Program description and download
General description
Some people asked me how it works and what technologies were used:
- The visitor creates the Genealogy information file (gedcom file) in gedcom standard. It it a plain text file that
can be viewed by a regular word processor.
The upload page uses INPUT TYPE="file" HTML tag to upload data into the server, which is Apache
running under the Linux (Debian).
- The administative interface is performed in PHP.
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The JavaServlet runs under Tomcat parse gedcom file and output
XML file goes directly to the visitor's browser. You can see the data
in XML data by View Source command.
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The XML transformed into the viewable format by XSLT, which also gets uploaded into a visitor's browser. Unlike an XML file with
data, which is re-generated whenever you decide to change the "key" person, an XSLT file is static.
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In the legacy mode the XSLT transformation is done on the server using
Apache Xalan/Xerces libraries.
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Sizes, colors, location of nodes, etc. are defined through CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
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Interactivity, i.e. openning - closing branches is handled on the client's side using JavaScript, which is sometimes
called DHTML. After opening the page, you can explore the whole Family Map off-line.
Downloads and contributions
You do not have to download and install Family Map Viewer, because the service is
freely avaliable at www.tyoma.com web site.
If you see some disadvanatage or bugs in the program, it probably would be
better if you report it to the author
tyoma@tyoma.com to correct running version.
Author also is also greatlly apreshiate futher internationalization, adding
more languages. If somebody is unhappy with the current skin, the contributions
of the additional skins would be greatlly apreciated.
In case you willing to contribute new skin or language set, it is still not
needed to download and install software. You can simply save the XML file and
related XSL, CSS and js files on your computer and pertform development
using XSLT engine of your browser. After you done, mail new XSL/CSS to me and
I will drop it into the server.
Finally, if you are really would like to run your own Family Map Viewer on
your domain, or made serious contribution to the Java code, here is the source:
Instalation notes
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Unzip familyMap.zip into the document root of your Apache server
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Deploy familyMap.jar into Tomcat server.
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Under application directory create the subdirectory named data and assign permisions
777 to it. The directory data should be on the same level as WEB-INF
directory.
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Adjust path to the data directory within php elements, located at familyMap/php
directory. On my system it is /usr/java/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/data.
The element names are upload.php and delete.php
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Adjust URL to the servlet in view.php element. On my system it is
/servlet/familyMap.
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On my server, html pages are considered to be a PHP templates. If you restrict
PHP only to pages with .php extenshion, you will have to rename files in
the familyMap/html directory, as a well as adjust links.