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Budget constraint

In economics, a budget constraint represents all the combinations of goods and services that a consumer may purchase given current prices within their given income. Consumer theory uses the concepts of a budget constraint and a preference map as tools to examine the parameters of consumer choices. Both concepts have a ready graphical representation in the two-good case. The consumer can only purchase as much as their income will allow, hence they are constrained by their budget. The equation of a budget constraint is $$P_x x+P_y y=m$$ where $$P_x$$ is the price of good $X$, and $$P_y$$ is the price of good $Y$, and $m$ is income.

Soft budget constraint
The concept of soft budget constraint is commonly applied to economies in transition. This theory was originally proposed by János Kornai in 1979. It was used to explain the "economic behavior in socialist economies marked by shortage”. In the socialist transition economy there are soft budget constraint on firms because of subsidies, credit and price support. This theory implies that the survival of a firm depends on financial assistance, especially in a socialist country. The soft budget constraint syndrome usually occurs in the paternalistic role of the State in economic organizations, such as public and private companies and non-profit organizations. János Kornai also highlighted that there are five dimensions to evaluate the post-socialist transition, including fiscal subsidy, soft taxation, soft bank credit (non-performing loans), soft trade credit (the accumulate rears between firms) and wage arrears.

According to the point of view by Cllower [1965], budget constraints are a rational planning assumption with two main attributes. The first is that budget constraints refer to the decision makers' behavioural characteristics --- selling output or acquiring asset income to compensate for spending. This means that adjustment limitation on financial resources are obvious. The second is to impose constraints on prior variables, such as constraints on current actual demand based on expectations of future financial conditions.

The reason for the soft budget constraints is that the excess of expenditure over income will be paid by additional organizations (the State). In addition, the decision maker expects such external financial assistance to be highly probable based on his actions. The further explanation is the more excess spending is covered by external aid, the budget constraints will be more softer.

Bank
Bank supervision refers to the supervision on the capital adequacy ratio of banks. When the bank's capital is difficult to finance due to the default of a large number of loans, it can prevent the bank from going bankrupt with the aid of the government, then it will occurs the soft budget constraint of the bank.

Dewatripont and Maskin(1995) point out the presence of sunk costs in existing loans may lead to soft budget constraints when banks need additional financial assistance. The internalization of external options can expand the model by allowing banks to allocate funds between new loans and refinancing old loans. Through investment screening and monitoring technology, banks can improve the relative profitability of new loans, thus breaking the equilibrium of soft budget constraints.

Individual choice
Consumer behaviour is a maximization problem. It means making the most of our limited resources to maximize our utility. As consumers are insatiable, and utility functions grow with quantity, the only thing that limits our consumption is our own budget.

In general, the budget set (all bundle choices that are on or below the budget line) represents all possible bundles of goods an individual can afford given their income and the prices of goods. A common assumption underlying consumer theory is the concept of well-behaved preferences, and as such, the direction of an individual's preferences will point 45 degrees from the origin. When behaving rationally, an individual consumer should choose to consume goods at the point where the most preferred available indifference curve on their preference map is tangent to their budget constraint. The tangent point (the xy coordinate) represents the amount of goods x and y the consumer should purchase to fully utilize their budget to obtain maximum utility. It is important to note that the optimal consumption bundle will not always be an interior solution. If the solution to the optimality condition leads to a bundle that is not feasible, the consumer's optimal bundle will be a corner solution which suggests the goods or inputs are perfect substitutes. A line connecting all points of tangency between the indifference curve and the budget constraint is called the expansion path.

All two dimensional budget constraints are generalized into the equation:

$$P_x x+P_y y=m$$

Where:
 * $$m=$$ money income allocated to consumption (after saving and borrowing)
 * $$P_x=$$ the price of a specific good
 * $$P_y=$$ the price of all other goods
 * $$x=$$ amount purchased of a specific good
 * $$y=$$ amount purchased of all other goods

The equation can be rearranged to represent the shape of the curve on a graph:

$$y= (m/P_y)-(P_x/P_y) x$$, where $$(m/P_y)$$ is the y-intercept and $$(-P_x/P_y)$$ is the slope, representing a downward sloping budget line.

The factors that can shift the budget line are a change in income (m), a change in the price of a specific good ($$P_x$$), or a change in the price of all other goods ($$P_y$$).

International economics

A production-possibility frontier is a constraint in some ways analogous to a budget constraint, showing limitations on a country's production of multiple goods based on the limitation of available factors of production. Under autarky this is also the limitation of consumption by individuals in the country. However, the benefits of international trade are generally demonstrated through allowance of a shift in the consumption-possibility frontiers of each trade partner which allows access to a more appealing indifference curve. In the "toolbox" Hecksher-Ohlin and Krugman models of international trade, the budget constraint of the economy (its CPF) is determined by the terms-of-trade (TOT) as a downward-sloped line with slope equal to those TOTs of the economy. (The TOTs are given by the price ratio Px/Py, where x is the exportable commodity and y is the importable).

Many goods
While low-level demonstrations of budget constraints are often limited to less than two good situations which provide easy graphical representation, it is possible to demonstrate the relationship between multiple goods through a budget constraint.

There are 2 requirements for this case. The first one is that the constraint is not affected if the prices are multiplied by any positive scalar. The second one is that all commodities are desirable and the constraint will always be binding.

In such a case, assuming there are $$n\,$$ goods, called $$x_i\,$$ for $$i=1,\dots,n\,$$, that the price of good $$x_i\,$$ is denoted by $$p_i\,$$, and if $$\,W\,$$ is the total amount that may be spent, then the budget constraint is:
 * $$\sum_{i=1}^np_ix_i\leq W.$$

Further, if the consumer spends his income entirely, the budget constraint binds:
 * $$\sum_{i=1}^np_ix_i=W.$$

In this case, the consumer cannot obtain an additional unit of good $$x_i\,$$ without giving up some other good. For example, he could purchase an additional unit of good $$x_i\,$$ by giving up $$p_i/p_j\,$$ units of good $$x_j.\,$$

Borrowing and lending
Budget constraints can be expanded outward or contracted inward through borrowing and lending. By borrowing money in a period, usually at an interest rate r, a consumer can choose to forgo consumption in future periods for extra consumption in the borrowing period. Choosing to borrow would expand the budget constraint in this period and contract budget constraints in future periods. Alternatively, consumers can choose to lend their money in the current period, usually at a lending rate l. Lending contracts the budget constraint in the current period but expands budget constraints in future periods. According to behavioral economics, choices on borrowing and lending may also be affected by Present bias. In economics, there are two groups of present biased individuals, sophisticated individuals who are aware of their present bias, and naive individuals who are not aware of their present bias.

title: Budget constraint


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Game port

The game port is a device port that was found on IBM PC compatible and other computer systems throughout the 1980s and 1990s. It was the traditional connector for joystick input, and occasionally MIDI devices, until made obsolete by USB in the late 1990s.

Originally located on a dedicated Game Control Adapter expansion card, the game port was later integrated with PC sound cards, and still later on the PC's motherboard. During the transition to USB, many input devices used the game port and a USB adapter dongle was included for systems without a game port.

Pre-IBM game ports

At the time IBM was developing its game port, there was no industry standard for controller ports, although the Atari joystick port was close. It was introduced in 1977 with the Atari Video Computer System, and was later used on the VIC-20 (1980), Commodore 64 (1982), and Amstrad's PC1512 (1986).

In contrast with the IBM design, the Atari port was primarily designed for digital inputs (including a pair of two-axis/four-contact digital joysticks, each with a single pushbutton trigger). Its only analog connections were intended for paddles -- although, as there were two analog inputs per port, each port could theoretically support a two-axis analog joystick, touchpad, trackball, or mouse (some of these being eventually developed for Atari systems).

The Apple II, BBC Micro, TRS-80 Color Computer, and other popular 8-bit machines all used different, incompatible, joysticks and ports. In most respects, the IBM design was similar to, or more advanced than, existing designs.

Initial IBM PC type game ports
The IBM PC game port first appeared during the initial launch of the original IBM PC in 1981, in the form of an optional US$55 expansion card known as the Game Control Adapter. The design allowed for four analog axes and four buttons on one port, allowing two joysticks or four paddles to be connected via a special "Y-splitter" cable.

Originally available only as add-on that took up an entire slot, game ports remained relatively rare in the early days of the IBM PC, and most games used the keyboard as an input. IBM did not release a joystick of its own for the PC, which did not help. The most common device available was the Kraft joystick, originally developed for the Apple II but easily adapted to the IBM with the addition of another button on the back of the case. When IBM finally did release a joystick, for the IBM PCjr, it was a version of the Kraft stick. However, it connected to the computer using two incompatible 7-pin connectors, which were mechanically connected together as part of a larger multi-pin connector on the back of the machine. This eliminated the need for the Y-adapter. Adapters for Atari-style "digital" sticks were also common during this era.

The game port became somewhat more common in the mid-1980s, as improving electronic density began to produce expansion cards with ever-increasing functionality. By 1983, it was common to see cards combining memory, game ports, serial and parallel ports and a realtime clock on a single expansion card. The era of combo expansion cards largely came to an end by the late 1980s, as many of the separate functions normally provided on plug-in boards became common features of the motherboard itself. Game ports were not always part of this supported set of ports.

Integration with sound cards
However, the game port was given a major boost in usage in 1989, with the introduction of the first Sound Blaster. As sound cards were primarily used with computer games, Creative Labs took the opportunity to include a game port on the card, producing an all-in-one gaming solution. At the same time, they re-purposed two otherwise redundant pins on the port, 12 and 15, to produce a serial bus with enough performance to drive an external MIDI port adapter. Previous MIDI systems like the MPU-401 used their own separate expansion cards and a complex external adapter, whereas the Sound Blaster only required an inexpensive adapter to produce the same result. By the end of the year the Sound Blaster was the best selling expansion card on the PC, and the game port was receiving widespread software support.

