Personal Ancestral File (PAF)

What works

Installation with no DLL overrides, using PAF font by itself.

Create new blank file.

Enter data, including sources and notes. Notes larger than 32K work fine.

Navigate in and between pedigree, family, and individual tabs.

Load, Save-As (PAF 5 format).

Import GEDCOM.

Export GEDCOM.

Printing reports: Individual Summary, Pedigree Chart, Family Group Record.

What does not

Using window manager "close" menu item to close help window can cause unhandled page fault. Simple help reading is often okay.

Workarounds

What was not tested

Multimedia.
Other auxiliary functions.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

It appears there is no need to install MS core fonts. Display glitches appear to be gone. Notes longer than 32K appear to work fine. Help can be used if user is careful to save often and/or doesn't click around too much in the help window. I consider it good enough to call Platinum.

Maintenance of this AppDB page has been suspended, because PAF has been unsupported since about July 15, 2013.  A comment was posted in August, 2013 asking whether anyone still uses this application, and there has been no response.

If anyone does use this application, please post a comment.  If anyone does use this application, I'll probably resume regular testing with new versions of Wine.  (If someone else wants to be a maintainer of this page, I won't be opposed.)

1. Install WINE 1.1.6 or later.  (Actually, 0.9.37 through 0.9.53 work, too, if you don't need the help function.)
   
2. Install PAF 5.2 by running WINE on file PAF5AllLangs.exe
• This file can be downloaded at http://ftp.ldscatalog.com/PAF5AllLangs.exe
• On the PAF 5 CD, it is in /mnt/cdrom/Download/
  
3. While installing PAF, mark the check box labeled International Unicode Font.
4. If you want to use PAF's help functions with Wine version 1.0.1 (well, actually 0.9.38) or earlier, you should install the MS core fonts. See the appendix for details.
   
5. Start PAF by double clicking the _PAF 5_ shortcut on your desktop or by running file drive_c/Program Files/FamilySearch/Paf5/pstart.exe
   

Appendix:

• WINE version 1.0.1 (well, actually, 0.9.29 or later) or later will work if you don't need PAF's help functions.
• If you want to create a new WINE prefix directory, run wineprefixcreate. (Newer versions of WINE don't require wineprefixcreate.)
  
• If installing from CD, you can use setup.exe to install. In this case, uncheck the Acrobat reader.
• The International Unicode Font is referred to as Andale WT inside PAF. Any relationship between this font and any supported by Bill Gates' company is not obvious.
  
• To install the MS core fonts, download the core font installers from http://sourceforge.net/projects/corefonts. Skip the Word 97 viewer. Run the other 11 *32.exe files.
  
  

PAF 5 works under Wine on an Intel-based Mac using the X11 compatibility layer.  It is reported to have the same issues as on Linux.  To supply updates, clarifications, corrections, and such to this note, please post comments or email maintainers.

It requires XCode, X11, and fontforge:

• XCode and X11 are available on the Mac OS X CDs or on the Apple website.  (They are not installed by default on Mac OS X.)
• Fontforge can be installed from a pre-built package, or it can be built from source.  If building from source, build as if to run on Linux.

There have been no reports concerning the use of Darwine, the Quartz driver instead of the X11 driver to remove the X11 requirement, or QEmu to run PAF on a PowerPC Mac.

To make it as easy to start as other Mac programs, it is recommended to make a simple Mac bundle containing a bash script that starts X11 and then starts Wine and the PAF executable.

On May 29, 2011, Clinton Stimpson commented with the following:

Yes, Wine still works with PAF 5.2 on Mac.

There is no special information for Mac users except what is found here (Intel Mac support is part of the official source):
wiki.winehq.org/MacOSX
wiki.winehq.org/MacOSX/Installing

But, I would add that my own do-it-yourself build had to have this:
export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/X11/lib:/usr/lib
The /usr/X11/lib path was for better font support, and /usr/lib was to enable print support in PAF.

(This is an edited version of a comment originally dated January 12, 2007 and originally titled "To run PAF 5.2 under Wine 0.9.29 (or later) (on Mandriva Linux 2007)").

1. Install wine-0.9.29 or later. If you compile Wine from source, you will need fontforge, bison-2.3 (byacc won't work) and libcups2-devel (or equivalent).

2. If you wish to specify the path to the Wine prefix directory to be something other than $HOME/.wine, set environment variable WINEPREFIX. This variable must be set each time you run something from this prefix directory.

3. Run wineprefixcreate to build the prefix area.

4. Install PAF 5.2 from CD /mnt/cdrom/setup.exe or from downloaded PAF5AllLangs.exe or PAF5EnglishSetup.exe. Suggestions: uncheck Acrobat reader, skip viewing 'getting started' document if asked, install PAF international font if asked. (File PAF5AllLangs.exe can be found at ftp.ldscatalog.com/PAF5AllLangs.exe.)

5. Install font(s) by doing either OR both of the following:

1. Install PAF international font (if that was not done in step 4) by running Wine on PAF5Font.exe (from the PAF 5.2 CD.)

2. Download the core font installers from sourceforge.net/projects/corefonts. (You don't need the Word 97 viewer--it probably won't work.) Run all 11 of the *32.exe files.

6. Run PAF with something similar to the following command. (You may want to define an alias for this command.

Suggestion: make a source script that sets the WINEPREFIX environment variable and defines the alias.)

wine curpref/drive_c/'Program Files'/FamilySearch/Paf5/pstart.exe

As a historical note, the following "HOWTO" used to be posted here:

Test System: Wine Version = 20021007; Linux Version = Redhat 8.0; Hardware = Thinkpad PII 196MB RAM

PAF Install Guide:

1. Manually add the following keys to the wine windows user registry file:

[Software\\LDS Church\\FamilySearch\\Personal Ancestral File 5\\Options]
"ShowLDS"=dword:00000001
"ShowLdsRpt"=dword:00000001

2. Copy the file usp10.dll from a windows installation of PAF into the wine windows directory: c:\\windows\\system32
3. Add c:\\windows\\system32 to the path setting in the wine user config file
4. copy all files from a windows installation of PAF from c:\\Program Files\\FamilySearch\\Paf5 to the corresponding wine windows directory.
5. Open PAF: wine paf5.exe
6. The dialog box asking if you would like the enter key to move to the next field appears without the text and buttons.
7. The "Welcome to PAF" dialog box opens and prompts with options to create new database, open existing, etc. [At this point the original tester experienced a crash that appears to have been a null-pointer dereference. No one ever filed a bug report or otherwise provided more information, so it looks like we've made progress.]