genster

Usage

genster is an application for building browseable family history sites from GEDCOM files. It generates markdown documents that cam be processed with a site generator such as Jekyll or Hugo.

I created it for myself so it makes many assumptions about my particular style of using GEDCOM. It may or may not work for other people.

Notably:

I use Ancestry extensively and use this as the primary source of my GEDCOMs. Because of this genster includes various idioms that are peculiar to Ancestry.
I use Ancestry custom events to convey extra information. These appear in the exported GEDCOM as a general EVEN with the "fact label" of the event becoming its type.

Getting Started

As of Go 1.19, install the latest genster executable using:

go install github.com/iand/genster@latest

This will download and build a binary in $GOBIN.

Conventions

Some custom event "fact labels" with specific handling:

Nickname - holds the preferred nickname for a person (unfortunately alternate names and AKAs are very messy in Ancestry and I wanted a single value to refer to the person)
OLB - one line bio, a short sentence that summarises the person's life

Other examples of custom event "fact labels" that are used verbatim in the generated pages:

Admitted to Shipmeadow Workhouse
Discharged to Shipmeadow Workhouse
Enlisted in Royal Fusiliers
Discharged from Royal Fusiliers
Posted to Malta - use when assigned or sent to a new post
Posted Home
Stationed at Woolwich
Promoted to Corporal Wheeler
Awarded Queen's South Africa Medal - include clasps in details
Missing in action
Injured in action

Events with values that start with one of these phrases will be included verbatim in the generated narrative:

He was recorded as
She was recorded as
It was recorded that
George is recorded
George was recorded

License

This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain. For more information, see http://unlicense.org/ or the accompanying UNLICENSE file.