2010-12-28 MagiKey Family Tree
genealogy software
The MagiKey
MagiKey Family Tree is a desktop genealogy application developed by The MagiKey. The latest version is 2.3, version 2.3.9 to be precise.
There never was a product named MagiKey Family Tree version 1.0. The MagiKey introduced MagiKey Family Tree 2.1 in 2009, and that version number already suggests that MagiKey Family Tree is not a new product. MagiKey Family Tree was a merely a new name for product introduced nearly a decade ago.
MagiKey Family Tree started as Issue, a genealogy application by Armidale Software, for which the first betas were made available in 2001.
| date | name | version | brief remark |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2001-??-?? | Issue | beta | initial availability |
| 2004-01-?? | Issue | 1.0 | first release |
| 2004-02-?? | Issue | 1.1 | defect fixes |
| 2004-12-?? | Issue | 1.2 | support for merging |
| 2005-04-?? | Issue | 1.3 | HTML reports |
| 2007-12-?? | Issue | 1.3.4 | Family Group Sheet |
| 2009-05-03 | Issue | 2.0 | support for NFS |
| 2009-11-24 | MagiKey Family Tree | 2.1 | name change, updates & fixes |
| 2010-01-15 | MagiKey Family Tree | 2.1.10 | includes Census Tracker (Beta) |
| 2010-03-20 | MagiKey Family Tree | 2.2 | Census Tracker |
| 2010-10-18 | MagiKey Family Tree | 2.3 | UTF-8 support |
The Armidale Software website is still around, but the link to download the beta for
Issue 2.0 no longer works. The first sentence on their Issue page now notes that
Issue is available for purchase from The MagiKey
. MagiKey Family Tree 2.1 is
Issue 2.1 by another name and under other conditions; Issue was freeware, MagiKey
Family Tree is not.
The MagiKey Family Tree née Issue application has been around for nearly a decade. Yet, according to The MagiKey née Armidale Software, it has never been reviewed yet.
download and installation
Millennia loves to say that their Legacy Family Tree application is a free download, but they do prompt you for your email every time you want to download the latest version. The MagiKey thinks nothing of annoying their potential customers a lot more; to even download a 30-day trial, you actually need to register with their site first - and they do not merely want your email address, they want your snail mail address too.
It initially seemed that The MagiKey does not allow you to download
and install updated versions from their site, that they only allow you to update The MagiKey from
inside the application. That would be odd, because all the updater inside
MagiKey Family Tree does is download and start the latest version of MagiKeySetup.exe. You
can download the latest installer directly from their website
once you've registered and logged in, the problem is that you cannot get to that
page via their main menu. The download can be only found on the files tab of My
Account.
This information is in the MagiKey Family Tree FAQ. Seriously, how to find
the page where you can download the installer is in their FAQ. Apparently,
when frustrated potential users asked where to find the download, it never
occurred to The MagiKey that they should make it easy to find, say by adding a
menu item. They decided to add step-by-step instructions in their FAQ instead.
The MagiKeySetup.exe download is a little over 2 MB. Installation presented no problems. The installer suggests a default installation directory in Program Files but allows you to change it. It does create a program group but does not create a desktop icon. It prompts you to start the application as soon as the installation is done.
getting started
Annoying potential customers is something The MagiKey excels at.
Every time you start MagiKey Family Tree trial, it prompts you for your user name and
password, and then contacts the MagiKey server. By the way, notice how
ridiculously wide this dialog box is.
I wondered what would happen if you installed the trial on a laptop and tried to use without Internet access. Turns out, it works just fine; that start-up prompt is not necessary, it is nothing but an annoyance.
I soon discovered that there is no need to even type your name and password, you can simply click the
Continue with trial
button. In fact, you do not even have to click that
button, but can simply hit the Esc key.
Well, at least that is how it is during the 30-day trial.
If you opt to buy a license, you do not get a registration key, but an extended subscription. MagiKey Family Tree needs to contact the server to verify your subscription. Once you've done that, the registration dialog is no longer shown.
update check
MagiKey Family Tree performs an automatic update check on start-up. The Update Available dialog box not only allow you to download and install the update, but also allows you to postpone the update, and to disable the automatic update check.
