Family Historian User Group

Sort of a complexed problem I wonder on how to file a wish list request since I can't easily put it into 2 sentences.

Perhaps Jane could think of a short summary ? [smile]

Smallest desciption: Spousebox movement in diagram shouldn't affect descendantbox movement.

Ok, problem goes like this.
I got a huge diagram showing all ancestors and descendants of my parents. Now since this should result in some sort of a present (the final diagram) I wanted to include all the individuals being somewhat linked to my parents 4-5 steps. Which also means I got married and my wife's parents are pretty well know to my parents as are my wife's grandfather and grandmother. Same applies for my sister, my brother, and also all the spouses of my father and mother and their parents. Means all these should be within that diagram.

Pretty easy I thought ... One's entitled to add as many diagrams into existing diagram as one likes to.

But I wanted the boxes being integrated in it's preferred position, eg, at the location they would normally pop up. Means, the parents of my wife should best bet be next to my wife. I know this leads to lines crossing each other, but that's still more readalbe but placing 10 2-generation-maximum-diagrams besides the original diagram.

Adding the first additional diagram does work like a dream. You simply declare what you want to add, ensure that boxes are same width, and simply put the duplicated boxes into background to not loose the relationship lines to their parents.

You need to move some boxes, fine.

When doing this more but 1 time the following problem happens.

If you move an individual having descendants these move aswell.
Means if you and your ancestors are in the original diagram and you want to add 2 generations to your spouse you must likely move your spouse away from you to get the space to put their ancestors in.
Now your children will move aswell when moving your spouse.
If on of your children got married and you previously added 2 generations of a spouse of one of your children, these are now in the wrong location.

What I think what's needed is any of the following solutions.

a) being able to move a spouse (individual) without moving any other boxes.

b) being able to lock boxes to each other so that if having added a second diagram, matching boxes if being placed on top of each other would both be moved identically in case they are moved.

When I asked Simon about this problem, he suggested to file a request in the FHUG wishlist, but he mentioned to describe the problem short and exactly. Well move spouse shouldn't affect moving descendants does it, but doesn't explain the need why I ask for it.

Anyone with an idea ?

ID:1771

I assume you are trying to do something like the following (all names I have used are fictitious):

Create an ancestor and descendant tree for Tom Smith and Sally Jones.
Add Ancestor Trees for any spouses of Tom and Sally's descendants
Move these ancestor trees so the root individual is behind the same box on the original ancestor and descendant tree

If this is the case I have created another diagram  below to show what I think the problem is.

The first ancestor tree I added was for Amy Black to show her parents Dave Black and Helen White.  I used Fixed point moving with Anne Smith as the fixed Point to bring Amy to the left.  I used Tree Move to put Amy on her ancestor tree exactly on top of Amy on the original tree, then used move to back so the original tree remains at the front.

I now added an ancestor tree for Jean Brown, but when I try the Fixed Point move now, with Ruth Smith as the fixed point, as soon as I start to move Jean then Amy moves as well.

I would describe your problem as below between the two lines of asterisks.  I would give it a title something like 'Box moving with multiple trees'.

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I would like to position multiple trees on the same diagram so that duplicate individuals overlap.  Currently when you move trees after having positioned a first it changes the original spouse/ancestor/descendant positions.  I need a method of box moving that allows you to move an individual without affecting the position of the boxes of their spouse, ancestors or descendants.

This could be a Fixed point move, with an option to allow children not to be symmetrically below their parents.

Alternatively set up an Individual Group function so that when enabled on particular duplicate individuals their relative positions are maintained.

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Note I did not include siblings in the movement restrictions otherwise if Bill Smith had an elder brother or sister then moving Amy left would cause Bill to overlap the elder brother or sister.

For the individual group function I would think this would need to be selectable where you would need to highlight the two duplicates and then chose to group them, rather than an automatic group of all duplicates.  There may also need to be restrictions between any two trees so that if you had two brothers in one family who married two sisters in another you could not group both pairings because this could also cause placement issues.

If any solution can be done I suspect you will still need to do an amount of manual moving around, but it seems you are ok with this, you just need a way so you don't have to keep redoing what you have already done.

Yes a pretty visible explanation of the problem indeed.

But it should have been far easier.

Assume FH would have shown a branch expansion knob at the top of Jean's box, since FH is aware that the data for her parents are in the GEDCOM database.

All what's needed is 'expand 1 level', and I bet that Family Historian would have choosen next ot the same location for the boxes of Jean's parents which was shown by adding a second diagram into the first one. Since it's the only place which is outside the normal ancestor & descendant tree which is generated having Tom & Sally being the center.
It becomes tricky if you have sliblings of 3 and want to display parents of their spouses, but it'll work as long as there's only 2 poeple. And that'll be far easier but adding multiple additional diagrams in the first one, having hundreds of curvy lines to connect these.

With small diagrams it's a quick task doing so by exporting as enhanced metafile and do that trick in a vector graphics package. But with diagrams being sized beyond 200 inches, there's no programs I'm aware of being able to handle vector files nowadays.