With the exception of laptops—for which companies released joystick adapters for parallel or serial ports, which needed custom software drivers —through the early 1990s, the game port was universally supported on sound cards, and increasingly became built-in features as motherboards added sound support of their own. This remained true through the second half of the 1990s, by which time integrated sound support had displaced the third-party sound card to a large degree. By the early 2000s, such support was so widespread that newer sound cards began to dispense with the game port as it was certain the machine they would be used in already had such support, including MIDI. Every Sound Blaster card from the first model up to August 2001 included a game port. In 2001 the Sound Blaster Audigy moved the game port to a second expansion slot, which connected to a header on the card.

Replacement by USB
The introduction of the first USB standard in 1996 was aimed squarely at the sort of roles provided by the game port, but initially had little market impact. The subsequent release of the iMac, which featured no legacy ports in favor of USB, started a rapid expansion of USB in the market. This led both to new gaming devices using USB, as well as the profusion of adapters. For instance, the 1997 Microsoft Precision Pro joystick was re-introduced in a version that used a game port connector, but also included a USB adapter in the box. The rapid takeover of USB meant that this was superfluous when the Precision Pro 2 was released the next year in 1998. By 2000, game ports were purely for backward compatibility with now outdated devices.

Microsoft Windows discontinued support for the game port with Windows Vista, though USB converters can serve as a workaround.

Hardware
The game port's DA-15 connector includes inputs for a total of four analog channels and four buttons. These were almost always implemented as two joysticks with two buttons each, but it is also possible to support four paddle controllers each with one button, or a single gamepad with two analog sticks and four buttons using the same inputs. The port includes redundant pins, including a total of four +5 V supplies, and separate grounds for most of the buttons. In most similar game ports, like those on the Atari, a single +5 V and ground is used for all the channels.

The game port was originally mounted on a dedicated ISA card. Since the early 1990s, when the game port moved from dedicated expansion cards to PC I/O or sound cards, these connectors have usually doubled as connectors for MIDI instruments; two of the redundant +5 V and GND pins of the original standard were rededicated to MIDI input and output to make this possible. To use a game port with MIDI instruments, a break-out cable with the necessary opto-isolation hardware and compatible connectors is required - typically these consisted of a male and a female DA-15 and two male 5-pin DIN connectors. For many sound cards, the game port midi capabilities were based around the Roland MPU-401 MIDI interface (in UART mode only), however some older sound cards (notably the original Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster Pro) used a proprietary interface that was not compatible with the MPU-401.

The analog channels are read by sending voltage into the line, through a potentiometer in the controller, in this case 100,000 ohm, and then into a capacitor. The value is read by timing how long it took for the voltage in the capacitor to cross a certain threshold. The rate varied depending on the resistance, and thus physical position, of the potentiometer. In the Atari port, which had similar analog channels, there is a convenient timer available in the form of the video clock circuitry. In the PC there is no similar clock because video functionality is normally provided on an expansion card. Instead, a software routine needs to first trigger capacitor discharge by issuing an IO write to the Gameport, and then measure the time it takes to charge them again by constantly polling Gameport. Using original IBM formula, Time = 24.2 μs + 0.011 (r) μs and assuming 100Kohm potentiometers this process can take up to 1.1ms per readout, or over 60ms if we decide to read joystick position 60 times a second. This significant overhead was the reason why using original Gameport on the PC could consume up to 10% of CPU time independent of CPU speed.

Software
Initially there was no standardized software for running the joysticks; applications would poll the known ports associated with the sticks as part of their game loop. This did, however, leave the implementation of a lot of housekeeping tasks to every application that used them, such as looking for and enumerating the active devices, and calibrating them. This changed in Windows 95, which introduced standardized Windows Registry entries to hold these values and make it easier for applications to find these devices. DirectX further expanded the options through DirectInput with the "joystick mini-driver" with a number of new capabilities. Among these were support for up to six analog axes, a point-of-view hat, and up to 64 buttons. It also supported up to 16 such devices, which could be connected using any interface, not just the game port.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Game port


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Banat

Banat (, ;  Bánság; Банат) is a geographical and historical region located in the Pannonian Basin that straddles Central and Eastern Europe. It is currently divided among three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania (the counties of Timiș, Caraș-Severin, Arad south of the Mureș river, and the western part of Mehedinți); the western part of Banat is in northeastern Serbia (mostly included in Vojvodina, except for a small part included in the Belgrade Region); and a small northern part lies within southeastern Hungary (Csongrád-Csanád County).

The region's historical ethnic diversity was severely affected by the events of World War II. Today, Banat is mostly populated by ethnic Romanians, Serbs and Hungarians, but small populations of other ethnic groups also live in the region. Nearly all are citizens of either Serbia, Romania or Hungary.

Name
During the Middle Ages, the term "banate" designated a frontier province led by a military governor who was called a ban. Such provinces existed mainly in South Slavic, Hungarian and Romanian lands. In South Slavic and other regional languages, terms for "banate" were: Serbian – бановина/banovina, Hungarian – bánsag, Romanian – banat and Latin – banatus. Several theories have been proposed for the etymological origin of the regionym "Banat". A first theory claims that it comes from the root of a verb found in several Germanic peoples, namely ban. This term means "to proclaim" or "to announce". From there it passed into medieval Latin, under the form bannum, which means – among the Frankish peoples, for example – "proclamation", but also the district on which the said proclamation was to have effects. Another theory puts forward the Persian origin of the word "ban"; in Persian ban (بان) means "master". From this language, it would have been taken over by the Avars and brought to Pannonia, where they ruled in the 6th–8th centuries. Another interpretation is also related to Avars, according to which the origin of the word "ban" would come from the name of the first khagan of the Avar Khaganate, Bayan I. These views are contradicted by those who believe that "ban" comes from an old Proto-Indo-European root, bha, which means "to speak".

At the time of the medieval Hungarian kingdom, the territory of modern Banat appeared in written sources as Temesköz (first mentioned in 1374). The Hungarian name mainly referred to the lowland areas between the Mureș, Tisza and Danube rivers. Its Ottoman name was "Eyalet of Temeşvar" (later "Eyalet of Yanova"). During the Turkish occupation, the territory of Temesköz (Banat) was also called "Rascia" ("the country of the Serbs", 1577). For Romanians, the region was also known as Temișana.

In the early modern period, there were two banates that partially or entirely included the territory of what is referred to in the current era as Banat: the Banate of Lugoj and Caransebeș in the 16th–17th centuries and the Banate of Temeswar in the 18th–19th centuries. The word "Banat" without any other qualification typically refers to the historical Banate of Temeswar, which acquired this title after the 1718 Treaty of Passarowitz. The name was also used from 1941 to 1944, during Axis occupation, for the short-lived political entity (see: Banat (1941–44)), which covered only today's Serbian part of the historical Banat.

The name "Banat" is similar in different languages of the region; Banat, Serbo-Croatian: Банат/Banat, Bánság or Bánát, Банат, Banát, Banat, Βανάτο/Vanáto, Banát, Banat, Банат. Some of these languages would also have other terms, from their own frame of reference, to describe this historical and geographic region.

Geography
Banat is defined as the part of the Pannonian Basin bordered by the Danube to the south, the Tisza to the west, the Mureș to the north and the Southern Carpathians to the east. The historical Banat totals an area of 28,526 km2. Various sources indicate figures slightly different from this. When the province was divided in 1920, Romania was assigned an area of 18,966 km2 (approximately ⅔ of the total), the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes 9,276 km2 (approximately ⅓ of the total), and Hungary 284 km2 (approximately 1% of the total).

The Romanian Banat is mountainous in the south and southeast, while in the north, west and southwest it is flat and in some places marshy. Some Banat mountain massifs constitute the western branch of the Southern Carpathians, i.e., Țarcu Mountains and Cerna Mountains. The Poiana Ruscă Mountains and Banat Mountains with the Semenic, Anina, Dognecea, Almăj and Locva divisions are part of the Western Carpathians. The western pre-mountainous hills make up about a third of the historical Banat territory. Their altitude varies between 200 and 400 meters. The high plain (with altitudes of over 100 meters, up to 140 meters) is represented by the plains of Vinga, Buziaș, Gătaia and Fizeș. The plains with intermediate altitudes, between 100 and 130 meters, are the plains of Hodoni, Duboz, Tormac, Jamu Mare, Arad and Sânnicolau Mare, and the low plain (with altitudes below 100 meters) is represented by the river meadows, the floodplains before the extensive regularization works. These plains, components of the Pannonian Plain, represent another third of the Banat area. Worth mentioning are the two extinct volcanoes from Lucareț and Gătaia: Piatra Roșie (211 m) and Șumigu (200 m), respectively.

The relief of Serbian Banat is monotonous, except for a few morphological units: the Vršac Mountains, the Bela Crkva basin and the east Banat alluvium. The largest stretch of sand in Europe, today stabilized and covered with vegetation, Deliblatska Peščara, also lies in Serbian Banat.

Climate
The climate of Banat is predominantly temperate (Cfb, according to Köppen classification), with a northeastward increase of continental and orographic effects (Dfb). Frequent cyclones from the Mediterranean cause positive precipitation anomalies especially in the western parts and, due to the maritime influence, winters are mild and short, but when northeastern conditions prevail, harsh frosts may occur. Mean annual temperatures range between 12 °C (with average summer temperatures above 22 °C in July) and 6 °C towards the eastern highlands. Besides, temperature inversions occur in the valleys and in the depressions of the Banat Hills, the bottom being colder than the slopes. The thermal and dynamic convection produced on the slopes causes greater cloudiness throughout the year; humidity and precipitation are higher.

Hydrography
Considering the low and undesiccated land, there is a relatively large number of watercourses in Banat. The rivers bordering the area and delimiting it from the rest of the territories are Mureș, Tisza and Danube. With the exception of some small local tributaries, the Mureș does not have a very large area. The other rivers that have their source in Banat are direct or indirect tributaries of the Tisza and the Danube. The Danube forms between Baziaș and Porțile de Fier, over a distance of 140 km, the so-called Iron Gates. Tisza is the river that separates the Banat from the Hungarian areas to the west and divides the current Vojvodina into two parts. A wide river that meanders through the plain that bears its name.