When you choose to install the update, MagiKey presents another dialog that shows the available updates with some descriptions and lets you choose which updates you want to download and install.
The Update Available dialog even has a link to options dialog box that allows you to change the update check frequency. That's nice, but when I later looked through all the tabs on MagiKey Family Tree's options dialog box, I could not find those options there.
Apparently the only way to access the dialog that
let's you change the update check frequency is to wait for MagiKey Family Tree
to discover an update.
When I first tried to use the help file to find out how to configure the update
options when there isn't an update, the help file did not work either. When it
worked later, I did not find any information on configuring update settings.
documentation
The documentation, or rather the lack of it, is a bit of disappointment. There is no User Manual. There is no Getting Started manual either. However, there are several MagiKey video tutorials on Vimeo. You don't have to search for these on Vimeo; they are embedded on the MagiKey website.
There is a HTML Help file. The MagiKey 2.2 help file would not display on my system. I reported this issue to The MagiKey. Perhaps they made some changes, perhaps there was some problem with my system to begin with. Either way, I am happy to report that the HTML Help for MagiKey 2.3.9 works just fine.
There is an online user manual on website, but you need to login to view it. Worse, even
after logging in, I still got to see Access Denied
. Half a year later,
that problem has still not been resolved. Notice the sidebar with my name and
the Log out
link to the right of my name near the middle of the screenshot; I am obviously logged in.
Yet instead of showing me the online User Manual, the site tells me Access
denied
, and adds Please Login to continue viewing this page
. I think that
it would be wise for The MagiKey to simply include their User Manual with the
product, as an Adobe PDF or HTML Help file.
Welcome Wizard
Once you've dealt with the logon and automatic update prompts, MagiKey Family Tree shows
a Welcome Dialog. Fortunately, this dialog box has the all-important Do not show me this windows again
checkbox.
The MagiKey Family Tree Welcome Dialog offers three other choices
Create a new file
: acts as if you selected File | New from the menu.Open an Existing File: opens the File Open dialog box to open an existing file
Learn More about MagiKey Family Tree
: opens the help file
The screenshot shows how it used to be. Sadly, version 2.2.14 and later are burdened with an enlarged Welcome dialog box with more options that
really don't belong in a Welcome dialog and
are only of interest to LDS members.
The additional option is to turn LDS features on or off. Genealogists don't need
any LDS features, and LDS members probably don't want to be reminded that they can
turn these features off. Most importantly, it has nothing to with starting up.
new file
The File | New dialog box does not prompt you to choose a file name
for your new project. That is a violation of Windows user interface guidelines
already, but it gets worse; it does not even create a file at all!
When you choose to create a new file, MagiKey Family Tree does not create a
file, but prompts you for submitter
information and that's it; MagiKey Family Tree does not prompt you for a file name. Only when you decide to exit MagiKey
Family Tree does it ask
you whether you want to save your file, and does it finally prompt you for a file name.
save issue
This is not merely a violation of the Windows user interface guidelines, it
also reveals a major defect: unlike most genealogy applications, MagiKey Family
Tree does not save your changes while you are using it. MagiKey Family Tree only saves
your data when you decide to save. If the application or the system
crashes, all edits done since the last save are lost.
The MagiKey compensates that
MagiKey Family Tree design error somewhat with an auto-save feature; every five
minutes, it automatically saves your work to a temporary file.
MagiKey Family Tree's file load and save isn't very fast, so it is only prudent to wonder what happens with large databases when the save operation it starts every five minutes takes more than five minutes to complete. I asked The MagiKey that question and they answered that MagiKey Family Tree's auto-save feature does not save the entire file, but merely saves all changes to a temporary file.
design defect
That MagiKey Family Tree does not automatically save your edits like most other genealogy applications do, and the awkward auto-save of recent changes to try and limit the impact of that issue are both symptoms of an underlying design defect; MagiKey Family Tree does not to use a real database system like most genealogy applications do, but is one of those applications that makes the mistake of using their own GEDCOM dialect as their native file format.
editing
Once you've entered submitter information, MagiKey Family Tree defaults to an empty five-generation pedigree window. It isn't a pure pedigree view, but one with something extra; below the pedigree is a table for spouses and children of the proband.
