Writing plugins – Family Historian User Group

Sub Categories

GEDCOM Extension List: Not yet updated for Version 8 The user-defined GEDCOM custom tags used by Family Historian are tabulated below, and subsequent sections give more details with advice on how to export them to other genealogy programs
Getting Started Writing Plugins: Plugin scripts are written in Lua, a lightweight scripting language that is ideal for embedding into more complex applications such as Family Historian
International Character Handling for Plugin Authors: Many plugin authors encounter problems handing unexpected characters
IUP GUI Builder Hints and Tips: IUP is a very powerful tool for building graphical user interfaces (GUI), but it’s fairly unforgiving and the IUP Documentation is a little sparse especially when used with Lua
Lua Code Snippets: Plugin developers may find these Lua snippets useful
Lua References and Library Modules: Lua Language References versions 5 & 6 version 7 version 8 Notes Lua version 5
Plugin Structure, Version Control and File Naming Advice: When you start creating Plugins for yourself or for the Plugin Store it really helps to be able to manage the files and the file levels
Privacy and Security Standards for Published Plugins: Family Historian Plugins Family Historian plugins are a powerful tool for ordinary users to create and share additional functionality for processing user data
Run Time and Memory Use Advice: Some Plugins perform intensive repetitive operations, which on a large database in excess of 10,000 Individuals, may take a long time or need large amounts of memory
Understanding Lua Patterns: A pattern is a formula for matching text strings that conform to some definable criteria (experienced coders need to remember Lua patterns are similar but not identical to regular expressions)
Writing and Maintaining Plugins Compatible with Versions 5, 6 & 7: The changes from Lua 5
Writing and Maintaining Plugins Compatible with Versions 7 and 8: This article is a work in progress
Writing Plugins Compatible With Apple Mac and Linux: There are some key differences in how plugins behave in emulator software for Mac and Linux systems that authors need to be aware of to avoid unexpected effects or application crashes