The Timiș/Tamiš is the largest inland river of Banat, which has its sources on the eastern slopes of the Semenic Mountains, in Caraș-Severin County. The river is formed at the confluence of three branches: Semenic, Grădiște and Brebu. It crosses the entire Timiș County, then passes into Serbia, where it flows into the Danube, at Pančevo. The most important cities through which Timiș passes are Caransebeș, Lugoj and Pančevo.

The Bega/Begej springs from the Poiana Ruscă Mountains, crosses the area of Făget and Lugoj, passes through Timișoara, then descends through a channel, flowing into the Tisza, at Titel. Bega and Aranca/Zlatica flow into the Tisza, and Timiș with its tributaries, such as Pogăniș, Bârzava/Brzava, Caraș/Karaš and Nera, flow into the Danube.

There are no large natural lakes. In the past, there were many lakes, ponds and swamps in Banat, which were drained by land reclamation carried out at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. There are bigger lakes only south of Zrenjanin.

History
The first known inhabitants of present-day Banat were the Neolithic populations. In the 4th century BC, Celtic tribes settled in this area. Various Hallstatt and La Tène objects were found in this area. The most important tribes were the Scordisci and the Taurisci. The Scordisci, who formed a powerful state even minted their own coins, imitating the Macedonian tetradrachm. The Scordisci subdued as all the other tribes in the region to the getic ruler Burebista, therefore their region was part of the Dacian kingdom under Burebista in the first century BC, but the balance of power in the area partially changed during the campaigns of Augustus. At the beginning of the 2nd century AD, Trajan led two wars against the Dacians: the campaigns of 101–102, and 105–106. Eventually, the territory of Banat fell under Roman rule. It became an important link between Dacia province and the other parts of the Empire. Roman rule had a significant impact: castra and guard stations were established and roads and public buildings built. The public bath establishments of Ad Aquas Herculis, modern-day Băile Herculane were also established. Some of the important Roman settlements in Banat were: Arcidava (today Vărădia),Centum Putea, Berzobis (today Berzovia), Tibiscum (today Jupa), Agnaviae (today Zăvoi), Ad Pannonios (today Teregova), Praetorium (today Mehadia), and Dierna (today Orșova).

In 273 AD Emperor Aurelian withdrew the Roman Army from Dacia. The area fell into the hands of foederati such as the Sarmatians (Iazyges, Roxolani, Limigantes) and later the Goths, who also took control of other parts of Dacia.

Migration Period and Early Middle Ages

The Goths were forced out by the Huns, who organized their ruling center in the Pannonian Basin (the Pannonian Plain), an area that included the northwestern part of today's Banat. After the death of Attila, the Hunnic empire disintegrated in days. The previously subjected Gepids formed a new kingdom in the area, only to be defeated 100 years later by the Avars.

One governing center of the Avars was formed in the region, which played an important role in the Avar–Byzantine wars. An inscription on one of the vessels from the Treasure of Sânnicolau Mare (which origin is disputed) recorded names of two local rulers, Butaul and Buyla, who bore Slavic ruling titles of župan. The Avar rule over the area lasted until the 9th century, until Charlemagne's campaigns. Banat region became part of the First Bulgarian Empire a few decades later. Archaeological evidence shows the Avars and Gepids lived here until the middle of the 10th century. The Avar rule had triggered considerable Slavic migration to the southern Pannonian plain and to the Balkans.

In 895, the Hungarians living in Etelköz entered the Byzantine-Bulgarian war as allies of Byzantium, and defeated the Bulgars. Because of this, the Bulgarians allied with the Pechenegs, who attacked the Hungarian settlements. This led to the process of what is known as the Hungarian conquest of the Pannonian basin, referred to by them as "hometaking" (honfoglalás) in Hungarian. This also resulted in the loss of part of the territories north of the Danube for the Bulgarian Empire.

According to Gesta Hungarorum chronicle, a local ruler known as Glad ruled over Banat and his army was formed by Vlachs, Bulgarians, and Cumans. Ahtum was another early-11th-century ruler in the territory now known as Banat. His primary source is the Long Life of Saint Gerard, a 14th-century hagiography. Chanadinus, Ahtum's former commander-in-chief, defeated and killed Ahtum, occupying his realm.

Hungarian administration (11th–16th centuries)

Banat was administered by the First Bulgarian Empire from the 9th to the 11th century, but that control gradually migrated to the Kingdom of Hungary which administered it from the 11th century up until 1552, when the region of Temesvár (today Timișoara) was captured by the Ottoman Empire.

The area of the Timiș river was not the land of the Hungarian royal tribe. When nomadic Hungarians came to Transylvania there was no direct Bulgarian political rule there. In the eastern part of the Carpathian basin the Byzantine rite became more influential after Ajtony's (Ahtum) conversion to Christianity. This was halted with the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary. István I reasserted dominance over the last local leader, Ajtony. He was a semi-independent ruler of Banat and a formally baptized Christian who constructed a Byzantine monastery at Morisena, but still kept 7 wives and worshiped Pagan gods at his Court. His vassal Csanád defeated him by the will of King Stephen I of Hungary. The territory of the modern Banat did not form a separate territorial unit in medieval Kingdom of Hungary, it was an integral part of it. The territory was shared by Krassó, Keve, Temes, Csanád, Arad and Torontál counties.

In 1233, under the Kingdom of Hungary administration, the Banate of Severin, a military frontier area was formed, including some eastern parts of the modern Banat. In the 14th century, the region became of priority concern to the Kingdom, as the southern border of Banat was the most important defensive line against Ottoman expansion from the southeast.

Ottoman administration (1552–1716)

The Ottoman Empire took over the area and incorporated Banat in 1552. It was absorbed as an Ottoman eyalet (province) named the Eyalet of Temeşvar. The Banat region was mainly populated by Rascians (Serbs) in the west, and Vlachs (Romanians) in the east. Thus, in some historical sources, the region of Banat was referred to as Rascia, while in others as Wallachia. Numerous Ottoman Muslims settled in the area, living mostly in the cities and associated with trade and administration.

Not all of Banat fell immediately under Turkish rule. Eastern regions around Lugoj and Caransebeș came under the rule of Princes of Transylvania. In that area, a new banate was formed, known as the Banate of Lugoj and Caransebeș.

In the spring of 1594, shortly after the beginning of the Austro-Turkish War (1593-1606), local Serbian Christians, in the Eyalet of Temeşvar, started an uprising against Turkish rule. The local Romanians also participated in this uprising. At first, rebels were successful. They took the city of Vršac and various other towns in Banat and started negotiations with Prince of Transylvania. One of the leaders of the uprising was local Serbian Orthodox Bishop Theodore.

In the middle of the 17th century, the territory of Banate of Lugoj and Caransebeș finally fell under Turkish rule and was incorporated into Eyalet of Temeşvar.

During Austro-Turkish War (1683–1699), local Serbian uprisings broke out in various parts of Eyalet of Temeşvar. Austrian armies and Serbian militia tried to drive out sultans army from the province, but Turks succeeded in holding the fort of Temesvár. In 1689, Serbian patriarch Arsenije III sided with Austrians. His jurisdiction (including the province) was officially recognized by the charters of emperor Leopold I in 1690, 1691 and 1695. Under the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), northern parts of the Eyalet of Temeşvar were incorporated into the Habsburg monarchy, but the territory of Banat remained under Turkish rule.

Habsburg administration (1716–1867)

At the beginning of the next Austro-Turkish War (1716–1718), Prince Eugene of Savoy took the Banat region from the Turks. After the Treaty of Passarowitz (1718), the region became a province of the Habsburg Monarchy. It was not incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary. Special provincial administration was established, centered in Temesvár.

In 1738, over 50 Romanian villages from Serbia and Banat were destroyed and dwellers murdered by Austrians and Serb militia during a revolt of Romanians. Also governor of the province was not given the title of "ban", the region became known as the Banate of Temes or Banat of Temeswar. It remained a separate province within the Habsburg monarchy and under military administration until 1751, when Empress Maria Theresa of Austria reorganized the province, dividing it between military and civil administration. The Banat of Temeswar province was abolished in 1778, when civilian part of the region was incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary and divided into counties. The southern part of the Banat region remained within the Military Frontier (Banat Krajina) until the Frontier was abolished in 1871.

During the Ottoman rule, parts of Banat had a low population density due to years of warfare, and some local residents also died during Habsburg-Ottoman wars and Prince Eugene of Savoy's conquest. Much of the area had reverted to nearly uninhabited marsh, heath and forest. Count Claudius Mercy (1666–1734), who was appointed governor of the Banat of Temeswar in 1720, took numerous measures for the regeneration of Banat. He recruited German artisans and especially farmers from Bavaria and other southern areas as colonists, allowing them privileges such as keeping their language and religion in their settlements. Farmers brought their families and belongings on rafts down the Danube River, and were encouraged to restore farming in the area. They cleared the marshes near the Danube and Tisa rivers, helped build roads and canals, and re-established agriculture. Trade was also encouraged.

Maria Theresa also took a direct interest in Banat; she colonized the region with large numbers of German farmers, who were admired for their agricultural skills. She encouraged the exploitation of the mineral wealth of the country, and generally developed the measures that were introduced by Count Mercy. German settlers arrived from Swabia, Alsace and Bavaria, as did German-speaking colonists from Austria. Many settlements in the eastern Banat were developed by Germans and had ethnic-German majorities. The ethnic Germans in the Banat region became known as the Danube Swabians, or Donauschwaben. After years of separation from their original German provinces, their language was markedly different, preserving historic characteristics.

Similarly, a minority coming from French-speaking or linguistically mixed communes in Lorraine maintained the French language for several generations, and developed a specific ethnic identity, later known as Banat French, Français du Banat.

In 1779, the Banat region was incorporated into the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary, and the three counties of Torontal, Temes and Karasch were created. In 1848, after the May Assembly, the western Banat became part of the Serbian Vojvodina, a Serbian autonomous region within the Habsburg Monarchy. During the Revolutions of 1848–1849, Banat was respectively held by Serbian and Hungarian troops.

After the Revolution of 1848–1849, Banat (together with Syrmia and Bačka) was designated as a separate Austrian crownland known as the Voivodeship of Serbia and Temes Banat. In 1860 this province was abolished and most of its territory was incorporated into the Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary.