MagiKey Family Tree does not just open that window, but immediately throws a dialog box on top of that prompts you to edit details for a new individual. That's annoying.
Edit New Individual Information
The Edit New Individual Information
dialog itself focuses on the
genealogy basics, like name, birth and death, christening and burial, and gives prominent placement to sources
for the events.
That seems a good idea. This way, the Edit New Individual Information
dialog encourages documenting your sources
by having source fields on the dialog itself, not some other dialog you need to
bring up first.
Well, it encourages documenting sources as long as you do not have to many of
them. The source selection on the Edit New Individual Information
dialog box is a simple drop-down box; that may seem handy when you have just a
handful of sources, but isn't very practical when you have thousands.
Add More Information...
The Add More Information...
button brings up another dialog box, the Individual Editor
dialog box, where you
can add other events. It would be better if these two separate dialogs where two
tabs on the same dialog box, but otherwise this design, which focuses on getting
the basics right, seems fine - until you try to use it.
As soon as you choose OK on the Edit New Individual Information
dialog,
MagiKey seems to decide that you'll never need to see it again, even
if you chose OK
without entering anything. The next time you
double-click that individual, MagiKey does not show the Edit New Individual Information
dialog, but this Individual Editor
dialog box instead. You can enter the basics
through the Individual Editor
dialog box, but it is not as
straightforward.
events
To add an event to an Individual, you choose the Add...
button next to
list of existing events on the Individual Editor
dialog box.
Choosing that button brings up the Edit Event Information
dialog box, where you
can choose the event to add from a drop-down box.
| event | PAF | MK |
|---|---|---|
| Adoption | Y | Y |
| Adult Christening | Y | Y |
| Baptism | Y | Y |
| Annulment | Y | Y |
| Bar Mitzvah | Y | Y |
| Bas Mitzvah | Y | Y |
| Batch Number | Y | N |
| Birth | Y | Y |
| Blessing | Y | Y |
| Burial | Y | Y |
| Census | Y | Y |
| Christening | Y | Y |
| Circumcision | Y | N |
| Confirmation | Y | Y |
| Cremation | Y | Y |
| Custom ID | Y | N |
| Death | Y | Y |
| Divorce | Y | Y |
| Divorce Filing | Y | Y |
| Emigration | Y | Y |
| Engagement | Y | Y |
| Excommunicated | Y | N |
| First Communion | Y | Y |
| Graduation | Y | Y |
| Hospitalisation | Y | N |
| Illness | Y | N |
| Immigration | Y | Y |
| LDS Confirmation | Y | N |
| Marriage | Y | Y |
| Marriage Bann/Notice | Y | Y |
| Marriage For Time Only | Y | N |
| Marriage Contract | Y | N |
| Marriage License | Y | N |
| Marriage Settlement | Y | Y |
| Military Service | Y | N |
| Miscarriage | Y | N |
| Mission | Y | N |
| Move | Y | N |
| Naming | Y | N |
| Naturalisation | Y | Y |
| Occupation | Y | N |
| Ordinance | Y | N |
| Ordination | Y | Y |
| Probate | Y | Y |
| Religion | Y | N |
| Residence | Y | N |
| Retirement | Y | Y |
| Separation | Y | N |
| Will | Y | Y |
| Other | N | Y |
Upon a first look, you are likely to notice that it supports major events, but I also
immediately noticed that
its drop-down list is shorter than the list in PAF's dialog box, so I had a
good
second look and quickly noticed that neither marriage nor divorce is on that list.
Those events are on another drop-down list. The screenshot shows events
that pertain to individuals, there is another list that pertains to
relationships.
To get to that list, you need to
leave the Individual Editor
dialog box,
choose the Marriage Information
context menu item on an individual in the
pedigree view, to bring up the Marriage Editor
dialog box. To add an
event, you must choose the Add...
button next to the list of Marriage Events
.
Choosing that button brings up the Edit Event Information
dialog box, where you
can choose the event to add from a drop-down box.
I find it less than intuitive and somewhat convoluted that I am expected to close
the Individual Editor
to add an event for that individual. That the context menu
displays shortcut keys, that allow you to quickly bring up one of the Editor
dialog boxes does not change that.
