Relatively Yours 3 is a major upgrade over its version 2 predecessor. The program can only be installed via CD, and installation is as easy as placing the CD into the CD-ROM or DVD drive in your computer. The CD has an auto-install feature that helps install the program through a series of prompts.

Relatively Yours (RY3) is an event-based (add people to linked events) program and not lineage-linked (add events to linked people), but the production of Relatively Yours has made this distinction almost transparent, and in return you get an extremely powerful program that can handle any complex situation when given the opportunity.

Each time you start the application, you can select from the last active database (if there was one), open a previously created database, use the sample database, browse your computer for a database, or create a new database.

Starting a new database is as easy as defining a new folder in the path of where you have Relatively Yours located or navigating to an area on your computer and then defining a new folder. If that folder does not exist, one will be created. You can add new individuals by using either the toolbar (third icon) or the menu bar (Person > New), but I found the menu bar to be the easiest method.

Type in a name, gender, and then click OK. From the individual page you can add further details and information you have collected by right-clicking and selecting from the context menu. Here you can add Aliases, Edit the Individual's Biographical Data, create relationships (marriages, defacto, or same sex), and add children, events, or personal data such as addresses, images, or user-defined fields.

Located on the lefthand side is a navigation pane with further areas where you can add to your research. You'll find areas specifically categorized to help you enter the details in the appropriate sections. These are Biography, Children, Siblings, Chronology, History, Objects, References, Private Notes, Portfolio, Trivia, Research Log, and Ancestors and Descendants. Most of these sections are self-evident and help the user place information collected from the family history pursuits into some sort of methodical order.

Apart from information you input, you will also want to associate all the multimedia you have obtained. Whether they are photographs or slides (if modern), cards, daguerreotypes, tintypes, or some other process (if not modern), getting these images into Relatively Yours is not difficult. You can use a scanner and save the image as a file on your computer, or you can scan directly from within Relatively Yours. The image saved to your computer will be restricted to the available media type your imaging software can save to, but the software is capable of recognizing the most popular and professional image types including JPG, PNG, and TIFF.

In addition to photographs, you can include other types of media as links in your family history. These can include paintings, photographs, sculpture, movie film, video tape, hologram, and sound recording. Relatively Yours recognizes audio and video files such as MPEGs, so when you click on these types of files, your computer will also open the appropriate associated program.

Relatively Yours allows you to search the Internet for your ancestors and has powerful search facilities built in to help you do this effectively. This feature extends to name searches with popular search engines such as the IGI. It can also search mapping websites as well as link directly to a website using hyperlinks in the Biographical Display or invoke your e-mail client if they have an e-mail address. What the software does not do for you, unlike other programs, is create a website for you to upload to a website, but it can create individual webpages from your data reports. In turn, you can link the pages into a common homepage design and uploaded to your website. You will need third-party FTP software to perform this operation.

Relatively Yours can generate reports from any screen. Should you wish to get inventive with your reports, located under the Tools Menu is a section for Custom Reports where you will find access shortcuts to nine custom reports, with an additional ten also available. Should you require something else, you can create your own reports. This is an extremely advanced feature and one reserved for users who are capable of using relational database scripting.

Charting within Relatively Yours is not as intuitive as regular lineage-linked programs, and you may think that it has been omitted altogether. On the contrary, Relatively Yours is as powerful as any lineage-linked program from the point that it creates ancestral and descendant lines upon demand. These are called build groups and are controlled by the user.

To better aid in the production of your family history, there are some fantastic charts in Relatively Yours that add distinctiveness to the program. Graphs include bar charts (vertical and horizontal), pie charts, and timelines. Timelines are color-coded to show specific details not represented on the chart. The Comparative Timeline graph shows the life span of individuals, representing individuals with both birth and death dates. Green is used for those that only have a birth date (presumably alive), and individuals who are assumed dead (birth date only, but one that is greater than 100 years ago) are shown in yellow. There are no assumptions made if there is no birth date.

Relatively Yours also has a very handy mapping tool. It uses the events entered for the individual, then renders this information onto a map that can be saved to a graphic or printed. Each plotted event in a person's life located under Chronology is recorded against places that have geographical coordinates. Map projection can be changed from Mercator or Cartesian to Spherical, and by clicking World, you can then spin the globe with your left mouse button. You can also use the right mouse button to select and zoom in on a certain area. There is also a supplemental disk available (for a fee) with an additional 1,159 layers, including countries from Aruba to Zimbabwe. Different types of layers available are Contours, Highways, Land Cover, Ocean Features, Ocean Names, (Railways, River Names, Rivers, Roads), Urban, User, and Vegetation. The four bracketed names are the defaults with the main program.

The only strange piece of data handling I found in Relatively Yours was when I was entering information on a marriage. The female is entered with her new married name, then you give her birth name as an Alias. This seems to be the reverse of the standard convention.

This aside, with more than 28 new features and improvements, Relatively Yours is an extremely powerful piece of software. With everything revolving around an event, you can control the final outcome. Relatively Yours places family events into their appropriate historical and political context, with multiple participants per event, and has the ability to include unlimited narrative information as well as multiple sources to qualify that event.

Relatively Yours also uses graphing facilities that can bring your family history to life from a statistical viewpoint. These facilities are not restricted to just how many males, females, and families are in your family tree, but they extend to the use of names, surnames (excellent for one-name studies), births, deaths, anniversaries by month and week, distribution of events by type, place and location, occupation, compatibility, fertility, and longevity.

There are many other features that deserve attention, such as the sensitivity of data exclusion, mailing lists and circulars, and the ability to publish a complete family history that can be custom-made by the user from his or her desired angle of perception. This may include everyone or a particular individual from an ancestral or descendant viewpoint.

Help is available with an online Help guide, a 173-page PDF manual, a 38-page PDF Tutorial, an online eGroup community, and e-mail support from Computability, the maker of Relatively Yours.

A large (26.7 MB) trial version of Relatively Yours is available on the website. This trial is limited only by the number of persons whose details can be entered, along with a restricted map and gazetteer capability, otherwise it has full functionality. This powerful piece of software is truly unique and a winner.

Note
Bob Dalrymple, creator of Relatively Yours, died February 2004. The software is being maintained by Bob's Computability partner, Greg Morgan. Relatively Yours 3 will continue and Bob's wife, Dot, will play an active part in production. Planning has commenced for version 4 of Relatively Yours.

Relatively Yours 3
Computability Ltd.
P.O. Box 4018
Kingsway West
NSW Australia 2208

System requirements: IBM compatible PC, Windows 98, 98, NT, Me, 2000, XP, Pentium 2 processor or higher, 32MB RAM, 100MB free hard disk space, CD-ROM drive.

$75 plus $15 shipping.
$20 for additional Mapping Layers.

Mark Lang is an active lecturer and writer on family history programs for the past four years. He has served as Webmaster for a local family history group, and has been involved in family history since 1991. He is currently writing a book The Complete Legacy Family Tree. He can be reached by e-mail at marklang@tpg.com.au.

Return to October/November/December 2004 issue of Genealogical Computing.