The Serbian Banat (Western Banat) was part of Serbian Vojvodina (1848–1849) and part of the Voivodeship of Serbia and Temes Banat (1849–1860). After 1860, later Serbian Banat was part of Torontal and Temes counties of Habsburg Kingdom of Hungary. The center of Torontal county was Großbetschkerek (Hungarian: Nagybecskerek, Serbian: Veliki Bečkerek), the current Zrenjanin.

Hungarian administration (1867–1918)
In 1867, after the Austro-Hungarian compromise the territory returned again to Hungarian administration. After 1871, the former Military Frontier, located in southern parts of Banat, came under civil administration and was incorporated into Banat's counties. Krassó and Szörény were united into Krassó-Szörény in 1881.

The Banat Question at the end of First World War
In 1918, the Banat Republic was proclaimed in Timișoara in October, and the government of Hungary recognized its independence. However, it was short-lived. After just two weeks, Serbian troops invaded the region and took control. From November 1918 to March 1919, western and central parts of Banat were governed by Serbian administration from Novi Sad, as part of the Banat, Bačka and Baranja province of the Kingdom of Serbia and newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (which was later renamed as Yugoslavia).

In the wake of the Declaration of Union of Transylvania with Romania on December 1, 1918, and the Declaration of Unification of Banat, Bačka and Baranja with Serbia on November 25, 1918, most of Banat was (on July 26, 1919) divided between Romania (Krassó-Szörény completely, two-thirds of Temes, and a small part of Torontál) and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (most of Torontál, and one-third of Temes). A small area near Szeged was assigned to the newly independent Hungary. These borders were confirmed by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles and the 1920 Treaty of Trianon.

At the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the delegates of the Romanian and some German communities voted for union with Romania during the Great National Assembly of Alba Iulia; the delegates of the Serbian, Bunjevac and other Slavic and non-Slavic communities (including some Germans) voted for union with Serbia during the Great People's Assembly of Serbs, Bunjevci and other Slavs in Banat, Bačka and Baranja; while the Hungarian minority remained loyal to the government in Budapest. Besides these declarations, no other plebiscite was held.

Romanian Banat since the First World War

In 1938, the counties of Timiș-Torontal, Caraș, Severin, Arad and Hunedoara were joined to form ținutul Timiș, which roughly encompassed the area typically called Banat in Romania.

On 6 September 1950, the province was replaced by the Timișoara Region (formed by the present-day counties of Timiș and Caraș-Severin). In 1956, the southern half of the existing Arad Region was incorporated to the Timișoara Region. In December 1960, the Timișoara Region was renamed the Banat Region.

On 17 February 1968, a new territorial division was made and today's Timiș, Caraș-Severin and Arad counties were formed.

Since 1998, Romania has been divided into eight development regions, acting as divisions that coordinate and implement regional development. The Vest development region is composed of four counties: Arad, Timiș, Hunedoara and Caraș-Severin; thus it has almost same borders as the Timiș Province (ținutul Timiș) of 1938. The Vest development region is also a part of the Danube-Criș-Mureș-Tisa Euroregion.

Serbian Banat since the First World War

The region was claimed by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes between 1918 and 1922 (as the province of Banat, Bačka and Baranja between 1918 and 1919) and from 1922 to 1929 it was divided between Belgrade oblast and Podunavlje oblast. In 1929, most of the region was incorporated into the Danube Banovina (Danubian Banat), a province of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, while the city of Pančevo was incorporated into self-governed Belgrade district.

During World War II, the Axis Powers occupied this area and partitioned it. Nazi Germany had been intent on expanding into eastern Europe to incorporate what it called the Volksdeutsche, people of ethnic German descent. They established the political entity known as Banat in 1941. It included only the western part of the historical Banat region, which was formerly part of Yugoslavia. It was formally under the control of the Serbian puppet Government of National Salvation in Belgrade led by Milan Nedić. It theoretically had limited jurisdiction over all of the territory under German Military Administration in Serbia, but in practice the local minority of ethnic Germans (Danube Swabians or Shwoveh) held the political power within Banat. The regional civilian commissioner was Josef Lapp. The head of the ethnic German group was Sepp Janko. Following the ousting of Axis forces in 1944, this German-ruled region was dissolved. As a consequence, much of the local Germans fled from the region together with defeated German army in 1944. Most of its territory was included in the Vojvodina, one of the two autonomous provinces of Serbia within the new SFR Yugoslavia. Following WWII, most ethnic Germans were expelled from Banat and eastern Europe. Those Germans who remained in the country were sent to prison camps run by the new communist authorities. After prison camps were dissolved (in 1948), most of the remaining German population left Serbia because of economic reasons. Many went to Germany; others emigrated to western Europe and the United States.

Since 1944–1945, the Serbian Banat (together with Bačka and Syrmia), has been part of the Serbian Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, first as part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and then as part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Serbia and Montenegro. Since 2006, it has been part of an independent Serbia.

Hungarian Banat since the First World War
The Hungarian Banat consists of a small northern part of the region, which is part of the Csongrád-Csanád County of Hungary and is made up of seven villages and the district of Szeged, Újszeged. The Hungarian part of Banat used to be the northernmost region of the Torontál County in the Kingdom of Hungary.

Administrative organization
In Romania, Banat includes all of Timiș and Caraș-Severin counties (with the exception of Băuțar), Arad County (only the part south of the Mureș), the Mehedinți panhandle (several localities from the traditional Banat area disappeared under the waters of the Porțile de Fier reservoir) and Hunedoara County (only the villages of Pojoga and Sălciva).

The Serbian Banat includes the part located east of the Tisza in Vojvodina: North Banat District, Central Banat District and South Banat District, as well as a part of Central Serbia (the area called Pančevački Rit, forming the left part of the Danube in the municipality of Palilula, included in the Belgrade metropolitan area).

In Hungary, there is only a small part of Csongrád-Csanád County, namely the part located in the southern angle formed by the Tisza and Mureș rivers, up to the state border with Romania and Serbia.

Largest cities
The following table lists the cities in Banat with a population greater than 10,000 (2022). Some cities that are not historically part of Banat expanded into this region during the 20th century, so that today some districts lie in the historical Banat: Arad (Aradu Nou), Belgrade (Palilula) and Szeged (Újszeged).

Romanian Banat
Romanians form a majority in the south, center and east of Banat. Their share increased, after 1930, also in the Timiș Plain (where they were a minority) through immigration from Transylvania, Moldavia and Oltenia. In some settlements the majority is made up of other peoples: Serbs make up the absolute majority in Pojejena (Пожежена) and Svinița (Свињица), and the relative majority in Socol (Соколовац); Croats (Krašovani) make up the majority in Carașova (Karaševo) and Lupac (Lupak); Bulgarians make up the majority in Dudeștii Vechi (Stár Bišnov); while Ukrainians make up the majority in Știuca (Щука) and Copăcele (Копашиль).

Serbian Banat
In most cities and municipalities of the Serbian Banat, the majority population is Serbian. Hungarians make up the majority of the population in Čoka (Csóka), and Slovaks make up the relative majority in the ethnically mixed municipality of Kovačica. Romanians make up the majority in certain settlements, and Czechs in Češko Selo.

Hungarian Banat
In the Hungarian part of Banat, the majority population is Hungarian, but in some villages in the region (Deszk/Деска, Szőreg/Сириг, Újszentiván/Нови Сентиван) there is also a Serbian minority.

Symbols
The traditional heraldic symbol of Banat is a lion, which is nowadays present in both the coat of arms of Romania and the coat of arms of Vojvodina. It is assumed that the Banat lion has its origin in the Cuman lion.

The current coat of arms of the Romanian Banat was designed in 1921, after the union of the Banat with the Kingdom of Romania, by the heraldist József Sebestyén by combining some elements from the coats of arms of Temes and Krassó counties from 1779 to represent the "Romanian Banat of Severin". It consists of a red shield in which is represented a golden lion rampant emerging from a golden bridge with two arched openings, built of carved stone, over an azure river. According to its author, "the lion is the old (Cuman) element, the bridge is the new element, Trajan's Bridge over the Danube". The coat of arms from 1921 was modified in 1992 by adding a sabre in the right paw, recalling the backsword of Pál Kinizsi, count of Temes.

Serbs use the seal of the Velika Kikinda District of 1774 to represent Banat. It also features a golden lion rampant with a sabre in the right paw and a severed Turkish head in the left one.

Notable people

 * Radomir Antić (1948–2020), football player and coach
 * Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin (1858–1935), Serbian physicist, physical chemist and philanthropist
 * Iolanda Balaș (1936–2016), high jumper
 * Béla Bartók (1881–1945), composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist
 * Miodrag Belodedici (b. 1964), football player and coach
 * Dejan Bodiroga (b. 1973), basketball player
 * Nicu Covaci (b. 1947), singer
 * Sava II Branković, Orthodox priest and Saint
 * Vuk Drašković (b. 1946), writer and politician
 * Nicolae Kovács (b. 1911), fotballer
 * Nikola Grbić (b. 1973), volleyball player and coach
 * Vladimir Grbić (b. 1970), volleyball player
 * Arnold Hauser (1892–1978), art historian and sociologist
 * Aleksa Janković (1806-1869), Prime Minister of Serbia, born in Timișoara
 * Ion Ivanovici (1845–1902), military band conductor and composer
 * Francesco Illy (1892–1956), inventor of coffee machine and businessman
 * Đura Jakšić (1832–1878), painter, poet, storyteller and playwright
 * Károly Kerényi (1897–1973), philologist and father of Greek mythology studies
 * Ștefan Kovács (1920–1995), football player and coach
 * Nikolaus Lenau (1802–1850), poet
 * Bela Lugosi (1882–1956), actor
 * Herta Müller (b. 1953), novelist, poet and essayist
 * Dorinel Munteanu (b. 1968), football player and coach
 * Dositej Obradović (1742-1811), writer
 * Ana Pacatiuș (born 1939), folksinger
 * Vasko Popa (1922–1991), poet
 * Julieta Szönyi (b. 1949), actor
 * Ștefan Szönyi (1913–1967) (hu; ro) painter
 * Döme Sztójay (1883–1946), soldier and diplomat
 * Zoran Tošić (b. 1987), football player
 * Traian Vuia (1872–1950), inventor and aviation pioneer
 * Zvonimir Vukić (b. 1979), football player
 * Ivana Vuleta (b. 1990), long jumper
 * Johnny Weissmuller (1904–1984), swimmer, water polo player and actor

title: Banat


text:
Haribo

Haribo GmbH & Co. KG, doing business as Haribo, is a German confectionery company founded by Hans Riegel Sr. It began in Kessenich, Bonn, Germany. The name "Haribo" is a syllabic abbreviation formed from Hans Riegel Bonn. The company created the first gummy candy in 1922 in the form of little gummy bears called Gummibärchen. The current headquarters are in Grafschaft, Germany.