PAF uses two different event lists too, one you access from the Edit Individual
dialog box
and one you access from the Edit Marriage
dialog box, and the actual
selection of an event is arguably even more awkward, yet somehow I do not find it half
as annoying to work with.
dialog boxes
Perhaps the explanation lies in some of the differences between MagiKey
Family Tree and PAF. PAF's Family
view already shows birth, marriage and death
events for two marriage partners, and all that information remains visible
when I choose to bring up a moderately sized Edit
dialog box, while the
MagiKey Family Tree Editor
dialog boxes are so large that they obscure
all the information in the current view. That is a general problem with the
MagiKey Family Tree user interface; its dialog boxes are too large.
MagiKey Family Tree's Edit Event Information
dialog box combines events with
sources and notes into a single dialog box. That seems a good idea for a view,
but not such a great idea for a dialog box. It combines conceptually different
things on the same dialog box. Apparently, MagiKey figured that out themselves,
and the <<Less button
reduces the dialog box to just the event and
sources. I find that smaller dialog box more pleasant to work with.
All MagiKey Family Tree requires from you, the user, is that you discover
and memorise the EVEN tag type values used by popular genealogy software…
events
Looking at the events drop-down list of PAF and MagiKey Family Tree, I was struck by just how many more events PAF supports.
The table lists the events that PAF and MagiKey
Family Tree support. I may have made a few mistakes, but it is clear that there are many events that PAF does, but MagiKey Family
Tree does not support. There is one only event that MagiKey Family Tree
does, but PAF doesn't support: Other
.
The Other
event allows you to add any event you like. When you choose Other
, MagiKey
Family Tree adds another edit box to the dialog, in which you can enter the name
of the event.
That way, you can add any event that PAF or any other software supports -
well, assuming that you know all the codes used for these events by heart.
MagiKey Family Tree stores all Other
events using the generic EVEN tag with subtag TYPE.
The text you enter in the Event
edit box for events of type Other
, is used as the value of the TYPE.
The GEDCOM standard does not provide a list of approved type values, but
type values used by popular
genealogy software (e.g. Hospitalization
used by PAF) may
be supported by other genealogy software. So, if you use any of those values,
many other applications will have no problem understanding what event it is.
All
MagiKey Family Tree
requires from you, the user, is that you discover and memorise the EVEN
tag type values
used by popular genealogy software…
event support
You could enter a separation into MagiKey Family Tree by choosing the Other
event and typing Separation in the Event
field. The resulting GEDCOM will
contain an EVEN record containing TYPE Separation,
which is exactly how PAF encodes separation events.
However, not only is having to enter major events this way ridiculously awkward,
it simply isn't good enough.
Being able to enter an event isn't the same thing the same as having ready-made support in the
application. There is a more to support for an event type than the ability to
enter. It is not just about the convenience of picking an event from a
list, using a consistent set of event names or avoiding typos. It is also about
having sentences for these events when you generate a report.
I tried several MagiKey Family Tree reports, and did not find any information
about the separation event on any of them.
user interface
Apart from the rather large dialog boxes, the MagiKey Family Tree user interface is not out of the ordinary. I did notice that its menu seems surprisingly empty until you start working on some project; instead of greying out the menu items that only make sense for an open project, MagiKey Family Tree removes these menu items entirely. MagiKey Family Tree shows its regular menu once you open a project.
options
Although the auto-save frequency isn't one of them, MagiKey Family Tree does have plenty of options. This includes options for consistency checks.
consistency checks
Many developers seem to think of consistency checks as nice-to-have extras, I do not. I
consider consistency checks to be a fundamental must-have feature for genealogy
applications. I was happy to notice that MagiKey Family Tree features
consistency check and decided to give these a whirl by choosing
Tool | Find Problems...
.
It took MagiKey Family Tree just a few seconds to complete a consistency check
of the 100k INDI database and then present a text report. That report seems to be in no particular order, and
many of the sentences it uses are too convoluted to make immediate sense, e.g. birth date of 27 JAN 1885
is outside expected range of BET 1866 AND 1884, based on a child's miscellaneous
event
. Those sentences clearly need some work, but MagiKey Family Tree
performs consistency checks a lot faster than Legacy Family Tree, so I decided to try it on a database containing roughly a quarter million
individuals.
