2011-03-15 Agelong Tree 4.0

Unicode genealogy software

multi-lingual

Agelong Tree is a multi-lingual Windows application for traditional genealogy, created by Genery Software, in Novosibirisk, Russia.

Agelong Tree version 4.0 supports fourteen languages; Bashkir, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, English, French, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish and Tatar. The Genery website is multi-lingual too, but does not support as many languages as the software; its pages are available in English, Russian, French and Latvian.

versions

Version 1.0 was released on 2002 Jul 21. A major shortcoming of version 1.0 is that it does not support GEDCOM at all. Version 2.0, released in 2003, fixed that. Version 3.0 released in 2006 not only featured a redesigned user-interface, but was also the first Unicode-based version. However, once again, its GEDCOM support lagged behind. Version 4.0 fixes that.

More than four years after version 3.0, Genery Software has introduced version 4.0. Version 4.0 is not just a new version, but a complete rewrite. Version 4 offers several improvements, such as smooth scrolling and zooming, more settings and options and better keyboard support. Its major new features are support for Unicode in GEDCOM, integration with Google Maps and the possibility to define custom fields.

upgrade

Registered users of version 3 qualify for an upgrade discount. All version 3 users wishing to switch to version 4 have to download the Agelong Tree Converter, which will convert the Agelong Tree 3 database into Agelong Tree 4 format.

Although it is nice that the version 3 to version 4 database conversion is available as a standalone utility, Agelong Tree 4 should include the ability to read databases created by previous versions in the application, but it does not. When I tried to open an Agelong Tree version 3 database with Agelong Tree version 4, it complained Invalid file type.

The File Open dialog for Agelong Tree 4 does not even show Agelong Tree 3 databases. Agelong Tree 3 databases have file extension *.atd, Agelong Tree 4 uses the file extension *.at4.

editions

Agelong Tree is available in two editions; a Free Edition and a Commercial Edition. There are no other editions, yet oddly, it's the commercial edition that is also known as the Basic Edition. The reason for this is that Genery Software is developing a Premium Edition to be released later.

There is just one application, which defaults to the Free Edition. You upgrade Agelong Tree to the Basic Edition by entering an activation key.
The so-called Free Edition should really be called the Demo Edition, because it is limited to just 40 individual per database. The Free Edition does not allow you to edit databases with more than 40 individuals. You can import files larger than that, but the application will switch to read-only mode and not allow you to edit anything until you upgrade to the Basic Edition.

download and installation

The Agelong Tree website lets you download the installation program, which is about 5 MB large. The installation is pleasantly simple and uneventful. The installer defaults to a directory in Program Files, but allows you to choose another directory. Installation takes less than a minute. Agelong Tree is a 32-bit application, so on 64-bit Windows, the installation defaults to a subdirectory of Program Files (x86).

activation

When you choose to buy a license, you'll receive an activation code.
To activate the product, you should be online. Agelong Tree connects to the registration server, and upon confirming that your activation code is valid, shows the name associated with that registration code.
It is possible to register offline. To do so, you have to email your activation code, together with an computer code generated by Agelong Tree to support at Genery Software.
It is possible to install Agelong Tree on both your desktop and a laptop; Genery Software allows three activations.

Agelong Tree 4.0

user interface

The Agelong Tree user interface is just a bit unusual. There is the usual main menu along the top and a status bar along the bottom of the main window. Directly below the menu is a row of buttons - at least, that is what looks like. It actually are tabs to switch between different views of you data.
Family Tree Maker 2008 has a tabbed interface, with a menu on the tabs that keeps changing as switch between tabs. That's annoying. Agelong Tree has a main menu that does not change when you switch between tabs.

Each tab has a sidebar along the left. This sidebar is different for each tab. You can resize the sidebar, and collapse it you want. Each sidebar contains several sections, which can be collapsed as well.
It initially seemed to me that the ability to collapse the sidebar was a bit theoretical; as the sidebar allows actions that the main menu does not. For example, to add a person to your database, you can choose Create from the Person sidebar, while there is no menu item to do the same. However, you can right-click the main window to bring up a context menu that does offer the ability to add a person.

GEDCOM import

When you import a GEDCOM file, Agelong Tree prompts you for the GEDCOM encoding. Every time you import a GEDCOM file, Agelong Tree pops up a dialog box asking you to choose the GEDCOM encoding. That is not just annoying, that is plain wrong. Agelong Tree should read the GEDCOM header, and act accordingly. Agelong Tree should not bother the user with questions it knows the answer to while the user may not know.