History
On 13 December 1920, the company was registered in the commercial register by its founder Johannes Riegel. In 1921, his wife Gertrud Riegel was the company's first employee. According to the company, Riegel's seed capital was a sack of sugar, a copper pot, a marble slab, a stool, a stonewalled stove and a roller. In the same year, he bought a house that was located in the Bonn district Kessenich on a street called Bergstraße. The house was Haribo's first production facility.

Two years after the company's foundation, Hans Riegel invented the precursor of the Goldbear, who was still called Tanzbär (Dancing Bear) at that time. However, it was not only bigger than the present gummi bears, but also softer, due to the use of gum arabic instead of the now common gelatine.

In 1925, Haribo began producing licorice products. The sales organization in Germany and the main building of the new production facility were established at the beginning of the 1930s.

According to the company, production fell immensely during the Second World War, partly due to a shortage of raw materials. In 2000, Haribo was suspected of having employed forced labourers during this war. However, the manufacturer denied this and consequently refused to pay into the forced labour fund. After Johann Riegel's early death in March 1945, the company was initially continued by his wife. After the sons Hans and Paul returned from captivity in 1946, they took over management.

Hans Riegel junior represented the company externally, while Paul Riegel headed research and product development and hardly ever appeared in public. In 1957, Haribo took over the Godesberg company Kleutgen & Meier, where Hans Riegel senior had had his first job. In 1961, Haribo took over Bonera Industrie en Handelsmaatschappij NV in Breda and continued to run it as Haribo Nederland BV. In the 1960s, a new headquarters building opened in Bonn.

In 1967, Haribo acquired shares in the French confectionery factory Lorette from Marseille, which was renamed Haribo-France SA. In 1987 it merged with the southern French manufacturer Ricqles Zan to form Haribo Ricqles-Zan with production facilities in Marseille, Uzès and Wattrelos. The company's only small factory museum is also located at the Uzès site. In 1968, Haribo bought shares in the Solingen company Dr. Hillers, they took it over completely in 1979. From 1980 onwards, a new production facility was built at the site in three expansion phases. In October 2011, the Solingen location was expanded to include a high-bay warehouse, an office building and a goods handling hall.

Haribo since expanded its operations, taking over many local confectionery manufacturers around the world. It began international expansion in the 1960s and entered American markets in the 1980s. As of 2013, it operated 16 factories which produce over 100 million gummi bears per day.

In 1986, the confectionery company Haribo from Bonn bought the production and rights to the Maoam candy  and Haribo Chamallows (formerly “Dulcia”). The company headquarters was in the Kessenich district of Bonn until 2018; in May 2018 it was relocated to the municipality of Grafschaft in Rhineland-Palatinate. Bonn continues to be a production location.

In October 2003, Hans Riegel junior announced that one of his nephews, Hans-Jürgen Riegel (* 1956), would be his successor. He managed the company in France until 2005, but then fell out with his uncle and left the company. Co-owner Paul Riegel died unexpectedly on the night of 3 August 2009.

After the good relationship with his nephew broke down, Hans Riegel decided to leave the question of succession open. This led to a conflict between the Haribo family tribes, as Paul Riegel's sons continued a complaint to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry that had been initiated by their father in the summer of 2008 to clarify the legally issues. After their temporary suspension, an amicable overall solution was finally developed and presented in 2010.

Haribo-Holding GmbH & Co. KG was then re-established. The Paul Riegel Family Holding and the Hans Riegel Holding, which was newly founded for this occasion, each have a half stake. At the same time, two intermediate holding companies were created below the new parent company to bundle the German business on the one hand and the international business on the other. Hans-Guido (* ~1966), Paul Riegel's son from his first marriage, became, like his father, managing director for production and technology alongside his uncle Hans, who continued to look after marketing and sales. Hans-Arndt (* ~1968), Paul Riegel's son from his second marriage, took over the chairmanship of a new four-member supervisory board. Long-time employee Andreas Nickenig (* ~1968), who was considered Hans Riegel's foster son and got along well with Paul's sons of the same age, also had a strong role in managing the foreign business.

Hans Riegel died during rehabilitation after the removal of a brain tumour on 15 October 2013. His position was filled by the Hans Riegel Foundation, which was founded in 1987 and is now headed by Reinhard Schneider, authorized representative and also a long-time employee of Hans Riegel.

Present
Haribo production is made up of around 7,000 employees in four plants in Germany and ten more in other European countries. As of June 2003, Haribo products were distributed in more than a hundred countries. In 2008, the Federal Cartel Office initiated proceedings against the company and other confectionery manufacturers for illegal price fixing. In 2012, the Federal Cartel Office imposed a fine of a total of 2.4 million euros on Haribo and a responsible sales employee. The reason was anti-competitive agreements with competing companies in which negotiations with retailers were exchanged.

Relocation of the company headquarters
Since 2005, there has been public speculation about the company's plans to relocate the Bonn location with its 1,300 employees because expansion are no longer possible there. The Rhineland-Palatinate town of Gelsdorf (community of Grafschaft) and its North Rhine-Westphalian neighboring town of Rheinbach were discussed as new locations.

In April 2018, the company moved its head office from Bonn to Grafschaft. Some factory capacity remained in Bonn.

Goldbears
Goldbears are fruit gums in the shape of stylized bears, that are two centimeters in size and consist of sugar, sugar syrup, colorants and flavorings. They also contain acidifiers, coating agents, water and a gelatin mixture, which gives the bears their rubbery consistency. Since 1960, Haribo calls its gummi bears Goldbears, in order to distinguish them from other manufacturers' products. In 2005, Haribo produced about 100 million Goldbears daily in 15 establishments throughout Europe to ensure the distribution in over 100 countries. The Goldbears account for Haribo's largest revenue share. According to the company, their brand awareness in Germany is 99 percent and the Goldbear stands for childlike happiness.

For the German market, they are colored with natural fruit extracts, in contrast to the use of colorants in the past. Although there are enough possibilities today to create a shade of blue, making the production of blue Goldbears theoretically conceivable, the Haribo management does not want to make any changes to the traditional product.

In August 2007, the product range was partly changed by adding apple as a new flavor and giving it the color green. The strawberry flavor, which was hitherto assigned to the color green, was recolored to light red. Additionally, the shape of the Goldbears was slightly changed, compared to the former generations, by giving them a smiling face.

Devoted to the UEFA Euro in 2008, Haribo produced Schwarz-Rot-Goldbären: a black, red and yellow Goldbear mix. The mix, which was inspired by the color combination of the German flag, contained the flavors blackcurrant (black), raspberry (red) and lemon (yellow). For the first time ever, Haribo developed black Goldbears, which, besides blackcurrant, also contained elder extract.

On the occasion of the FIFA World Cup in 2014, Haribo produced the Goldbären-Fan-Edition. This mix included gummi bears in cherry (dark red), grapefruit (red), watermelon (green), woodruff (dark green) and apricot (orange) flavor as well as blue Goldbears in blueberry flavor. Included Haribo made a zero sugar version of the gummy bears were discontinued because people got Diarrhea because of maltitol in the candy.

There is a halal version of Haribo Goldbears in various countries (including the United Kingdom); Imported from Turkey where it is manufactured using beef gelatin which is permissible if slaughtered accordingly to Islamic dietary laws which uses the dhabihah method. They have the halal certification on the packaging.

UK presence
Haribo entered the UK sweets market by buying Dunhill's in 1972, a manufacturer of liquorice Pontefract cakes which was founded in the 18th century.

Haribo's key brands in the UK are Starmix, Tangfastics, Supermix and Maoam, with Maoam being a brand of chewy sweets being bought in 1986 from Edmund Münster, the manufacturer who originally owned Maoam when it was first launched in Germany back in 1931. They were once the distributor of Pez products in the United Kingdom, but this is no longer the case. Haribo makes Pontefract Cakes at their factory in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, and other locations. The company owns seven shops in the UK located in Pontefract, the West Midlands, York, Cheshire, East Midlands, Somerset and Kent.

US presence
Haribo had been imported into the United States since 1982. In Germany, Haribo was not an exclusive gourmet product, but a mere candy. When Haribo of America was incorporated in the 1980s in Baltimore, Maryland, Haribo's gummi candies were introduced to the US mass market through retailers such as drugstores, grocery stores and discount stores. The packaging was translated into English, and package weights were adjusted to match US candy prices and package sizes. A laydown bag was developed for the US supermarket trade, instead of the hanging bag commonly found in German supermarkets, and a boxed product was developed for theaters.

Sales soared the first year, and gummi bears became so popular in the US that the US market was soon flooded with competitors such as German Trolli and American Black Forest.

In 2015, Haribo of America moved to the Chicago, Illinois area and established their headquarters in Rosemont, Illinois. On 23 March 2017, Haribo announced the opening of its first US factory, a 500,000 sq ft (46,500 m2), 400 employee manufacturing plant in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, scheduled to start construction in 2020 by Gilbane Building Company.

In 2023, the US factory went live and began producing Goldbears. Haribo factories do not give tours.

International distribution
Haribo plans to expand to China and Brazil. In China, it has launched test stores in Shanghai and in Guangdong province. New production facilities opened in Castleford, West Yorkshire, in 2016, and it plans to open in São Paulo, Brazil.