I repeatedly tried to load my database by importing a PAF 5.2 UTF-8 GEDCOM,
but without success. The first time, MagiKey Family Tree decided to crash after
just a few seconds. The second time, MagiKey Family Tree decided to prompt for
the next disk after about eight minutes and when I dismissed that messagebox, it
crashed. The third time it prompted for the next disk after about four minutes
and again crashed as soon as dismissed that messagebox.
I've seen the Insert the Next Disk
messagebox for many files I've
tried but it seems to appear quite reliably for larger files that take several
minutes to import, so I wonder whether MagiKey may be crashing because it
decides to auto-save the file while it still hasn't been fully imported yet…
project load
Once you've dealt with the annoying logon dialog and Welcome Dialog, you will most often start your session by opening your project, and project load is surprising slow. Loading the 100k INDI database takes about fifty seconds, during which you are expected to twiddle your thumbs. This another issue caused by the decision to not use a database system, but use GEDCOM as the native format instead. A fifty seconds GEDCOM import time would be great, but this is a fifty second project load time. A slow project load is common shortcoming of applications with this design mistake.
That is why MagiKey Family Tree takes fifty seconds to loads its database
.
Sadly, it only takes fifty seconds if the database
load succeeds. More than once, MagiKey Family Tree
became not responding
during project load, demanded the next disk
, and
crashed. Then you have to start over again.
By the way, MagiKey Family Tree is so unstable that if you even dare to move the
import dialog a bit, say because it covers another window you want to look at, it will immediately become not responding
, demand the next disk
and crash.
MagiKey Family Tree frequently crashes upon opening its own files!
crash-prone
MagiKey Family Tree is remarkably crash-prone. MagiKey Family Tree crashes rather easily. It often crashes when you try to import a GEDCOM file. Even worse, MagiKey Family Tree frequently crashes upon opening its own files! That is completely unacceptable.
import phases
MagiKey Family Tree's GEDCOM load has four distinct phases, and the load
dialog box restarts the progress bar for each phase. The first phase loads the
file, the second converts to a standard format and phase three performs some
consistency checks. MagiKey Family Tree often merely loads the database, but
sometimes decides to performs phase two and three as well. When it decides to do
so, merely opening your database
takes minutes. It is not clear why it does not
always perform all three phases, or what the converting to standard format
really means.
The fourth last phase is the merge phase. The merge phase only happens when you import a GEDCOM into a database that already contains some data. The merge phase cannot be cancelled, but the matches that it may pop-up can be cancelled.
The first time MagiKey Family Tree showed theIndividual Matchdialog box, the two names were nothing alike, the birth dates more than a hundred years apart, and the birth places on two different continents! Subsequent matches were equally unimpressive.
merging
multiple submitters
By the way, MagiKey Family Tree keeps track of multiple submitters. According to the help file, these are the details of data (GEDCOM files) that you merged into your database. MagiKey Family Tree does not keep track of the original GEDCOM file that some data was imported from as a source, but remembers the submitters for each individual instead. So, if you have multiple GEDCOM files from the same submitter, you can no longer tell which a record was imported from.
merging
Starting a merge operation in MagiKey Family Tree seems simple; just choose to import another GEDCOM file. However, I tried merging a few small GEDCOM files, and MagiKey often complained about the GEDCOM file or crashed.
The first time I tried a merge, MagiKey Family Tree did not complain or crash,
but almost immediately showed a Verify Individual Match
dialog box with an individual from the already
loaded GEDCOM on the left and an individual from the GEDCOM that I was merging
into the project on the right. Below each individual it showed the submitter of the
original GEDCOM file. The first time MagiKey Family Tree showed the
Individual Match
dialog box, the two names were nothing alike, the birth dates more than
a hundred years apart, and the birth places on two different continents!
Subsequent matches were equally unimpressive.
The obvious conclusion is that MagiKey Family Tree's matching algorithm still
needs some work, but I noticed something else; in my experience, MagiKey Family Tree
always shows the Verify Individual Match
dialog and always shows it
exactly once. That hints at a defect other than the matching algorithm itself. I
decided to simply dismiss that dialog box.
