GEDCOM-L is an agreement between the authors of genealogy programs on how to write GEDCOM 5.5.1, with a few extra tags where the standard has no answer. The GEDCOM-L working group was started in 2009 by the Computer Genealogy Society of Germany (CompGen), and most of its members write programs in German. Their files are ordinary GEDCOM files that any viewer opens; GED-VIEW also reads everything the agreement adds.

Which programs write it

The members of the group, as the agreement (Release 2) lists them:

  • Programs you enter data in: Ages!, Ahnen-Chronik, Ahnenblatt, Ahnenforscher 2000, Ahnenwin, Familienbande, Familienbuch, GedTool, GEN_DO!, Gen_Plus, GenLogix, GENprofi, GES-2000, GFAhnen, GHome, Gramps, Omega, PC-AHNEN, PRO-GEN, RS-AHNEN, Stammbaumdrucker and webtrees.
  • Services built on GEDCOM files: GEDBAS, OFB (Our Family Book), Online-OFB and PhotoIdent.

Gramps writes the agreement's tags in its GEDCOM export, and its own Gramps files open in GED-VIEW too; the Gramps files guide covers those.

GED-VIEW treats a file as GEDCOM-L when one of these programs wrote it, when its header names the "GEDCOM-L Addendum", or when it holds place records. There is nothing to choose: open the .ged as usual.

What you see

Places
Each place with a place record gets a box on the Places list: what it was part of today and what it was part of at the date of each event there (a village that later became part of a city shows both), its names over time and in other languages, its kind (village, then part of town), postal codes, the church it belonged to, population counts, official ids, its id in the Historic Gazetteer (GOV), linked, and its Maidenhead locator. The map pins places from the record's coordinates.
People
The call name (Rufname), the given name a person went by, under the name on the profile. Godparents and witnesses written in words appear under their event; those linked as people appear with their role, such as "Witness of civil marriage".
Families
A couple recorded as not married or never married says so.
Overview
The file details name the agreement and its release.
Issues
A place that points to a place record the file does not have, a GOV id under a place that differs from its record's, and a call name that is not one of the given names.

An e-mail address that the file writes with a doubled at sign, as the agreement asks, reads as one.

Converting from and to GEDCOM-L

Convert is part of Pro. To write a file for any of these programs, choose For German programs (GEDCOM-L). The header then names the agreement, every place gets a place record built from its name as written (each part of the name lies in the next, and the coordinates come from the file), witnesses and godparents of families and events take the agreement's own tag and words, every @ in a text is doubled, and the file starts with the byte order mark the agreement asks for. The agreement's corrections are made too: an address written straight on a person goes into a residence, a sex recorded as N becomes unknown (X stays), ages are spelled its way ("> 45y", "65y"), a place of citizenship becomes a Bürgerort event, the text of a to-do goes into its description, and a relative photo path starts with "./".

Going the other way:

  • GEDCOM 7 keeps the place records and lists every GEDCOM-L tag in its header, as GEDCOM 7 asks for extension tags. A couple recorded as never married becomes GEDCOM 7's "no marriage", and witnesses become associations with a role.
  • Other programs keep the place records as tags they ignore, and each place also gets the record's coordinates, where every program reads them.
  • Gramps (XML or the package) gets a real place hierarchy: each place record becomes a Gramps place with its names over time, kind, code and the places it lay in, and a link to its GOV page. Witnesses and godparents named in words become the event's own Witness and Godparents entries.
  • Programs that do not read godparents and witnesses in words, or to-do lists, get them as notes, so nothing disappears from view.
  • When unknown tags are dropped, or for GEDCOM X, the place records go; what a record said that the place name does not (other names, postal codes, the GOV id, dates) is kept in a note under the place.

The program by program guide has the same in its GEDCOM-L section, and the report after a conversion counts every change.

Next

Open the .ged, then the Places list: places with a record show what they were part of when your family lived there.