HRE Progress Report – October 2021

Original aims

We recently went back to review the original aims of the HRE project to see how we were tracking against these somewhat lofty plans. The result was re-assuring and we thought we’d share these with you, partly as a reminder of what we claimed we would do and partly to show the progress we have made.

We set out to implement the following:

APPLICATION AIMS	Report
Build a modular, extendable application which manages the recording, analysis and reporting of research into the history of any type of object	YES!
Build an open-source application	YES!
Build an application that will run on Windows, Macintosh and Linux from a single code base	YES!
Use Java as the main language	YES!
Support UTF-8 Unicode text	YES!
Enable the application to be extensible by the use of plug-ins	YES!
The application may be able to be used with: • All components in a standalone installation, or • A client/server implementation.	YES!

DATABASE AIMS	Report
Use an open-source SQL database engine	YES!
Allow for replacement of the database engine if required	YES!
Every record of every user data table to have a persistent record ID	YES!
Provide a secure method of logging into project databases	In progress

USER INTERFACE AIMS	Report
The user presentation layer shall be able to support any natural language	YES!
Language selection may be changed during application execution	YES!
The user interface must be configurable to provide: • Choice of content and layout with persistence of settings • Choice of accessibility for vision, colour and motor-skills • Choice of language • Long-running operations must give status progress • Effective use of a range of screen sizes.	YES!

DATA MANAGEMENT AIMS	Report
Files must be operating system independent	YES!
Must be able to import digital records (documents, images, audio, video, DNA, etc.) in known discipline-related formats	To do
Must be able to export digital records (documents, images, audio, video, DNA, etc.) to known discipline-related formats	To do
User data must have the capability to store alternative forms in any supported language	YES!
Have the ability to edit, update, remove any stored data	In progress
Have the ability to “undo” at least the last data modifying command	To do
On a per session-basis, be able to identify what data has been changed, from what to what and by whom since the start of the session	To do
Manual selection and automated selection of data by use of filters must be provided	To do
Custom filters must be able to be saved and re-used	To do
The report generator will: • Provide default standard reports • Permit users to create their own report templates • Permit output to a number of word processing and other formats • Permit creation of documents using large paper (up to at least A0).	To do

INTEROPERABILITY AIMS	Report
To be able to export any data within the HRE database to XML format	To do
To provide the ability to import project files created by The Master Genealogist v8.5 and later without loss of information or loss of any ability to use that data	In progress
To provide the ability to Import GEDCOM v7 format files	To do
To provide the ability to Export data from HRE that conforms to GEDCOM v7	To do
Through a “plug-in manager” enable others to add code to HRE to perform additional actions such as: • Importing data from other genealogical programs • Creating other access points for users • Providing a bridge to other external software.	YES!

Some of these items can’t be addressed until we get a bit further along with the implementation, but with the recent addition of a Plug-in manager the functions listed in the last row of the above table are now possible.