We’re glad to (finally!) announce the availability of some additional resources that we’re hoping will make the GEDCOM X project more accessible and available to everybody.

Formal Specification Documents

Until now, there weren’t really any formal specification documents for GEDCOM X–it was all being built and formalized in Java source code and we used an open-source toolset to generate documentation from that code.

But things are different now. GEDCOM X is now formally specified by a new set of documents that we’ve made available. They’re still in draft form, and there’s probably some precision that still needs to be added, but we think this goes a long way toward helping people understand what we’re trying to do here.

We hope it opens up further discussion, too. Please don’t be shy.

Diagrams and Illustrations

We’ve had some requests for UML diagrams. We’re maintaining a UML diagram of the GEDCOM X conceptual model using ArgoUML. The ArgoUML project is checked into version control, and we’d love some help making it better. Send us a pull request.

Community member CMEliasz-Solomon suggested that Graphic Syntax Diagrams were a good way to illustrate GEDCOM X. So we thought we’d give it a try:

• Conclusion Model
• Source Model
• Contributor Model

These were generated from some EBNF documents using a tool called Clapham. We’ve checked the bnf documents into version control, and (again) we’d love some help making it better. Send us a pull request.