Slogans
Haribo's German catchphrase is "Haribo macht Kinder froh – und Erwachsene ebenso" ("Haribo makes children happy – and adults as well"). The German advertisements starred Thomas Gottschalk from 1991 until 2015. In English-speaking countries, it uses the slogan "Kids and grown-ups love it so – the happy world of Haribo". In Hungary, it uses the slogan "Gyermek, felnőtt kedve jó – édes élet, Haribo" ("Child and adult is happy – sweet life, Haribo"). "Haribo c'est beau la vie, pour les grands et les petits" ("Haribo life is beautiful, for big ones and little ones") is used in France, while in Italy the song used during commercials is: "Haribo è la bontà, che si gusta ad ogni età" ("Haribo is the delicacy that one can taste at any age").

In Turkey, it uses the slogan "Çocuk ya da büyük ol, Haribo'yla mutlu ol" ("Be a kid or a grown up, be happy with Haribo"). In Denmark, it uses the slogan "Luk op for noget godt! Luk op for Haribo! Den er go'" ("Open for something good! Open for Haribo! It is good"). In Spain "Vive un sabor mágico, ven al mundo Haribo" ("Experience a magical flavour, come to Haribo's world") slogan is used. Similar slogans are used in other languages. The Haribo jingle music was created by UK composer Stephen Lee Vickers.

title: Haribo


text:
Argeș County

Argeș County is a county (județ) of Romania, in Muntenia, with the capital city at Pitești.

Demographics
At the 2021 census, the county had a population of 569,932 and the population density was. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 612,431 and the population density was.

 * Romanians – 97%
 * Roma (Gypsies) and other ethnic groups – 3%

Geography
This county has a total area of 6862 km2. The landforms can be split into 3 distinctive parts. In the north side there are the mountains, from the Southern Carpathians group – the Făgăraș Mountains with Moldoveanu Peak (2,544 m), Negoiu Peak (2,535 m) and Vânătoarea lui Buteanu peak (2,508 m) towering the region, and in the North-East part the Leaotă Mountains. Between them there is a pass towards Brașov, the Rucăr–Bran Pass. The heights decrease, and in the center there are the sub-carpathian hills, with heights around 800 m, crossed with very deep valleys. In the south there is the northern part of the Wallachian Plain.

The main river that crosses the county is the Argeș River in which almost all the other rivers coming from the mountains flow. In the south the main rivers are the Vedea River and the Teleorman River.

Neighbours

 * Dâmbovița County in the east.
 * Vâlcea County and Olt County in the west.
 * Sibiu County and Brașov County in the north.
 * Teleorman County in the south.

Economy
The county is one of the most industrialized counties in Romania. There is one oil refinery and two automobile plants at Mioveni – the Dacia Renault car plant, and at Câmpulung the ARO plant.

The predominant industries in the county are:
 * Automotive
 * Chemical
 * Electrical equipment
 * Home appliances
 * Food
 * Textiles
 * Construction materials

Oil is being extracted in the center and in the south. Also there are a few coal mines and close to Mioveni there is a nuclear research and production facility making nuclear fuels for the Cernavodă Nuclear Electric Power Plant. On the Argeș River there are a great number of hydroelectric power plants, the most impressive being the Vidraru power plant and dam.

The hillsides are well suited for wines and fruit orchards, and the south is suited for cereal crops.

Tourism
The main tourist destinations are:
 * The city of Pitești
 * The city of Curtea de Argeș, where one of the most well known monasteries in Romania is located
 * The Câmpulung – Rucăr area
 * The Făgăraș Mountains – the Transfăgărășan
 * The Leaota Mountains
 * The Poienari Castle
 * The Cotmeana monastery.

Politics
The Argeș County Council, renewed at the 2020 local elections, consists of 34 counsellors, with the following party composition:

Administrative divisions
Argeș County has 3 cities, 4 towns, and 95 communes:
 * Municipalities
 * Câmpulung
 * Curtea de Argeș
 * Pitești – county seat; population: 141,275 (as of 2021)
 * Towns
 * Costești
 * Mioveni
 * Ștefănești
 * Topoloveni

 * Communes
 * Albeștii de Argeș
 * Albeștii de Muscel
 * Albota
 * Aninoasa
 * Arefu
 * Băbana
 * Băiculești
 * Bălilești
 * Bârla
 * Bascov
 * Beleți-Negrești
 * Berevoești
 * Bogați
 * Boteni
 * Boțești
 * Bradu
 * Brăduleț
 * Budeasa
 * Bughea de Jos
 * Bughea de Sus
 * Buzoești
 * Căldăraru
 * Călinești
 * Căteasca
 * Cepari
 * Cetățeni
 * Cicănești
 * Ciofrângeni
 * Ciomăgești
 * Cocu
 * Corbeni
 * Corbi
 * Coșești
 * Cotmeana
 * Cuca
 * Dâmbovicioara
 * Dârmanești
 * Davidești
 * Dobrești
 * Domnești
 * Drăganu
 * Dragoslavele
 * Godeni
 * Hârsești
 * Hârtiești
 * Izvoru
 * Leordeni
 * Lerești
 * Lunca Corbului
 * Mălureni
 * Mărăcineni
 * Merișani
 * Micești
 * Mihăești
 * Mioarele
 * Miroși
 * Morărești
 * Moșoaia
 * Mozăceni
 * Mușătești
 * Negrași
 * Nucșoara
 * Oarja
 * Pietroșani
 * Poiana Lacului
 * Poienarii de Argeș
 * Poienarii de Muscel
 * Popești
 * Priboieni
 * Râca
 * Rătești
 * Recea
 * Rociu
 * Rucăr
 * Sălătrucu
 * Săpata
 * Schitu Golești
 * Slobozia
 * Stâlpeni
 * Ștefan cel Mare
 * Stoenești
 * Stolnici
 * Șuici
 * Suseni
 * Teiu
 * Tigveni
 * Țițești
 * Uda
 * Ungheni
 * Valea Danului
 * Valea Iașului
 * Valea Mare-Pravăț
 * Vedea
 * Vlădești
 * Vulturești

Historical county
The county was located in the central-southern part of the Greater Romania, in the western part of the historic Muntenia region. Its territory comprised a large part of the current county, and a piece of the western part of the present Vâlcea County. It was bordered on the west by the counties of Olt and Vâlcea, to the north by the counties Făgăraș and Sibiu, to the east by the counties Muscel and Dâmbovița, and to the south by the counties Teleorman and Vlașca.

Administration
The county was originally (to 1925) divided administratively into five districts (plăși):
 * 1) Plasa Argeș, headquartered at Curtea de Argeș
 * 2) Plasa Dâmbovnic, headquartered at Rociu
 * 3) Plasa Oltul, headquartered at Jiblea Veche
 * 4) Plasa Teleorman, headquartered at Costești
 * 5) Plasa Uda, headquartered at Uda

Subsequently, Plasa Uda was divided into two districts, and some territory was transferred from Plasa Oltul: Plasa Cuca, headquartered at Cuca, which town was formerly in Plasa Oltul Plasa Pitești, headquartered at Pitești

Population
According to the 1930 census data, the county population was 257,378 inhabitants, out of which 97.6% were ethnic Romanians. From the religious point of view, the population was 99.1% Eastern Orthodox, 0.3% Roman Catholic, 0.3% Jewish, as well as other minorities.

Urban population
In 1930, the county's urban population was 26,341 inhabitants, comprising 90.4% Romanians, 2.2% Jews, 2.0% Hungarians, 1.7% Romanies, 1.1% Germans, as well as other minorities. From the religious point of view, the urban population was composed of 93.0% Eastern Orthodox, 2.4% Roman Catholic, 2.4% Jewish, 0.7% Reformed, 0.7% Lutheran, as well as other minorities.

title: Argeș County


text:
Carlsten

Carlsten (Karlstens fästning) is a stone fortress located at Marstrand, on the western coast of Sweden. The fortress was built on the orders of King Carl X of Sweden following the Treaty of Roskilde, 1658 to protect the newly acquired province of Bohuslän from hostile attacks. The site of Marstrand was chosen because of its location and its access to an ice free port. The fortress was decommissioned as a permanent defense installation in 1882, but remained in military use until the early 1990s.

History
After peace in Roskilde in 1658, Bohuslän and thus Marstrand became Swedish. The city has long been a major trading place. Since the harbor almost never freezes, part of the Swedish Navy was stationed here. To defend Marstrand, Karl X Gustav decided to build a fortress on the island. On July 23, 1677, after an attack on the fortifications in Marstrand, Carlsten was conquered by Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve, the Danish military commander in Norway. In 1719, the fortress was attacked and besieged for a second time in its history by the Norwegian Vice-Admiral Tordenskjold, falling into enemy hands. The fortress was returned to Swedish control through negotiations and treaties.

Construction
In 1658, under the leadership of Johan Wärnschöld, a makeshift fortification was built in the form of a wooden  Wahlen skans, at the top of the mountain above the city's "big weather mill". This fortification was of great use in the fall of 1659 to fight back the attack carried out by Norwegian forces. In 1666, the construction of a replacement building for the wooden edging, which "struck", began. This new fortress was in the form of a Roman redoubt, or tower building with four small ravelins. In 1671–73, the tower, which was then called Karlsten, was built on one floor and was equipped with a roof battery. Initially a square stone tower was constructed, but in 1681, the construction of a large round shaped tower began, following the commander Carl Gustaf Frölich's design, but otherwise new construction, on drawings created by Erik Dahlbergh, was approved in general in 1685, and as early as 1689 the fortress itself was almost completed, consisting then of a brick redoubt and a high multi-storey tower, which included the former square.

The work was carried out by prisoners sentenced to penal labour. Successive additions to the fortress were carried out until 1860 when it was finally completed. Carlsten was exclusively a prison for men. Nonetheless, Metta Fock, a female prisoner, was to have been kept there 1806-1809. The most famous prisoner of Carlsten was arguably Lasse-Maja, who was imprisoned here in 1813-1838.

title: Carlsten


text:
Antsiranana

Antsiranana (Antsiranana ), named Diego-Suarez prior to 1975, is a city in the far north of Madagascar. Antsiranana is the capital of Diana Region. It had an estimated population of 115,015 in 2013.

