I remember years ago, that many early genealogy programs used to produce a compact way of describing the main surnames found in a family genealogy. This format was called a Tiny Tafel. It had a header section with general information and included ancestral surnames along with soundex codes, earliest and latest years and locations.
Wikipedia has a brief description of it, and shows the following example:
sample.tt
N Howard L. Nurse
A COMMSOFT
A 2257 Old Middlefield Way
A Mountain View, CA 94043
T (415) 967-1900
S FidoNet 143/26
B COMMSOFT BBS/(415) 967-6730
C 2400/B/X
D 5/IBM DSDD/360
F ROOTS II
R Sample Kennedy database
Z 29
A252 1915 1947 Auchincloss/MA
B160 1698 1933 Bouvier/Long Island NY
B530 1906 1939 Bennett/New York
B620 1869 1933 Burke/Suffolk Co. MA
C200 1803 1833 Cox\Ind
C414 1861 1899 Caulfield\Norfolk Co. MA/Suffolk Co. MA
C540 1868 1928 Connelly/Suffolk Co. MA
F326 1690 1890 Fitzgerald/Suffolk Co. MA
F430 1806 1836 Field/PA
H200 1806 1857 Hickey/Suffolk Co. MA
H500 1802 1865 Hannon/Middlesex Co. MA
K500 1858 1892 Kane\Ireland/Suffolk Co. MA
K530 1793*1957:Kennedy\Ireland/New York
K530 1793*1984 Kennedy\Ireland/Wstchster Co. NY
L000 1847 1906 Lee\MA/MA
L163 1923 1961 Lawford\England/L.A. Co. CA
L532 1753 1783 Lindsay\MA
M500 1847 1890 Mahoney\Suffolk Co. MA/Suffolk Co. MA
M610 1791 1821 Murphy/Wxfrd Co. IRE
M626 1710 1766 Mercier\MA
R324 1929 1959 Radziwill\MA
S240 1892 1928 Skakel\Cook Co. IL/Cook Co. IL
S530 1927 1960 Smith\Kings Co. NY/Suffolk Co. MA
S616 1915 1965 Shriver\Carroll Co. MD/Suffolk Co. MA
S625 1831 1861 Sergeant\MA
T525 1947 1983 Townsend\Baltimore Co. MD/Middlesex Co. MA
T653 1706 1736 Trintignant/IT
V650 1783 1813 Vernou\CN/CN
W453 1767 1797 Wilmouth\NH/MA
W 11 Dec 1986
A number of programs still produce Tiny Tafels. My question is if there still is a useful purpose today for them, and if they are actively used anywhere.