Family Historian User Group

ok, where to start. ... easy.
I'm on the way going for FH, simply because I did invest into 2 other programs which really won't suit my needs (one's called FT*2006 which is ... c**p.

I bought that one mainly because of the 'all-in-one' chart, and I was shocked about the fact that it's more or less locked in any terms of configration.
FH (even the demo) allows for more.

Having played for some hours with the demo now, 3 questions spring to mind.

1.) is there really no way to use differnt fonts and char sizes per box in the 'all relatives' chart ? I mean for example 10pt bold Arial for the name, 10pt Arial for the given name(s) and lets say 8pt for the other data presented ? I tried a lot, but with no luck.

2.) I'm also in need of special characters such as french and german accents and such like not to mention stars, crosses and such like as found in windings since it looks much nicer but writing b: d: m: for birth, death, marriage.

3.) I'm impressed by the flexibility allowing next to anything being definable for output. But I missed to get 2 things.
a) is it possible to force skipping output of a line in case the entry is emtpy ? For example, I would like to incl. immigration date but only if such a date is linked to a person, without wasting an emtpy line on all other poeple in the chart. Bet that's possible, but I didn't get it.
b) is it possible to ommit a substring from a linked field ? I've noticed the nickname / alternative name thread in thi forum, and must say ... the admin was right that it must be multiple 1 NAME entries, but some other programs do use '1 NAME VARIATION givenname /name/'
and without having to modify the GED files, I'd love to say something such as MID(%INDI:NAME[2]%),11) or such like.
Any idea ?

Apart from that ... I would have purchased it right now, if only I would have been entitled to download it straight without waiting for a CD shipment. So till working days I better wait to see which reseller got it in stock so that shipment happens the same day.

thanks for comments, and please be patient, for the huge number of lines.


ID:1408

1.) is there really no way to use differnt fonts and char sizes per box

Yes in V3 - out soon.

2.) I'm also in need of special characters such as french and german accents and such like not to mention stars, crosses and such like as found in windings since it looks much nicer but writing b: d: m: for birth, death, marriage.

Sorry not tried that,  don't think so as I believe you set the font on a line by line basis you might need to overide on a field basis,  but I have not tried.

a) is it possible to force skipping output of a line in case the entry is emtpy ? For example, I would like to incl. immigration date but only if such a date is linked to a person, without wasting an emtpy line on all other poeple in the chart. Bet that's possible, but I didn't get it.

Yes in V3 - the boxes can be set to the depth of the text to print.

b) is it possible to omit a substring from a linked field ? I've noticed the nickname / alternative name thread in thi forum, and must say ... the admin was right that it must be multiple 1 NAME entries, but some other programs do use '1 NAME VARIATION givenname /name/'
and without having to modify the GED files, I'd love to say something such as MID(%INDI:NAME[2]%),11) or such like.
Any idea ?

You can use the qualifiers, as in :GIVEN,  but personally I would sort out the invalid gedcom.  There are no string handling routines at the moment in V2 or V3.

Thanks for the comments, I couldn't resist so I bought it anyway earlier today.

For special characters such as  äéßØ  use the standard Microsoft Character Map utility

In XP, it can be found on the Start menu at Accessories - System Tools - Character Map.

You can select the chars you want then copy them to the clipboard.  Then paste them into any windows application, including FH.

You may need to experiment, as not all characters display in every application - FH uses a ? character for those not supported.

Foreign and other characters:
The Alt-key + numeric-keypad is the thing to use.
Have a look at http://www.tedmontgomery.com/tutorial/ALTchrc.html for a complete list.

Alan T