MagiKey Family Tree's GEDCOM import is a pop-up obstacle course.
GEDCOM import
The GEDCOM import procedure is simple; just create or open an project and then select File | Import... from the menu. MagiKey Family Tree does not annoy with superfluous Wizards or options, but simply shows a File Open dialog. Once you've chosen the GEDCOM file you want to import, MagiKey Family Tree starts importing it. MagiKey Family Tree shows a progress dialog box while importing, which shows some statistics. Once the import is done, MagiKey Family Tree may offer to show the import log file.
That sounds perfect, but alas, the GEDCOM import is far from perfect. MagiKey
Family Tree's GEDCOM import is a pop-up obstacle course. MagiKey Family Tree
may prompt you for submitter information. If it finds
anything wrong, say an unreferenced NOTE record, it will pause the import and throw up
a messagebox demanding your input. If it isn't the first GEDCOM file you import
into the project, MagiKey Family Tree will pop up the Verify Individual Match
dialog box. MagiKey Family Tree will often pop-up a messagebox asking for the
next disk. Worst of all, importing a few GEDCOM files is a practically sure to
make MagiKey Family Tree crash again, forcing you to restart the application,
and start it all over again.
MagiKey Family Tree creates an import log, but it is no help in figuring out
what made it crash.
That an application reliably crashes when you opt to go with its defaults strongly suggests that it has not been tested at all.
1 MB GEDCOM
My initial experiences with other GEDCOM files did not get my hopes up, but I bravely went ahead and tried importing the usual small and large GEDCOM files, starting with the small one, a GEDCOM file of just 1 MB.
When I created as project with the default submitter (Unknown)
, and then
imported the 1 MB GEDCOM file, MagiKey Family Tree would end the import by
asking for the submitter, and when I opted for the default (Unknown)
again,
it would pop up a dialog offering to merge the identical submitters, and then
promptly crash. A few trials gave me the impression that the it is MagiKey
Family Tree's attempt to merge submitters that's responsible for most GEDCOM
import crashes.
Once I decided to create projects with the default submitter (Unknown)
,
and then fill something else whenever MagiKey Family Tree prompted me for a
submitter again, or simply answered that I did not want to merge submitters, I
did not experience any GEDCOM import crashes again. That an application reliably crashes
when you opt to go with its defaults strongly suggests that it has not been
tested at all.
When everything works fine, MagiKey Family Tree's GEDCOM import is pretty
fast, but because MagiKey Family Tree does not automatically save your project
after importing the file, you have to do so manually.
On the Vista machine, import of the 1 MB GEDCOM into an empty project takes
about 11 seconds; 8 seconds during which the progress dialog is shown, another
second to dismiss the submitter dialog box, and another two second to manually
start a save operation and wait for it to complete. Total import time: 11 seconds.
100k INDI GEDCOM
Import of the 100k INDI GEDCOM took 58 seconds.
MagiKey Family Tree showed the progress dialog box for 42 seconds, after
which it offered to show the log file. Choosing to do so and switching back to
MagiKey Family Tree took two seconds, choosing to save the file took a second,
and the save operation itself took 13 seconds.
Well, those are the times when import of the file succeeded. Often, the
import failed because MagiKey Family Tree
decided to become not responding
in the middle of the import.
import log file
The import log file that MagiKey Family Tree produces could be better. It does not provide import statistics. It does say anything about non-standard tags in the imported GEDCOM file.
The import log does contain some information about merges, but it is close to useless.
I imported a file, cancelled one
ostensible match, was not presented with any other matches, yet found that
the log file claimed that multiple merges had been performed! That is
disturbing, and log messages themselves are not reassuring. The messages
always reads something like Merging families John /Doe/=Jane /Doe/ and John
/Doe/=Jane /Doe/
- that's right, it simply listed the same names twice.
It did not list their record numbers or other information that might be helpful
in verifying which records were merged.
