genster

Usage

genster is an application for building browseable family history sites from GEDCOM files. It generates markdown documents that cam be processed with a site generator such as Jekyll or Hugo.

I created it for myself so it makes many assumptions about my particular style of using GEDCOM. It may or may not work for other people.

Notably:

• I use Ancestry extensively and use this as the primary source of my GEDCOMs. Because of this genster includes various idioms that are peculiar to Ancestry.
• I use Ancestry custom events to convey extra information. These appear in the exported GEDCOM as a general EVEN with the "fact label" of the event becoming its type.

Getting Started

As of Go 1.19, install the latest genster executable using:

go install github.com/iand/genster@latest

This will download and build a binary in $GOBIN.

Conventions

Some custom event "fact labels" with specific handling:

• Nickname - holds the preferred nickname for a person (unfortunately alternate names and AKAs are very messy in Ancestry and I wanted a single value to refer to the person)
• OLB - one line bio, a short sentence that summarises the person's life

Other examples of custom event "fact labels" that are used verbatim in the generated pages:

• Admitted to Shipmeadow Workhouse
• Discharged to Shipmeadow Workhouse
• Enlisted in Royal Fusiliers
• Discharged from Royal Fusiliers
• Posted to Malta - use when assigned or sent to a new post
• Posted Home
• Stationed at Woolwich
• Promoted to Corporal Wheeler
• Awarded Queen's South Africa Medal - include clasps in details
• Missing in action
• Injured in action

Events with values that start with one of these phrases will be included verbatim in the generated narrative:

• He was recorded as
• She was recorded as
• It was recorded that
• George is recorded
• George was recorded

License

This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain. For more information, see http://unlicense.org/ or the accompanying UNLICENSE file.