ufo_data/README.md

# UFO Event Timeline Processing Tool

## Copyrights:
[ufojson](https://github.com/richgel999/ufo_data) tool: Copyright (c) 2023 By [Richard Geldreich, Jr.](https://medium.com/@richgel99) (Apache 2.0 license)

[libsoldout](https://github.com/faelys/libsoldout): Copyright (c) 2009, Natacha Porté (ISC license)

[json](https://github.com/nlohmann/json): Copyright (c) 2013-2022 Niels Lohmann (MIT license)

## Data files (in 'bin' directory): 
* George M. Eberhart - Copyright 2022
* LeRoy Pea - Copyright 9/8/1988 (updated 3/17/2005)
* Dr. Donald A. Johnson - Copyright 2012
* Fred Keziah - Copyright 1958
* Dr. Jacques F. Vallée - Copyright 1993
* NICAP
* Richard Geldreich, Jr. - Copyright 2023

Note: Although the C++ tool itself is open source with a permissive license (Apache 2.0), any commercial use of the copyrighted data in this repository may require permission from one or more copyright holders.

## Instructions

This C++ command line tool reads several source files containing UFO related events, which were compiled from a variety of sources, and converts each of them to JSON. It then sorts all of these events into a single large timeline and outputs them as the Markdown file "timeline.md" and the JSON file "majestic.json". [pandoc](https://pandoc.org/) can then be used to convert this Markdown text file to HTML.

Currently, the tool is Windows only, but it would be trivial to port to Linux/OSX. (I'll do this soon.) To run it: compile the .SLN using Visual Studio 2022. There are no external 3rd party dependencies. Run it in the BIN directory. It'll convert all the source files to JSON then output a file named timeline.md. 

Here's the output [Markdown file converted to PDF](ufo_timeline_v1_04.pdf). The latest HTML timeline is published [here](http://www.subquantumtech.com/timeline/timeline.html).