Agelong Tree is one of those applications that supports dozens of different characters set and encodings, despite the fact that only a few of these are legal or common in GEDCOM files. The GEDCOM import defaults to default.

1 MB GEDCOM

When I tried to import the 1 MB GEDCOM, Agelong Tree took 55 seconds ...to crash. After that, it would not respond to anything, and the Agelong Tree process had to be killed.

100k INDI GEDCOM

The attempt to import the 100k INDI GEDCOM did not result in a crash, but it took a while for Agelong Tree to complete the import. I performed the import on my new 3GHz Intel Core i7, my fastest computer yet. At first I thought something went wrong, but after several tries I discovered that import of the 100k INDI GEDCOM succeeds if you are willing to wait for twelve hours. That is the slowest import time yet on the fastest machine yet.

The Agelong Tree GEDCOM import is staggeringly inefficient.

The Agelong Tree GEDCOM import is staggeringly inefficient. Twelve hours is 43.200 seconds; Agelong Tree imported just 2,3 individuals per second. On a 3 GHz CPU, 43.200 seconds equals 129.600.000.000.000 cycles; Agelong Tree uses 1.296.000.000 CPU cycles per individual. The Agelong Tree GEDCOM import uses more than one million CPU cycles per individual! On an otherwise identical 1 GHz PC, Agelong Tree would import less than one individual per second; import of 100.000 individuals would take 1½ days.

The Agelong Tree GEDCOM import uses more than one million CPU cycles per individual!

Importing my current database of more than a quarter million individuals would probably take more than a week, while several other genealogy editors do so in just a few minutes and GENViewer Lite does so in just a few seconds.

import log

What makes the excruciatingly slow GEDCOM import especially disappointing is that Agelong Tree takes all that time without making an import log. It does not bother telling you what it could or could not import. It demanding blind trust by being is uncommunicative.

crash

Agelong Tree crashed several times. Every I restarted Agelong Tree after a crash, it would pop up a messagebox stating The previous session was not properly finished. Would you like to restore the latest data file?. I always answered yes, for fear of having to go through another 12-hour import.
Restoring the data file takes 9m45s, almost ten minutes. A progress bar along the bottom of the splash screen shows the restoration progress while you wait.

GEDCOM export

The GEDCOM export shows the same Select GEDCOM encoding dialog box as the GEDCOM import, and defaults to using UTF-8, as it should. The Agelong Tree GEDCOM export seems to be about as slow as its GEDCOM import, so I did not wait around for it to complete export of the HundredThousand database. Sadly, although Genery software must know that the export is slow and people may like to cancel the export operation when they discover how slow it is, there is no Cancel button. The only way to cancel the GEDCOM export is to kill the Agelong Tree process, and if you do so, you will have to wait through its database restoration process the next time you start it up.

GEDCOM encodings

import

in	encoding
N	ASCII
N	ANSEL
Y	UTF-8
N	UTF-16

A major new feature of Agelong Tree 4.0 is that it finally supports Unicode in GEDCOM. However, when I tried to import a so-called UNICODE GEDCOM, Agelong Tree failed to import it. Agelong Tree did not produce a warning either, it just did not import anything.

Agelong Tree 4.0 supports Unicode in GEDCOM, but it does not support UNICODE GEDCOM; Agelong Tree 4.0 supports UTF-8, but it does not support UTF-16. It just fails silently. Only when I tried a big-endian UTF-16 GEDCOM without a Byte Order Mark did Agelong Tree produce something else; the run-time error List index out of bounds.

What's really embarrassing for a version 4.0 genealogy application, is that Agelong Tree still doesn't support either ASCII or ANSEL. Both ASCII GEDCOM files and ANSEL GEDCOM files seem to be imported as if they are Windows ANSI GEDCOM files. Agelong Tree does not report illegal characters in an ASCII GEDCOM file, and mangles ANSEL GEDCOM files.

export

out	encoding
N	ASCII
N	ANSEL
Y	UTF-8
N	UTF-16

Agelong Tree's GEDCOM export is just as limited as its import. Of the four encodings that GEDCOM specification allows, the only one it supports is UTF-8.
Agelong Tree has an inconveniently large drop-down list of code pages to choose from, including multiple EBCDIC pages, but ASCII, ANSEL and UTF-16 are not on it.

Agelong Tree 4.0 does not try to support the legal GEDCOM encodings, but apparently simply allows all the different encodings supported by the Delphi library used. The developers have neither removed illegal encodings nor added the legal ones that are missing from the library they used.

