Personal Ancestry Writer II Version 81 for Macintosh

I have written before about Personal Ancestry Writer II (PAWriter II), a free genealogy program for Macintosh. I find it to be a great program, especially considering its price tag of zero. PAWriter runs on all PowerMacs and Intel Macs under all MacOS versions, including Leopard 10.5.2. (A 100% compatible OS 9 version is also available for older Mac systems.)

See http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2006/03/personal_ancest.html for my most recent full review of PAWriter II written two years ago. PAWriter also was reviewed by MacWorld last year and given a rating of four mice

PAWriter II combines most of the features of the now-defunct LDS Personal Ancestral File program (PAF) for the Macintosh, with additional features that generate web pages in HTML, word processing files in RTF, AppleWorks, and desktop publishing files in MML for FrameMaker. The generated report files include genealogical dictionaries, registers, ahnentafels, lineages, text files, and pedigree charts. The author suggests that PAWriter is the program that Macintosh PAF could have become, had its development not been discontinued some years ago after release 2.3.1.

Author Howard Metcalfe has been busy since my last review; he keeps updating the program to add more functionality. He has now announced the release of version 81.

The following changes were made in version 81:

• Fixed an error that prohibited saving general notes.
• The wording in the list of possible problems for children born less than nine months apart has been corrected.
• The list of current postal codes for the Canadian provinces and the U.S. insular possessions and freely associated states has been updated, and the State popup menu has been reorganized.

You can learn more about Personal Ancestry Writer II (PAWriter II) or download this free program at http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/27497/pawriter-ii.