History Research Environment (HRE) Update

1. History Research Environment (HRE)Update August HRE Newsletter

2. HRE Status • Reviewed the HRE design to ensure the revised specification properly achieves the initial HRE objectives • Found several common changes to simplify HRE internals – requires less code to be built and maintained within HRE • This commonality enables HRE to have more flexibility which is a major benefit to the User • Identified and currently testing several Open Source packages to embed within HRE to perform useful actions, thus reducing new code that built from scratch • Very important that HRE be efficient, flexible, and easy to maintain

3. HRE Progress (mid-summer) • In April 2017, HRE went live on GitHub – the world's leading software development platform and version control repository. • Outline of the HRE projects aims placed there • Loaded almost the complete specifications for HRE up to version 0.3, and a bit beyond – over 130 architectural and application specification documents • Thus the full scope of HRE’s design is visible to developers • In June 2017, many documents upgraded with more detail • https://github.com/History-Research-Environment/HRE--History-Research-Environment

4. HRE Progress (early August) • Taking longer than originally predicted • Although “stalled”, it is now proceeding at a faster pace • This enabled the design to be significantly simpler and more areas of common coding, leading to less code • Much work now in parallel • HRE Architecture explicitly incorporates plugins – these can be created by others • Accessing online data sources is a matter of suitable plugins • Access to online data within HRE is *NOT* excluded • Objective of “Meeting the replacement of TMG” comes first

5. HRE Features • Dates in HRE • Genetic data related to children • Selecting biological, legal, and social parents • Import and Export of definitions • Creating timelines from already entered events • Plugins can be developed by others • Accessing online data sources • Prime objective: import TMG Projects and continue expected features for that data

6. Dates in HRE • Import TMG dates with same qualifiers for date ranges and expected sorting and comparison. • Julian calendar date conversion to the Gregorian calendar for comparison values will be Location Dependent (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar#From_Julian_to_Gregorian) • Beginning of year can be set to be Location Dependent (unlike TMG) • Other calendar conversions can be included • HRE dates have extended time precision to one second (if required) • HRE dates to include BCE (Before Christian Era) dates to -99,999 years

7. Genetic data related to children • Change in Parents • Reproductive medicine has changed (use of egg donors and sperm donors, surrogate birth mothers, and mitochondria exchange) • Thus marking a single male and female parent is not sufficient • HRE provides separate primary settings for these to be recorded and provides separate primary markers for each of: • sperm source male • egg source female • birth mother • auxiliary mitochondria female • By default, In normal births, biological father will be marked as the sperm donor; biological birth mother will be marked as the primary egg donor and mitochondria supplier

8. Selecting Biological, Legal, and Social parents • Recording significant adults for their familial function rather than biological connection • For some reporting purposes, it is very important that the appropriate parenting person is selected • HRE provides for more than one person to be a “parent” • This overcomes the problem of children with same sex parents • And for those whose biological parent is known, but where the function of parent was performed by an unrelated person

9. Import and Export of definitions • Definitions can be exported to an XML file, such as • Tag types, • Source types, • Name styles, • Screen layouts, • etc. • That XML file can be imported into another project • Enables interchange of definitions between users.

10. Creating timelines from already entered events • Timeline is list of Events or Tasks • Timeline has a unique name so it can be selected for inclusion in a display or report • Imported TMG timelines will retain their original TMG name, and be converted into this form • To create a new Timeline within HRE, • a user creates a Head Entity with a user-provided unique name • then may select from already entered Events or Tasks as an entry in this timeline • Thus Timeline entries can have Citations and Sources

11. TMG Canberra weekend – April 2017 • In April 2017 Robin Lamacraft and Don Ferguson travelled to Canberra, Australia • Attended a ‘TMG Weekend’ which is an annual event hosted by the combined Canberra and Sydney TMG User Groups • Robin and Don presented HRE’s aims and directions and conducted a brief survey of attendees’ thoughts on which elements of TMG they regarded as good (and bad) and what they thought were requirements for any TMG replacement • Details of the survey are at the end of the newsletter for those who are interested

12. Call for Volunteers • Newsletter and Mailing List Management • Intend to improve the quality and frequency of HRE News by use of a more sophisticated mailout tool to advise all on our mailing list of the availability of a new newsletter • Manage the Mailing List • Distribute HRE Newsletter messages via an HRE email address • Will regularly schedule HRE News, with one update per quarter or more often as needed • Person’s commitment is sporadic and should not be overly time-consuming after they have well organized

13. Call for Volunteers • Contributor Liaison – manage and combine volunteer code contributions • Manage • Acknowledge contributions • Respond to • Forward queries to appropriate HRE person • Should have a technology or service provision background • Good organizational and communication skills • Prior knowledge of TMG is not a requirement • Sends messages out via an HRE email address

14. Call for Volunteers • Interested in helping out with Newsletter and Mailing List Management? Send an email to PaquitaLamacraft (paquita.lamacraft@archerbg.com) • Interested in helping out with Volunteer Code Contributions? Send an email to Don Ferguson (dhferguson@iinet.net.au) • Do you have a query or suggestion about any aspect of HRE’s design? Send send an email to Robin Lamacraft (robin.lamacraft@internode.on.net)