GEDCOM header

?»?0 HEAD
1 SOUR ALTREE
2 NAME Agelong Tree
2 VERS 4.0
2 CORP Genery Software
2 ADDR http://www.genery.com
1 CHAR UTF-8
1 DATE 15 MAR 2011
1 GEDC 
2 VERS 5.5.1
2 FORM Lineage-Linked

The GEDCOM header that Agelong Tree produces looks a bit odd; there are three characters in front of the header itself. This seems to be a failed attempt to included a Byte Order Mark (BOM). If it had been done right, NotePad would not show these characters, but simply interpret the rest of file as UTF-8.

Of the four legal character encodings, UTF-8 is the only one that Agelong Tree supports, and it always includes this failed BOM, there is no option to produce an UTF-8 GEDCOM without a BOM. Always including the BOM would be fine, if Agelong Tree did not mess it up. As it is, Agelong Tree makes sure that the UTF-8 file isn't interpreted as UTF-8, and that what should be GEDCOM file isn't a GEDCOM file. Agelong Tree 4.0 cannot read its own UTF- GEDCOM files.

Agelong Tree 4.0 cannot read its own UTF- GEDCOM files.

The first three bytes are 3F BB 3F, while the correct BOM for an UTF-8 file is EF BB BF. When you correct the BOM manually, the file seems okay.

Other than the failed BOM, the header seems fine. Agelong Tree correctly identifies the GEDCOM version it uses as 5.5.1, something quite a few other applications still get wrong; any UTF-8 GEDCOM file must be a GEDCOM 5.5.1 file, because GEDCOM 5.5 does not allow UTF-8.
There is another error though; the use of lower-case characters in Lineage-Linked; LINEAGE-LINKED should be all-uppercase. Few applications take the trouble to check this, but those that do will right complain that Lineage-Linked is an unknown GEDCOM form.

features

Agelong Tree is not very rich in features. It does not have consistency or duplicate checks. It will not create web sites. If it creates reports at all, it is not obvious how. It seems that you can only print the tabs as displayed on screen.

As I browsed through the program options, I noticed that Agelong Tree seemed to support patronyms, but it really doesn't. Agelong Tree confuses patronyms with middles names. The option I noticed is Middle name depends on father's first name. Like many other genealogy applications, Agelong Tree still allows users to use an antilogical date format, something no genealogy application should do.

Agelong Tree: no tree

Even the basic features aren't too hot. Agelong Tree has a Tree tab that can show a tree view. However, do not think that you can simply select a person and then switch to the Tree view to view their tree. When you try to that, you do not get to see a tree, but the message Select a person in "Persons" tab and click "Build tree" button instead.
I did so, and then I waited, and waited, and waited a bit more - and a few hours later, the application crashed. I tried it again, and after about twenty minutes Windows told me that the program had stopped working. And so on.

Agelong Tree 4.0 isn't a basic genealogy application, it is a rudimentary genealogy application.

conclusion

Agelong Tree 4.0 isn't a basic genealogy application, it is a rudimentary genealogy application. The interface is not very out of the ordinary and the application is easy enough to use, but it lacks almost every feature you can think of. The fact that is a simple Unicode-based might make it a good beginner's application, where it not that Agelong Tree is a commercial application with less functionality than the free RootsMagic Essentials.

Genery Software is planning a Premium Edition, but should probably focus on upgrading Agelong Tree to a basic genealogy application by adding such things such as a few simple reports and an import log.

GEDCOM

The GEDCOM support is both limited and broken. Of the four legal GEDCOM encodings - ASCII, ANSEL, UTF-8 and UTF-16 - Agelong Tree supports only UTF-8. That Agelong Tree does not support UTF-16 isn't very important, but that even version 4.0 still does not support ANSEL is a major shortcoming.
The staggeringly inefficient GEDCOM import and the lack of an import log that tells you what problems it encountered are two other basic issues.

Agelong Tree imports UTF-8 GEDCOM files without and without a Byte Order Mark, but it messes up the export of UTF-8 files by writing three bytes that do not make up the UTF-8 Byte Order Mark. The practical upshot is that the ostensible UTF-8 GEDCOM files it writes aren't GEDCOM files at all. Agelong Tree fails to read the GEDCOM it writes - and that Agelong Tree fails that basic test, highlights how little testing was done.

version 0.4

Agelong Tree is advertised as version 4.0, but the lack of basic features, performance issues and serious defects of the current product suggest it is version 0.4. Wait for version 1.0.

product details

property	value
product	Agelong Tree
version	4.0
company	Genery Software
website	Genery Software
price	US$ 29,95
requirement	Windows 2000 or later (XP, Vista, 2003, Win7)
note
Verdict	Slow, rudimentary, untested
Rating	pre-Alpha code