History
At the beginning of the 16th century, a Portuguese squadron of 13 ships crisscrossed the Indian Ocean; One of these ships went adrift, and its captain, Diego Diaz, was therefore the first European to discover the Big Island on August 10, 1500. In February 1506, Admiral Herman Suarez recognized the place and so Antomabokala, former capital of Ankarana, acquired its name of Diego Suarez, which comes from the contraction of the first name of the captain and the name of the Admiral. In 1635, the bay was mentioned for the first time under this name by the French pilot Berthelot, author of an oriental map of Africa and Madagascar. In 1824, the bay was explored by the English hydrographer Owen, then in 1833, Captain Bigeault, commandant of La Nièvre, traveled the North East coast to carry out hydrographic surveys.

In the 1880s, the bay was coveted by France, which desired it as a coaling station for steamships. After the first Franco-Hova War, Queen Ranavalona III signed a treaty on December 17, 1885, granting France a protectorate over the bay and surrounding territory, as well as the islands of Nosy-Be and Ste. Marie de Madagascar.

The French took possession of their new colony and the Bay of Diego Suarez (also called Bay of Antomboko at that time). It was then called Etablissement français de Diego-Suarez (French Establishment of Diego-Suarez) and was placed under the command of Frigate captain Caillet who is the founder of the city of Diego Suarez.

The first barracks were built at Cap Diego. The first habitants of the new colony were Creoles from Réunion & Mauritius, as well as from the French possession of Toamasina, Nosy Be, Ile Sainte-Marie, Mayotte and Mahajanga.

Run away slaves (Makoas), Antankarana and Sakalava made up another big part of the population. In 1886 the colony had a population of 2500 habitants. In 1887 a civil governor, Froger, replaced Caillet. In 1888 the islands of Nosy Be and Ile Sainte-Marie were attached to the colony. In 1900 the Decauville railway at Diégo Suarez was built. The Second Pacific Squadron of Imperial Russia anchored and was resupplied at Diego-Suarez on its way to the Battle of Tsushima in 1905.

On 21 March 1909 were laid down the first bricks of the cathedrale. In 1919 there was an epidemics of the Spanish flu followed by an outbreak of the plague in 1920. Still, in 1925 the Province de Diego-Suarez had 13695 habitants.

In 1942, Diego-Suarez was the primary objective of Operation Ironclad, the starting point of the Allied invasion and capture of Madagascar. The Allies were concerned that Japan would pressure Vichy France into granting use of Madagascar, as they had with French Indo-China during the previous year, and determined that the island should not be made a base for the interception of Allied shipping. Diego-Suarez, with its superb harbour and a concentration of government officials, was selected as the initial invasion point. The Japanese responded with an attack by midget submarines on the British naval forces in the harbour, damaging the battleship HMS Ramillies (07) and sinking the oil tanker British Loyalty.

France continued to operate a military base in the city following Malagasy independence in 1960. Between 1973 and 1975, French forces were withdrawn.

Education
The University of Antsiranana was founded in 1976.

Lycée Français Diego Suarez, or Lycée Français Sadi-Carnot, is a French international school in Antsiranana. Historically it was the Collège français Sadi Carnot.

Transport
Antsiranana is situated on Antsiranana Bay, one of the largest deep-water harbours in the Indian Ocean, but the remote location, and, until recently, a bad road to the south, rendered it unimportant for freight traffic. Arrachart Airport provides communication primarily with other parts of Madagascar.

Climate
Antsiranana has a tropical savannah climate (Aw) with long, hot summer-like weather that lasts year round cut into two seasons; a wet season which lasts from December to March and a dry season which lasts the rest of the year with rainfall being uncommon but not impossible.

Places of worship
Among the places of worship, they are predominantly Christian churches and temples:

There are also Muslim mosques.
 * FJKM - Fiangonan'i Jesoa Kristy eto Madagasikara (Church of Jesus Christ in Madagascar)
 * FLM - Fiangonana Loterana Malagasy (Malagasy Lutheran Church)
 * Assemblies of God
 * Fiangonara Batista Biblika (Baptiste church)
 * Roman Catholic Diocese of Antsiranana (Catholic Church seated in the Cathedral of St. Matthew).
 * Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean (Anglican Church)

title: Antsiranana


text:
HMS Royal Oak

Eight ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Royal Oak, after the Royal Oak in which Charles II hid himself during his flight from the country in the English Civil War:

 * HMS Royal Oak (1664) was a 76-gun second rate launched in 1664 and burnt by the Dutch in 1667 in the Raid on the Medway.
 * HMS Royal Oak (1674) was a 70-gun third rate launched in 1674, rebuilt in 1690, 1713, and 1741. Her 1741 rebuild left her as a 64-gun fourth rate. She was a prison ship between 1756 and 1763, and was broken up in 1764.
 * HMS Royal Oak (1769) was a 74-gun third rate launched in 1769 and used as a prison ship from 1796. She was renamed HMS Assistance in 1805, and was broken up in 1815.
 * HMS Royal Oak was to have been a 74-gun third rate but she was renamed HMS Renown (1798) before her launch in 1798.
 * HMS Royal Oak (1809) was a 74-gun third rate launched in 1809, on harbour service from 1825, and broken up in 1850.
 * HMS Royal Oak (1862) was an ironclad frigate launched in 1862 and sold in 1885.
 * HMS Royal Oak (1892) was a Royal Sovereign-class battleship launched in 1892 and scrapped in 1914.
 * HMS Royal Oak (08) was a Revenge-class battleship launched in 1914 and sunk at anchor in 1939, in Scapa Flow.

Battle honours
Ships named Royal Oak have earned the following battle honours:
 * Lowestoft, 1665
 * Four Days' Battle, 1666
 * Orfordness, 1666
 * Barfleur, 1692
 * Malaga, 1704
 * Passero, 1718
 * Chesapeake, 1781
 * The Saints, 1782
 * Jutland, 1916

title: HMS Royal Oak


text:
GEDCOM

FamilySearch GEDCOM, or simply GEDCOM (, acronym of Genealogical Data Communication), is a de facto open file format specification to store genealogical data. It was developed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the operators of FamilySearch, to aid in the research and sharing of genealogical information. A common usage is as a standard format for the backup and transfer of family tree data between different genealogy software and websites, most of which support importing from and exporting to GEDCOM format.

As of version 7.0, a GEDCOM is defined as a plain text file using UTF-8 encoding. This file contains genealogical information about individuals such as names, events, and relationships; metadata links these records together.

GEDCOM 7.0, released in 2021, is the most recent version of the GEDCOM specification. However, its predecessor, GEDCOM 5.5.1, remains the industry's format standard for the exchange of genealogical data. First released as a draft standard in 1999, GEDCOM 5.5.1 received only minor updates in the subsequent 20 years leading up to the release of 5.5.1 final in 2019. To address its shortcomings, some genealogy programs introduced proprietary extensions to GEDCOM which are not always recognized by other programs, such as GEDCOM 5.5 EL (Extended Locations). Efforts have been made to have 7.0 more widely adopted since its release. FamilySearch intends to be GEDCOM 7.0 compatible in Quarter 3 of 2022, and Ancestry.com has 7.0 compatibility on its roadmap but has not yet specified an implementation date.

Model
GEDCOM uses a lineage-linked data model, with link emphasis on the nuclear family, and the individuals (children) produced by that family. These historical goals are described in the 7.0 specification document, "The  record was originally structured to represent families where a male   (husband or father) and female   (wife or mother) produce   (children)."

The document goes on to say that these record types may be used more flexibly to reflect different family concepts. "The  record may also be used for cultural parallels to this, including nuclear families, marriage, cohabitation, fostering, adoption, and so on, regardless of the gender of the partners...The individuals pointed to by the   and   are collectively referred to as 'partners', 'parents' or 'spouses'."

File structure
A GEDCOM file consists of a header section, records, and a trailer section. Within these sections, records represent people (INDI record), families (FAM records), sources of information (SOUR records), and other miscellaneous records, including notes. Every line of a GEDCOM file begins with a level number where all top-level records (HEAD, TRLR, SUBN, and each INDI, FAM, OBJE, NOTE, REPO, SOUR, and SUBM) begin with a line with level 0, while other level numbers are positive integers.

Although it is possible to write a GEDCOM file by hand, the format was designed to be used with software and thus is not especially human-friendly. A GEDCOM validator that can be used to validate the structure of a GEDCOM file is included as part of PhpGedView project, though it is not meant to be a standalone validator. For standalone validation "The Windows GEDCOM Validator" can be used. or the older unmaintained Gedcheck from the LDS Church.

During 2001, The GEDCOM TestBook Project evaluated how well four popular genealogy programs conformed to the GEDCOM 5.5 standard using the Gedcheck program. Findings showed that a number of problems existed and that "The most commonly found fault leading to data loss was the failure to read the NOTE tag at all the possible levels at which it may appear." In 2005, the Genealogical Software Report Card was evaluated (by Bill Mumford who participated in the original GEDCOM Testbook Project) and included testing the GEDCOM 5.5 standard using the Gedcheck program.

To assist with adoption of GEDCOM 7.0, validation tools now exist for that standard as well.

Example
The following is a sample GEDCOM file.

The header (HEAD) includes the source program and version (Personal Ancestral File, 5.0), the GEDCOM version (5.5), the character encoding (ANSEL), and a link to information about the submitter of the file.

The individual records (INDI) define John Smith (ID I1), Elizabeth Stansfield (ID I2), and James Smith (ID I3).

The family record (FAM) links the husband (HUSB), wife (WIFE), and child (CHIL) by their ID numbers.

Versions
The current version of the specification in wide use is GEDCOM 5.5.1 final, which was released on 15 November 2019. Its predecessor, GEDCOM 5.5.1 draft was issued in 1999, introducing nine new attribute, tags and adding UTF-8 as an approved character encoding. The draft was not formally approved, but its provisions were adopted in some part by a number of genealogy programs  including FamilySearch.org.

