2019-10-02 GEDCOM 5.5.5: Just a Revision

You waited 20 years, and there's nothing new

GEDCOM 5.5.5

GEDCOM 5.5.5 is available today.
This is the first new release of GEDCOM in exactly twenty years; GEDCOM 5.5.1 was released on 2 October 1999. Sure, there is the GEDCOM 5.5.1 Annotated Edition released last year, but however useful the corrections, commentary, clarifications, resolutions of contradictions, guidelines, best practices, links and bonus sections may be, it is still GEDCOM 5.5.1.
Moreover, while the GEDCOM 5.5.1 specification includes support for a few new useful record types, such as those for email and web addresses, it is no more than a revision of GEDCOM 5.5, which was released on 11 Dec 1995, almost a quarter century ago.
Nothing much has changed in a quarter century, and today's GEDCOM 5.5.5 release does not introduce any major new features either.

The new specification isn't GEDCOM 6.0, a major new version. The new specification isn't GEDCOM 5.7, a minor new version. The new specification is merely GEDCOM 5.5.5, a revision.

There's a quarter century of backed up issues to deal with, and you can't deal with all of them at once; that would be like jumping from GEDCOM 5.5.1 to GEDCOM 12.0, with nothing in between. You'd love to see all issues fixed, but you have to decide where to start, which issues to deal with first, which ones to postpone till later.

What's New

The first question you have when you hear about a new release of some standard is simply What's new? and for GEDCOM 5.5.5, the one-word summary is Nothing.
That answer is 99% correct. A few minor new features have been sneaked in, but GEDCOM 5.5.5 isn't a feature release, it's a maintenance release. The GEDCOM 5.5.5 focus isn't on features, but on resolving issues with GEDCOM itself.

GEDCOM 5.5.5 is GEDCOM 5.5.1 cleaned up.

maintenance release

The GEDCOM 5.5.5 specification features better, more accurate and more consistent terminology. Many typos and minor specification errors, such as the maximum length of media file names, have been corrected. Contradictions have been resolved, existing specifications has been clarified. Obsolete, deprecated and superfluous stuff has been taken out. When there were two ways to do the same thing, there's one way to do that thing now. GEDCOM 5.5.5 isn't a bigger, more complex GEDCOM. It's a smaller, leaner, meaner and simpler GEDCOM. Simply put, GEDCOM 5.5.5 is GEDCOM 5.5.1 cleaned up.

What's different

The GEDCOM 5.5.5 specification is a better specification than the GEDCOM 5.5.1 specification; it corrects errors, solves internal contradictions, and resolves conflicts between the specification and actual practice. The grammar rules have been simplified and tightened. GEDCOM 5.5.5 has a better grammar that clearly distinguishes between characters used for GEDCOM itself and those used for user text, such as names and notes. GEDCOM 5.5.5 simplifies identifiers and escape sequences by no longer allowing almost any character, but demanding alphanumeric characters instead. A benefit of all the changes and simplifications is that GEDCOM 5.5.5 allows significantly simpler and faster GEDCOM readers.

The press release, available on gedcom.org, explains how GEDCOM 5.5.5 is a significant simplification of GEDCOM 5.5.1.that makes reading GEDCOM files a lot easier. Each GEDCOM 5.5.5 file is just one file, has just one GEDCOM version per file, just one line terminator per file, and just one encoding per file. There is just one character set for GEDCOM 5.5.5, just one submitter per GEDCOM file, and just one place name format. There is just one record for each thing, and just one record format for each record.

GEDCOM has been simplified and data transfer has been improved by using Unicode only, providing clear & simple CONC & CONT rules, using only one set of religious records for all religions, and demanding that there is one multimedia record per file & one file per multimedia record.

Those are real and significant differences between GEDCOM 5.5.1 and 5.5.5, yet they hardly impact users. From the users's perspective, GEDCOM 5.5.5 files are simply high quality GEDCOM 5.5.1 files.
GEDCOM 5.5.5 gets rid of obsolete and deprecated stuff; all that is illegal now, but no one needs it anyway. GEDCOM 5.5.5 gets rids of superfluous stuff, but there is another and better, more consistent way to record the same information. GEDCOM 5.5.5 adds a few little things that are useful and important in principle, but not likely to be used often.
GEDCOM 5.5.5 and GEDCOM 5.5.1 have technical differences, but nearly identical features. That is how it should be for as maintenance release, and the version number of such a release should indicate a revision.

just a revision

There are several good reasons to make the first new release in twenty years a revision. One reason is that it is good to deal with overdue maintenance issues before trying to add any major new features. Another is that most genealogy applications that exist today weren't around in 1999 or 1995: Many users and most developers of genealogy software have never experienced a GEDCOM version change yet.

GEDCOM 5.5.5 is already supported by practically every genealogy application.

It is a deliberate feature of GEDCOM 5.5.5 than you can manually change the version number from 5.5.5 to 5.5.1, thus downgrading a GEDCOM 5.5.5 file to a GEDCOM 5.5.1 file, so it can be imported by applications that do not support GEDCOM 5.5.5 yet. This takes away concerns about industry support for GEDCOM 5.5.5. Because of this feature, GEDCOM 5.5.5 is already supported by practically every genealogy application.
By the way, this feature works only in that direction; you can downgrade a GEDCOM 5.5.5 file to a GEDCOM 5.5.1 file by changing the version number, you cannot upgrade a GEDCOM 5.5.1 file to a GEDCOM 5.5.5 file by changing the version number, because most GEDCOM 5.5.1 files simply aren't up to GEDCOM 5.5.5 standards.

GEDCOM 5.5.5 demands that applications check the GEDCOM version number and only import GEDCOM versions they explicitly support.

importing GEDCOM 5.5.5 as GEDCOM 5.5.1

Now for the interesting bit: you probably do not even have to change the version number from 5.5.5 to 5.5.1 to import a GEDCOM 5.5.5 file into your current GEDCOM 5.5.1 application. Many existing genealogy applications will import GEDCOM 5.5.5 files without you having to make that change...
It is an error for a genealogy application to try and import a GEDCOM version it does not know about, but it is fact that many existing genealogy applications will import GEDCOM 5.5.5 files as if they are GEDCOM 5.5.1 files.

The GEDCOM 5.5.5 specification does not approve of importing GEDCOM 5.5.5 as GEDCOM 5.5.1. On the contrary, GEDCOM 5.5.5 demands that applications check the GEDCOM version number and only import GEDCOM versions they explicitly support. An application that imports a GEDCOM 5.5.5 file as GEDCOM 5.5.1 is officially wrong.
Still, the real world fact that many current genealogy applications will try to import GEDCOM 5.5.5 as GEDCOM 5.5.1 was taken into account when creating the GEDCOM 5.5.5 specification. This is why GEDCOM 5.5.5 does not introduce new record types, only a few new record values. This is why 5.5.5 is so GEDCOM 5.5.1 compatible that you can think of GEDCOM 5.5.5 files as high-quality GEDCOM 5.5.1 files.

Developers should add GEDCOM 5.5.5 import first, so they can test their GEDCOM 5.5.5 export while developing it.

upgrading to GEDCOM 5.5.5

This end-user feature was not designed to allow developers to upgrade their GEDCOM export to GEDCOM 5.5.5 before adding GEDCOM 5.5.5 import. Developers should add GEDCOM 5.5.5 import first, because it is relatively easy to do and has immediate benefits beyond GEDCOM 5.5.5 import being noticeably faster. Developers should add GEDCOM 5.5.5 import first, so their application can read the latest GEDCOM version, and to test their GEDCOM 5.5.5 export while creating it.