Project and timeline

What has driven the creation of this project?
See here.

How much will HRE cost?
HRE is being developed under open-source licence protocols, and will be free to download and install on as many computers as you wish.

Who supports it?
As an open-source product, HRE is supported by our user community – so if you want to help, we’d be glad to have you aboard.

Will multiple user languages be supported?
Yes. We currently support English, French, German and Norwegian but wish to add more. If you would like to help with translations into your local language, please volunteer.

Where can I download HRE?
The HRE software is a work in progress and is not yet available for download. If you would like to follow the progress of the project, and to be notified when we have software available for test, please join our mailing list to receive the project Newsletters.

When do you expect to have working software available?
This will depend very much upon the number of programmers and other volunteer developers that we are able to attract. We are not forecasting specific dates at this stage, but the Newsletters will keep you up to date on the development progress.

Will I be able to get my data onto a website?
Probably not in Version 1 of the software. But we recognise that many researchers want to be able to share their research online, and this is on our development list. As with TMG, we expect that third party software designers may want to develop independent tools for reading the HRE database and for uploading reports and charts to a website.

What about GEDCOM import?
As HRE is initially targeting TMG users for direct data import, a GEDCOM import is a lower priority item. But it is on the development schedule.

What areas of research are you targeting, apart from genealogy?
See HRE for historical and cultural research.

Family History and The Master Genealogist (TMG)

Is HRE a new version of TMG?
Not at all. Although HRE does import data from The Master genealogist (TMG), it has a wider use than the pure family history focus of TMG. It also implements a variety of concepts that go well beyond TMG’s capabilities. Of course, if what you’re looking for is a replacement for TMG we hope that HRE should fit that requirement, although it may not be able to replace all TMG functionality at first release.

Can I get my TMG data into HRE?
We intend to be able to import ALL data from TMG, as long as you are using a recent version of TMG (v8.05 or later).

Is this a Wholly Genes project?
No, HRE is an entirely independent project. Wholly Genes, Inc., the developer of The Master Genealogist (‘TMG‘), is not directly involved in the HRE project and will not provide technical support nor assume any responsibility or liability for the project.

We have, however, received kind permission from Bob Velke at Wholly Genes to reuse any aspects of TMG (other than the source code) for which they control the copyright, including underlying data structures, default sentence structures, modes of operation, and “look and feel”.

For more details of the advantages of HRE over TMG, see HRE for users of The Master Genealogist.

Technical

What hardware will the program run on?
HRE is installable on Windows, Mac, and Linux variants.

What language is HRE written in?
HRE is written in Java using the SQL H2 database system. These choices provide us with a good level of cross-platform compatibility and future-proofing as they are widely supported within the software development community.

Where can I see more technical details?
Check the technical glossary and our GitHub repo.