This is another program I wrote to assist me with my Genealogical pursuits. I wanted to be able to see the relative ages of one or more persons at the time of various events that might or might not be related to those individuals. The goal was to be able to answer questions like, "How old was an individual when each of their children were born?", or "How old was an individual when their sibling was born?". There might have been some commercial programs that would do something similar to this, but nothing I found did exactly what I wanted, besides not really wanting to spend any more on this hobby than I already have.
Initially I wrote this thinking I was mostly interested in knowing the relative age of a single individual, so I put the events running down the page and had a column for the age of the, at the time, single individual. Then I added another individual, so I added another column. By the time I had five columns, I decided to rework it so it was more versatile and set the report up to present each item as a group header with how ever many individuals are coded in the data file listed as a part of that event group. I keep the data file sorted by date and the date format is YYYYMMDD, so comparisons are easy to manage. An individual will not appear on the report until the event dates reach their birth date and, if you enter an individual's death date on the individual record, they will no longer appear once the event dates pass their date of death. As delivered, the program will manage 15 individuals, but can be easily expanded by modifying a single table (OCCURS clause) and constant to control maximum entries.
To install the source program, and compile it, execute the bash script: Timeline.setup [md5: 6ce9d2c5b32ac1dc62c313bb9dc8cd7b]. Right click and save the script in the location where you want the source program to reside, then execute it. It will create a file containing the source program, then execute the GnuCOBOL compiler to compile it, and finally will execute the program to produce a sample report in the file timeline.rpt. The GnuCOBOL compiler must be installed prior to executing the bash script. In order to execute the compiled program, my Y2K Date Routines must be installed on your computer and available through the COB_LIBRARY_PATH.
I have included a sample data file with the program that tracks two individuals. The report produced from that data file is:
DATE: 05/16/2016 PERSONAL TIMELINE EVENTS PROGRAM: TIMELINE TIME: 05:22:04 PM PAGE: 1 MAY 29, 1917 John F. Kennedy birth ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ JUL 28, 1929 Jacqueline L. Bouvier birth John F. Kennedy.....................age: 12 years, 1 months, 30 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SEP 24, 1941 John joined Naval Reserve John F. Kennedy.....................age: 24 years, 3 months, 26 days Jacqueline Lee Bouvier..............age: 12 years, 1 months, 27 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ OCT 26, 1941 John commissioned an ensign John F. Kennedy.....................age: 24 years, 4 months, 28 days Jacqueline Lee Bouvier..............age: 12 years, 2 months, 29 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DEC 7, 1942 John first PT command (PT-101) John F. Kennedy.....................age: 25 years, 6 months, 9 days Jacqueline Lee Bouvier..............age: 13 years, 4 months, 10 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SEP 12, 1953 John Married Jacqueline Bouvier John F. Kennedy.....................age: 36 years, 3 months, 14 days Jacqueline Lee Bouvier..............age: 24 years, 1 months, 15 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NOV 27, 1957 Caroline Bouvier Kennedy birth John F. Kennedy.....................age: 40 years, 5 months, 29 days Jacqueline Lee Bouvier..............age: 28 years, 3 months, 30 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ JAN 2, 1960 John began campaign to become president John F. Kennedy.....................age: 42 years, 7 months, 4 days Jacqueline Lee Bouvier..............age: 30 years, 5 months, 5 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NOV 25, 1960 John F. Kennedy Jr. birth John F. Kennedy.....................age: 43 years, 5 months, 27 days Jacqueline Lee Bouvier..............age: 31 years, 3 months, 28 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ JAN 20, 1961 John sworn in as president John F. Kennedy.....................age: 43 years, 7 months, 22 days Jacqueline Lee Bouvier..............age: 31 years, 5 months, 23 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ APR 17, 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion John F. Kennedy.....................age: 43 years, 10 months, 19 days Jacqueline Lee Bouvier..............age: 31 years, 8 months, 20 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DATE: 05/16/2016 PERSONAL TIMELINE EVENTS PROGRAM: TIMELINE TIME: 05:22:04 PM PAGE: 2 OCT 28, 1962 Cuban missile crisis ends John F. Kennedy.....................age: 45 years, 4 months, 30 days Jacqueline Lee Bouvier..............age: 33 years, 3 months ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ NOV 22, 1963 John F. Kennedy assassination John F. Kennedy.....................age: 46 years, 5 months, 24 days Jacqueline Lee Bouvier..............age: 34 years, 3 months, 25 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ MAY 19, 1994 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis death Jacqueline Lee Bouvier..............age: 64 years, 9 months, 22 days ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This page was last updated on April 06, 2021.