GEDCOM export
Exporting the 100k INDI database to GEDCOM takes about six or seven seconds. That is fast, but then again, exporting a GEDCOM file to GEDCOM is hardly an export.
no database system
MagiKey Family Tree is not built on a database system, but uses GEDCOM instead. This is a design mistake, plain and simple. GEDCOM is a format for data exchange, it was not designed for use as a database format, and cannot not match the performance or features of a real database system. The most obvious problem is that if you make just one single change to any record, the application cannot replace that record, but must replace the entire GEDCOM file instead. As your research progresses, your database becomes larger, and saving the entire file takes more time. Generally, saving the entire file is too slow an operation to perform for every small change. That is why MagiKey Family Tree does not save changes immediately and needs an auto-save feature to compensate for that. It would not suffer these problems if it had used a database system instead.
I wanted to do a crash test; see what happens to your database when the application crashes during save, but never got round to it; every time I tried to set it up, MagiKey Family Tree crashed already.
MagiKey Family Tree demands a Unicode platform, but does not support Unicode.
character encoding
| out | encoding |
|---|---|
| N | ASCII |
| Y | ANSEL |
| N | UTF-8 |
| N | UTF-16 |
When you decide to export your database
to GEDCOM, MagiKey does not
ask for anything more than a filename. It does not ask what character set or
encoding you want to use, but always uses ANSEL.
MagiKey is only the second version of what started as Issue 1.0 about a decade ago, and the minimum platform for Issue 1.0 was Windows 98. Windows 98 is a code-page based system.
Many vendors who created genealogy application for early versions of Windows are still using the less capable Windows ANSI (code page 1252) character set, but the GEDCOM specifications is clear that use of Windows ANSI is illegal and that the more powerful ANSEL character set should be used instead.
However, MagiKey Family Tree 2.x does not run on Windows 98. MagiKey Family Tree 2.x demands Windows XP or later. Windows XP is a Unicode-based operating system. MagiKey 2.x should continue to support ANSEL export, but should default to UTF-8, to ensure it can encode anything the user enters.
A quick examination of the GEDCOM files that MagiKey Family Tree uses instead of a database system show that these use ANSEL encoding as well. The inevitable conclusion is that MagiKey Family Tree still cannot handle Unicode. MagiKey Family Tree demands a Unicode platform, but does not support Unicode.
GEDCOM import
MagiKey Family Tree can import GEDCOM files encoded in ANSEL. It also
imports GEDCOM encoded in Windows ANSI. However, as soon as you try to import an
UTF-8 GEDCOM, with or without Byte Order Mark, MagiKey Family Tree will simply crash.
MagiKey Family Tree does not support Unicode, and will not even read an UTF-8 GEDCOM.
reports
report types
MagiKey Family Tree can create various reports, including ancestry pages, descendancy pages, family group sheets, a five-generation pedigree chart and timelines. I tried a few, and they look fine, although I do find it odd that the reports do not use colour at all, and am not happy that MagiKey decided to crash when I merely asked for an ancestry report using the default options.
HTML
All reports are written in just one format: HTML, or to be more precise, in
something that The MagiKey refers to as HTML.
I will keep saying this: there is no excuse for any error in
computer-generated HTML. You'd think that a company that decides to support just
one format would make sure it supports that format correctly, but the quality of
MagiKey Family Tree HTML is hardly bettern than the horrendous output of The Master
Genealogist (TMG).
MagiKey Family Tree does not use style sheets at all. All style and layout is hardcoded in the worst possible way, including the use of frames for navigation menus and the abuse of tables for layout.
The ostensible HTML output not only uses the deprecated font
tag, but then forgets to close that tag too, omits the mandatory alt attribute
from img tags, and does not even use quotes around the few attribute values
it does use.
All the tags are in uppercase. The so-called HTML output lacks a
doctype declaration, does not specify a content type and does not specify a
character set. The entire HTML header is missing.
This kind of unpalatable tag soup was unsavoury in the previous millennium of the
Gregorian Calendar already, it has no place in this one. There is no excuse.
Ancestry report
MagiKey Family Tree's idea of an ancestry report does not correspond with mine.
The image shows an ancestry report for AhnenNumbers.ged. The One_export.ged file
mentioned in the report header is the automatically generated filename of a
downloadable file. You can opt to include the original GEDCOM file or no file at
all.
