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
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 rian)
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 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 address

14. Call for Volunteers
Interested in helping out with Newsletter and Mailing List Management? Send an to Paquita Lamacraft
Interested in helping out with Volunteer Code Contributions? Send an to Don Ferguson
Do you have a query or suggestion about any aspect of HRE’s design? Send send an to Robin Lamacraft