Legacy Family Tree 9.x Forum

Legacy Family Tree 9.0.0 is now available, time for a test drive using CrossOver 16.2 running on OSX 10.12.4 Sierra.

Installing LFT 9 from scratch was quick and easy. Previous files were found and converted to the new format seamlessly. My first impression was wow! The quirkiness of running LFT 8 on CrossOver is largely gone. LFT 9 is stable, tooltips display, and all the core functions appear to operate as expected.

LFT 9 feels like a larger program than LFT 8 and runs a little slower. On my MacBook Air it consumes up to 30% of CPU time and 4 GB of RAM. That said, responsiveness is not a problem.

The few quirks encountered so far are display related. Sometimes the right half of tooltip boxes is blank. Also, the border around the LFT screen sometimes blinks black/grey, seemingly prompted by using a Mac program simultaneously.

All that said, I am much encouraged. LFT 9 is a huge leap forward for us in the Windows Free community.

Revised Legacy Family Tree 9.x Review for CrossOver 17, 12/22/17

CrossOver 17.0 running on OSX 10.12.6 Sierra installs and after a fashion runs Legacy Family Tree 9.0.0.189.

Installation hung on the first attempt, but succeeded on the 2nd attempt. Starting from Legacy is not reliable. It is best to startup CrossOver, allow it to stabilize, then launch Legacy.

The constantly blinking title bar and application frame are disconcerting. Resizing the program window is tricky, it requires clicking at the right time during the blink cycle to catch the corner of the program window; then the window takes a while to rebuild.
During the blink cycle, CPU load for the CrossOver Wineserver varies from 3-33% and program responsiveness is poor.

From what I am reading, upgrading to OSX High Sierra creates more severe instability, crashing, etc. for CrossOver users, especially when running on an all SSD machine such as my MacBook. CodeWeavers seems to be saying this is a Mac problem and Apple is working on a solution.

Not willing to risk loosing my data, I am dusting off an old Windows laptop, installing the latest version of Legacy, saving back-up files in both Legacy and GEDCOM format, and exploring RootsMagic. I am also delaying upgrading our Macs. This is not a comfortable situation; however, I am hoping all will work out.

Core functionality of the program seems to work. At this point, I would rate it as 3 stars for Sierra.
Due to the many reports of incompatibility with OSX High Sierra on SSD MacBooks, I am delaying this upgrade, but won’t wait too long. For those with High Sierra, my rating is Unknown.

Despite other shortcomings, Legacy users may be most satisfied with CrossOver 15.3 and avoiding High Sierra.

Legacy 9 is unstable, screen resizing, dropouts, won't start, hangs etc, running MacBook Pro, High Sierra and latest CrossOver, we need a solution now. Would not recommend as it is now. When will there be fixes?

CrossOver 17.5 running on Mac OS 10.13.4 installs well and appears to run Legacy Family Tree 9.0.0.189 almost like a native application with a few limitations.

All of the basic functions I have tried work as would be expected. Relationships, sourcing, and reports work as expected.

The occasional blinking title bar and application frame although disconcerting, do not seem to impair functionality.
Resizing the program window is problematic. Pulling in the corners from full screen display does not work, and using the window size icon makes the window small and change size randomly. Stay with full size.
Action boxes in the Legacy’s blue frame to cycle through spouses and move children to main view appear to show as empty white boxes when one hovers over them; however, they do work. The info box with last modified date for an individual’s information (bottom right corner) does seem to work properly.

So far, the issues found are only minor. Overall, Version 17.5 is a substantial step forward. I am grateful and excited to rate it as a long awaited 4 stars (some might even rate it as 5 stars). In brief, Legacy Family Tree 9.x installs and runs well, with only minor glitches. Nonetheless, this stability and interface issues do need to be fixed.

Although CrossOver 18.1 runs Legacy Family Tree 9x reasonably well on Mac OS Mojave 10.14.1, it is a step backward from 18.0. One is now required to enter the LFT Client name and number every time the program is launched. What a pain!
My other complaints are two long-standing issues. The constant program window frame blinking and cycling of Wineserver and Legacy 9.0 is annoying and consumes a lot of CPU capacity, compromising program responsiveness. Also, the program window is either full size or minimized. Pulling the corners in to shrink the program window and using the resize button do not work. This reduces the ease of working with multiple documents.
Otherwise, it works well enough.

CrossOver 18.5.0 runs Legacy Family Tree 9x reasonably well on Mac OS Mojave 10.14.3. However, it is a small step backward from v18.1.
My complaints are two long-standing issues. The constant program window frame blinking and cycling of Wineserver and Legacy 9.0 is annoying and consumes a lot of CPU capacity (9-45%), compromising program responsiveness. V15.3.1 was the last version to run without frame blinking and cycling.
Also, the program window is either full size or minimized. Neither pulling the corners in to shrink the program window nor using the resize button work. This reduces the ease of working with multiple documents.
Otherwise, v18.5 works well enough that I rely on CrossOver/Legacy Family Tree to be my only genealogy software.