Family Historian User Group

Is there any way in which I can show a flag in a chart text box?

It’s possible to display a word in the text box to indicate the existence of a flag, but it’s not possible to show icons inside the box.

For example to indicate the presence of an ‘Adopted’ flag, you can add a <custom item> to the Text scheme, enter ‘Adopted’ in the Template field and tick Flag Condition. Then set Record Flag: Adopted and …must be set.

Thank you very much. I have got it working as you suggested.

LornaCraig wrote: ↑

23 Oct 2022 15:08

It’s possible to display a word in the text box to indicate the existence of a flag, but it’s not possible to show icons inside the box.

For example to indicate the presence of an ‘Adopted’ flag, you can add a <custom item> to the Text scheme, enter ‘Adopted’ in the Template field and tick Flag Condition. Then set Record Flag: Adopted and …must be set.

I don't use diagrams much, but this got me thinking: could the "word" that's displayed be some non-alphabetic character - a kind of pseudo-icon? I managed to get some random Wingdings and Webdings characters to show in a box, but that was using 'test' and '123' in the Template field, and I couldn't figure out how to get symbols more appropriate to what they were meant to represent. Or could you get emojis to show there?

Wow, I had never thought of trying emojis. I have just tried copying and pasting some emojis into the template field in the text scheme and making the line conditional on a flag. It works.

Emojis look like pictures, but the more common ones are in fact Unicode characters, so would be fully supported by FH wherever more conventional characters are used.

Yes, you can use any Unicode (UTF-8) characters you prefer, including the vast array of symbols and emojis.
See the Windows 'Character Map' tool.
The 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol', 'OpenSymbol' and 'Webdings' fonts have an enormous selection of symbols.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticons_(Unicode_block) for a large set of 80 emoticons.

I hadn't thought of copying and pasting - and that works with Webdings and other fonts. In the text scheme, change the font to the one you're using, adjust the size and colour, then just copy and paste the character in the Template field.

tatewise wrote: ↑

25 Oct 2022 13:56

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticons_(Unicode_block) for a large set of 80 emoticons.

If you use an emoji that's not in the Windows Character Map, do you need to do anything like change the font first?

Those Emoticons don't seem to need a Font to be defined as they work with most fonts, but they are only displayed as a black & white outline (or in whatever font colour is in force).
e.g. 😐︎ or 😐︎ but not

In principle, that is no different to any other character. For example, a simple capital A looks very different in Arial font compared with Old English Text MT, even though it is exactly the same character code.

The 'gotcha' to be aware of is that while many such special symbols now have standard Unicode designations (so are rendered in a recognisable form in most applications, even if you cannot predict the exact appearance), many others are defined in what is called the Private Use Area, a series of reserved character codes that can be used for whatever the software or font designer chooses. These are clearly shown in the Windows Character Map app, so be aware that selecting one of these means that it is unlikely to be rendered correctly in all fonts and all applications. The best advice is to test carefully if you are going to use such special characters anywhere other than where you first enter them.

Mark makes some very valid points regarding the rendering of Unicode characters.

I've experimented with the Segoe UI Emoji font.
In applications such as MS Word, the fully coloured emoji are supported.
But in MS Excel and FH only the black & white outline form of the emoji are allowed.