Lineage-linked GEDCOM is the deliberate de facto common denominator. Despite version 5.5 of the GEDCOM standard first being published in 1996, many genealogical software suppliers have never fully supported the feature of multilingual Unicode text (instead of the ANSEL character set) introduced with that version of the specification. Uniform use of Unicode would allow for the usage of international character sets. An example is the storage of East Asian names in their original Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) characters, without which they could be ambiguous and of little use for genealogical or historical research. PAF 5.2 is an example of software that uses UTF-8 as its internal character set, and can output a UTF-8 GEDCOM.

GEDCOM 7.0 requires UTF-8 encoding throughout, and resolves other long-standing issues with GEDCOM 5.5.1. Multimedia support in the form of an associated .zip file, called a GEDZip, is another inclusion. Efforts are underway to see 7.0 embraced as the new exchange standard. GEDCOM 7.0 allows explicitly identifying what standards other than GEDCOM may apply to a particular file. GEDCOM has always been extensible, but prior to 7.0 there was no standard way to identify such extensions. Also, GEDCOM 7.0 allows explicitly marking an event as nonexistent. This allows, for example, documenting that a particular individual never married. GEDCOM 7.0 was the first version to use semantic versioning, and is the most recent minor version of the specification.

, the next planned minor release is v7.1, which is under development.

Support for multi-person events and sources
A GEDCOM file can contain information on events such as births, deaths, census records, ship's records, marriages, etc.; a rule of thumb is that an event is something that took place at a specific time, at a specific place (even if time and place are not known). GEDCOM files can also contain attributes such as physical description, occupation, and total number of children; unlike events, attributes generally cannot be associated with a specific time or place.

The GEDCOM specification requires that each event or attribute is associated with exactly one individual or family. This causes redundancy for events such as census records where the actual census entry often contains information on multiple individuals. In the GEDCOM file, for census records a separate census "CENS" event must be added for each individual referenced. Some genealogy programs, such as Gramps and The Master Genealogist, have elaborate database structures for sources that are used, among other things, to represent multi-person events. When databases are exported from one of these programs to GEDCOM, these database structures cannot be represented in GEDCOM due to this limitation, with the result that the event or source information including all of the relevant citation reference information must be duplicated each place that it is used. This duplication makes it difficult for the user to maintain the information related to sources.

In the GEDCOM specification, events that are associated with a family such as marriage information is only stored in a GEDCOM once, as part of the family (FAM) record, and then both spouses are linked to that single family record.

Ambiguity in the specification
The GEDCOM specification was made purposefully flexible to support many ways of encoding data, particularly in the area of sources. This flexibility has led to a great deal of ambiguity, and has produced the side effect that some genealogy programs which import GEDCOM do not import all of the data from a file.

Ordering of events that do not have dates
The GEDCOM specification does not offer explicit support for keeping a known order of events. In particular, the order of relationships (FAMS) for a person and the order of the children within a relationship (FAM) can be lost. In many cases the sequence of events can be derived from the associated dates. But dates are not always known, in particular when dealing with data from centuries ago. For example, in the case that a person has had two relationships, both with unknown dates, but from descriptions it is known that the second one is indeed the second one. The order in which these FAMS are recorded in GEDCOM's INDI record will depend on the exporting program. In Aldfaer for instance, the sequence depends on the ordering of the data by the user (alphabetical, chronological, reference, etc.). The proposed XML GEDCOM standard does not address this issue either.

Lesser-known features
GEDCOM has many features that are not commonly used. Some software packages do not support all the features that the GEDCOM standard allows.

Multimedia
The GEDCOM standard supports the inclusion of multimedia objects (for example, photos of individuals). Such multimedia objects can be either included in the GEDCOM file itself (called the "embedded form") or in an external file where the name of the external file is specified in the GEDCOM file (called the "linked form"). Embedding multimedia directly in the GEDCOM file makes transmission of data easier, in that all of the information (including the multimedia data) is in one file, but the resulting file can be enormous. Linking multimedia keeps the size of the GEDCOM file under control, but then when transmitting the file, the multimedia objects must either be transmitted separately or archived together with the GEDCOM into one larger file. Support for embedding media directly was dropped in the draft 5.5.1 standard.

Conflicting information
The GEDCOM standard allows for the specification of multiple opinions or conflicting data, simply by specifying multiple records of the same type. For example, if an individual's birth date was recorded as 10 January 1800 on the birth certificate, but 11 January 1800 on the death certificate, two BIRT records for that individual would be included, the first with the 10 January 1800 date and giving the birth certificate as the source, and the second with the 11 January 1800 date and giving the death certificate as the source. The preferred record is usually listed first.

This example encoded in GEDCOM might look like this: 0 @I1@ INDI 1 NAME John /Doe/ 1 BIRT 2 DATE 10 JAN 1800 2 SOUR @S1@ 3 DATA 4 TEXT Transcription from birth certificate would go here 3 NOTE This birth record is preferred because it comes from the birth certificate 3 QUAY 2 1 BIRT 2 DATE 11 JAN 1800 2 SOUR @S2@ 3 DATA 4 TEXT Transcription from death certificate would go here 3 QUAY 2

Conflicting data may also be the result of user errors. The standard does not specify in any way that the contents must be consistent. A birth date like "10 APR 1819" might mistakenly have been recorded as "10 APR 1918" long after the person's death. The only way to reveal such inconsistencies is by rigorous validation of the content data.

Internationalization
The GEDCOM standard supports internationalization in several ways. First, newer versions of the standard allow data to be stored in Unicode (or, more recently, UTF-8), so text in any language can be stored. Secondly, in the same way that you can have multiple events on a person, GEDCOM allows you to have multiple names for a person, so names can be stored in multiple languages (although there is no standardized way to indicate which instance is in which language). Finally, in version 5.5.1, the NAME field also supports a phonetic variation (FONE) and a romanized variation (ROMN) of the name.

GEDCOM X
In February 2012 at the RootsTech 2012 conference, FamilySearch outlined a major new project around genealogical standards called GEDCOM X, and invited collaboration. It includes software developed under the Apache open source license. It includes data formats that facilitate basing family trees on sources and records (both physical artifacts and digital artifacts), support for sharing and linking data online, and an API.

In August 2012 FamilySearch employee and GEDCOM X project leader Ryan Heaton dropped the claim that GEDCOM X is the new industry standard, and repositioned GEDCOM X as another FamilySearch open source project.

After the release of GEDCOM 7, FamilySearch positioned GEDCOM X as useful for interoperation with its FamilySearch Family Tree software.

Alternatives
Commsoft, the authors of the Roots series of genealogy software and Ultimate Family Tree, defined a version called Event-Oriented GEDCOM (also known as "Event GEDCOM" and originally called InterGED ), which included events as first class (zero-level) items. Although it is event based, it is still a model built on assumed reality rather than evidence. Event GEDCOM was more flexible, as it allowed some separation between believed events and the participants. However, Event GEDCOM was not widely adopted by other developers due to its semantic differences. With Roots and Ultimate Family Tree no longer available, very few people today are using Event GEDCOM.

Gramps XML is an XML-based open format created by the open source genealogy project Gramps and used also by PhpGedView.

The Family History Information Standards Organisation was established in 2012 with the aim of developing international standards for family history and genealogical information. One of the standards the organization proposed was Extended Legacy Format (ELF), compatible with GEDCOM 5.5(.1) but including an extensibility mechanism. The organization requested public comment on the proposed standard in 2017. It withdrew the proposal because release 7.0 of GEDCOM addressed many of the organization's concerns.

title: GEDCOM


text:
Pennyweight

A pennyweight (dwt) is a unit of mass equal to 24 grains, $1/undefined$ of a troy ounce, $1/undefined$ of a troy pound, approximately 0.054857 avoirdupois ounce and exactly 1.55517384 grams. It is abbreviated dwt, d standing for denarius – (an ancient Roman coin), and later used as the symbol of an old British penny (see £sd).

History
In the Middle Ages, an English penny's weight was literally, as well as monetarily, $1/undefined$ of an ounce and $1/undefined$ of a pound of sterling silver. At that time, the pound unit in use in England was the Tower pound, equal to 7,680 Tower grains (also known as wheat grains). The medieval English pennyweight was thus equal to 32 Tower grains. When Troy weights replaced Tower weights in 1527, the Troy weights were defined in such a way that the old Tower pound came out to exactly 5,400 Troy grains (also known as barleycorns), the Tower pennyweight $1/undefined$ Troy grains (and thus approximately 1.46 grams). After 1527, the English pennyweight was the Troy pennyweight. of 24 Troy grains. Thus the Troy pound, ounce, and pennyweight, with their definitions given in terms of the Troy grain instead of in terms of the Tower grain, were $22 1/2$ or 6.667% more than the Tower equivalents.

Usage
The troy pound and the pennyweight lost their official status in the United Kingdom in the Weights and Measures Act of 1878; only the troy ounce and its decimal subdivisions remained official. The troy ounce enjoys a specific legal exemption from metrication in the UK.

The pennyweight is the common weight used in the valuation and measurement of precious metals. Jewellers use the pennyweight in calculating the amount and cost of precious metals used in fabricating or casting jewellery. Similarly, dentists and dental labs still use the pennyweight as the measure of precious metals in dental crowns and inlays.

Pennyweight and grains are still used to weigh gooseberries in competitions in Cheshire, northwest UK. Over the Pennines in Yorkshire the alternative drams and grains measurement has been used since a new set of scales was purchased by the Egton Bridge Old Gooseberry Society in 1937. As of 2018, the world record for the heaviest gooseberry of 41 dwt 11 gr (41+11/24 dwt) was held by Kelvin Archer of Cheshire.

The most common abbreviation for pennyweight is dwt; d, for the Roman denarius, was the abbreviation for penny before Decimalisation of the British monetary system. Alternate abbreviations are pwt and PW.

Uses unrelated to weight
Although the abbreviations are the same, the pennyweight bears no relation to the weight of the American penny nail. That name is derived from the price for a hundred nails in 15th century England: the larger the nail, the higher the cost per hundred. The pennyweight also bears no relation to the weight of the American "penny" (1 cent) coin, which weighs 2.5 g (for those minted after 1982).

title: Pennyweight