GEDCOM by the Numbers

Gigatrees, as of this moment, has imported #GEDCOM tags from 74 different Applications (Follow link to view a complete list). These applications run the gamut from the ever popular #Ancestry Member Trees, to the never-before-heard-of-by-me foreign applications, and even some roll-your-own home-spun programs without a discernable name. Most of these applications attempt to comply with at least one of the FamilySearch GEDCOM Specifications, but many of them fail in their attempt. Gigatrees for its part, tries to parse every GEDCOM file and extract from it every bit of information useful for building its family trees. As such, it bends and weaves when necessary, but there are cases where it does not know how to support a particular application specific extension, or has deemed it unuseful. In several charts below, you will find the most commonly supported and unsupported standard GEDCOM tags as well as those added by those applications.

In the first table, the major GEDCOM versions are listed together with the total number of standard GEDCOM tags defined by their associated specifications. Keep in mind that most of these tags are duplicated in more than one spec. To see a complete list of GEDCOM versions processed by Gigatrees, see GEDCOM statistics. Gigatrees is also listed in the table showing the minimum total number of standard tags and extensions supported. The actual total is much higher.

The second table includes the total number of tags, both standard and application specific, imported by Gigatrees, the total number supported by Gigatrees, the total number unsupported, and finally, the total number of times each supported tag was seen and successfully processed over the period where tag data was collected (6-10 years with some large gaps). Many of the unsupported app extensions have no value in building family trees, these being a variety of reference IDs, display properties and flags specific to the exporting application only. Others have yet to be implemented. Some of the unsupported tags may have had support added, but as of yet no one has attempted to import those tags since that support was added.