list of found individuals, you can mark some of them with the "x" 
key so that the next time you want to search the database pressing "x" from the 
search criteria screen immediately brings the list of marked ones. This is also
useful for various reports.
TEXTUAL REPORTS
===============

HAZA-DATA offers a variety of reports, some of which are quite standard while 
others are unique. As space does not make it possible to describe them all in 
detail here, I will limit it to a brief listing. With each of these reports and
tree diagrams there is a wide range of options for which information should be
included, in what order, format of dates and place names, etc. With descendants
the options also include such niceties as male lines only (which I think should
be standard in all genealogy programs, as it allows to print out a one-name
family monograph without the need to split the database), female lines only
(for those who would object to the previous option), legitimate lines only, 
or "selection" in which the user is always prompted whether to include issue of
every person with children. 

1. Descendants - a report similar to the Register Report but in the format used
   in Continental Europe (especially the Benelux and Germany) which has 
   different kind of pointers. 

2. Family group.

3. Ahnentafel list - optionally with all children for every couple.

4. Pedigree chart - graphic presentation of pedigrees, used only in the Benelux
   and South Africa (as far as I know) but very interesting and making nice
   impression.

5. Direct ancestors - in male or female line.

6. Relationship - for two or more persons.

7. All relatives - a cumulative report for one person, listing all his/her 
   relatives from a specified number or generations before and after.

8. Whole file report - a very unsual but useful report. All persons within the
   database are grouped into unrelated "trees" and listed generation by 
   generation.

For all these reports we may generate a variety of indexes. They can also be 
sent to a text file for later word processing - with an option of user defined
formating codes. These are by default Word Perfect 5.1 codes and a whole bunch
of WP 5.1 macros is included with the commercial version of HAZA-DATA.

TREES
=====

We now come to the feature of HAZA-DATA that made the greatest impression on me.
There is just one type of these - sometimes called "tall trees" - with the
"top person" placed on the left and his/her descendants or ancestors proceeding
to the right generation by generation. The speed of constructing these trees is
really impressive and they can be previewed on the screen (with panning
facilities), sent to file or printer.

The options for any tree include all those for other descendants/ancestors
reports (i.e. male lines only, etc.) plus what data should be included (just 
names, dates, places, spouses, etc.). Data on every person may be enclosed in 
a box or not, and the boxes can be differentiated for males, females and persons
with issue. Additionally a subset of the individuals on the diagram can be
marked with a special box. This subset is created using the standard selection
facility, so you could mark all individuals 'aged over 80', 'murdered', 
'farmers' or whatever you like.

The trees are very space saving. Programs such as Brother's Keeper or Pedigree
(UK) also offer nice trees but they allocate the same amount of space for every
person, irrespective of how much information on him/her is available.
In HAZA-DATA boxes are "elastic" - of variable size. In this way one can 
squeeze much more into a standard A-4 page - and with the "selection" option 
for whom to include, it is very easy to divide larger trees into several A-4 
tables and add pointers in a word processor afterwards.

Where HAZA-DATA aproaches the impossible, however, is when it meets inter-family
marriages in descendant trees or repeated ancestors pedigree trees. But when 
you come to showing how several chosen people are related to one another via 
multiple common ancestors, it is really hard to believe a small program like 
HAZA-DATA can accomplish what it does! I will let the printouts speak for 
themselves since, as the Chinese say, "a picture is worth a thousand words".


LISTS
=====

There are two options for generating listings of people. The simple one lets 
you select a group of persons (via the search criteria) or all of them and 
information items to include and list them. The other - tabular - is quite 
complex, with many advanced options such as defining the order and an option 
to use one of the fields as sort of "head lines" for groups of entries, which 
saves a lot of space. It is difficult to give full justice to all the
possibilities of this tabular report which is indeed a very powerful reaserch 
and presentation tool.
CONFIGURATION
=============

One of the nice aspects of every program - not only genealogical - is a
possibility to taylor it to one's own needs. Among those related to genealogy 
the one hard to beat on this aspect is the British program PEDIGREE - but 
HAZA-DATA is not far behind. Its basic configuration file is pure ASCII and 
easily editable. Besides the obvious things such as the default path etc. one 
can define the date format, Julian/Gregorian calendar change date, the range 
of "ABOUT" for years, months and days that is used in calculations and reports
(e.g. "born at the latest on ..."), printer codes, text formating codes for 
file export, screen colors, etc. That is also where the default output language
file is defined. This is still another great aspect of HAZA-DATA - you can 
have as many language output files as you want to create. These are ASCII files
with translations of the words, phrases and abbreviations used on reports and 
trees. Any language that has its file in the default directory can be chosen 
from within the program just before printing a report. In this way one can send
genealogical information to relatives in other countries printed in their own 
language.


IS ANYTHING WRONG WITH HAZA-DATA?
=================================

If you have read that far, you may suspect I am overenthusiastic about this 
program. Perhaps it is true, as I believe in the basic importance of tree 
diagrams for genealogy. The most important dwawback is the lack of source 
information for particular events other than in textual notes. This is a 
comparatively new approach to genealogical data structure and Telapas Software
intend to implement it in a forthcoming major upgrade.

Summing up, for a program taking just 750 KB of disk space (it is not a 
printing error - "kilobytes") and able to run on an old XT with no hard drive
(by using several program diskettes with selected overlays) - it is really
incredible. When compared to those regarded as "state of the art" in
genealogical programs, it offers many options not available elsewhere, coupled
with clarity of display, ease of use, extreme user-friendliness and really
intuitive user interface. 

Minimal system requirements:
- XT computer with a 360 KB floppy drive and 640 KB memory.

Limitations: 
- 30,000 persons per database,
- 40 children per family,
- unlimited text notes per person.

Disk storage:
- 2,700 persons per 1 MB (without notes)

Try it yourself! A evaluation version is available in HZ-E700A.ARJ

A technical Support Conference, called WGA_SOFTWARE, is available on 
40:128/1 (2:2/40) and 40:210/1 (1:209/720).