The output uses frames to provide a menu, a deprecated practice. There is an
option to do without frames, but then there's no menu at all. Most remarkable
though, is that that The MagiKey refers to this report as Ancestry Web Pages,
and the report title starts is
is hard to discern any ancestry
here, it is really a bunch of descendants reports for the ancestors. The
unexpected addition of Ancestors of
, but it_____
wherever there is no given name makes the
output for this file particularly unpleasant to read.
report options
MagiKey includes various report options, including the option to exclude living individuals from reports. A less commendable option is the ability to confuse readers by using an antilogical date format. Vendors should not provide that option at all, they should not promote confusion, but ensure that all reports use logical date formats exclusively.
file transfer
MagiKey includes an FTP client, to immediately upload the reports to your web server. A rather useless feature considering the low quality of the MagiKey output. MagiKey Family Tree would be a better product if The MagiKey had spent its effort on the reporting module itself instead.
bookmarks, sort-of
MagiKey allows you to bookmark individuals, but in an awkward way. You cannot simply choose too bookmark them and then later pick them from a small list of bookmarked individuals. Instead, you have to add tags to individuals, and then you have to remember those tags. There is no list of tags to choose from.
This is an awkward system with an unfortunate name. This tagging ability is
easily confused with a custom tag, but that is exactly what it is not. It is
like the Custom ID supported by PAF and uses the standard GEDCOM tag REFN.
The correct use of the standard tag is great, but it would be nice if user
interface on top of it was more like a bookmarking system.
Census Tracker
MagiKey Family Tree's prominently promoted feature is the Census Tracker. Superficially, the Census Tracker is similar to the input forms that Geves supports. I wanted to try it, but got too frustrated by the frequent crashes, that make MagiKey Family Tree practically unusable.
conclusion
The MagiKey could it make it easier to get MagiKey Family Tree downloaded and installed, but they should focus on improving MagiKey Family Tree itself.
That MagiKey Family Tree is a ten-year old application shows in more than the slightly dated look of the button bar. The current version demands Windows XP, yet it still doesn't support Unicode and its ostensible HTML output is a tag soup that was embarrassing in the previous millennium already.
Database loading and saving are slow
because but uses GEDCOM files as its native database format, the import
procedure is pop-up happy and the import log file contains little of
relevance. The MagiKey Family Tree dialog boxes are very large, support for
events is limited and its consistency reports use convoluted sentences. All that
is bad, but the number one problem with MagiKey Family Tree is that it is extremely crash-happy. MagiKey Family Tree
even crashes when
you try to perform a simple action using the default options.
FamilySearch gave this crash-happy product a
FamilySearch Certified
logo, but that logo says nothing about the quality
of the product overall, only about its integration with NFS. The frequent
crashes make this product practically unusable.
GEDCOM extensions
MagiKey Family Tree uses several GEDCOM Extensions. The MagiKey provided me with a list of those, summarised below.
| tag | brief description |
|---|---|
_CKPT | Checkpoint. Used for detecting identical files when merging. |
_ATLS | Atlas. Place list. |
_CENR | Census Record. |
_FSID | FS ID. |
_INIL | LDS Initiatory Ordinance. |
_ISTAT | Internal Status. |
import speed (on Vista PC)
| file | 1 MB GEDCOM | 100k INDI GEDCOM |
|---|---|---|
| time | 11s | 58s |
| time in seconds | 11 | 58 |
| INDI per second | 442,00 | 1752,29 |
| bytes per second | 95.990,45 | 668.955,05 |
product details
| property | value |
|---|---|
| product | MagiKey Family Tree |
| version | 2.3.9 |
| organisation | The MagiKey |
| website | The MagiKey |
| price | US$ € 29,95 (approx. € 22,50) |
| requirements | Windows XP, patience |
| note | no database system |
| Verdict | crash-happy |
| Rating | unusable |
links
- The MagiKey
- MagiKey Family Tree
- MagiKey Census Tracker
- Armidale Software: Issue
- Family ChArtist
- The Master Genealogist Version 7
- Geves 2.0 Beta
video tutorials
- Vimeo: MagiKey Family Tree Tutorial: Basic Entry
- Vimeo: Integrating with Family Search: Part One
- Vimeo: Integrating with FamilySearch Part Two
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.