Family Historian User Group

In descendant diagrams showing one box per marriage, what governs which marriage is the remarriage box and which is the main box?

In the chart I am seeking to prepare, I have remarriages in gens 2, 4 and 5. In gens 2 and 5, it is the first marriage box that is pink using the default colour scheme but in gen 4 it is the second marriage that is pink. It may be gender-related since in gens 2 and 5 the descendant is male but in gen 4 female.

Ideally I would like to tweak my text scheme such as to choose in each case which is the remarriage box (i.e. to choose a 'preferred' marriage) so that where appropriate for my purposes I can hide unnecessary remarriage boxes. I have not succeeded thus far in my attempts at tweaking the text scheme.


Any tips? (I am using vers 4.02)

Thanks,
Derek

ID:4207

Derek,
Sorry I cannot suggest any Text-Scheme tweaks which might help, but ...
I find that if I start with 'Spouses in own box' and hide the spouse boxes I don't want, I can then switch to 'One box per marriage'.  Rather than select and hide individual spouse boxes each time, you could use a query, possibly based on a suitable flag, to mark the relevant spouse boxes, and then hide them.

Many thanks Peter - by following your suggestion I have got to where I wanted to be.

Derek

Just for interest, there is another way of switching the 'main' box vs. remarriage boxes.  Click on 'Movement Control Box' on the Diagram menu to open that box.  Then select the main box that you wish to switch, and click on either of the 2 'Shift Spouse Boxes' buttons (which look like 2 angle brackets pointing left or right) to switch the 'main' box left or right.  The Shift Spouse buttons can also be used to re-order spouse boxes or remarriage boxes, in a diagram, without changing the underlying order of spouses (in contrast to the 'Move Up' and 'Move Down' buttons on the main toolbar, which will re-order spouses, if you use those).

Hope that makes sense.

When I try Simon's suggestion, I find it does indeed change the order of the marriage boxes in the diagram, but not which family is in the Main box rather than the Remarriage box. You can hide a Remarriage box (and thus any descendants) but if you hide the Main marriage box you lose the 'main' Individual and all his/her Families, spouses and descendants.

Hi Derek,

I've been a bit slow in finding a possible answer to your problem - because I couldn't work out why I had no Remarriage boxes that were pink. The answer was that I had turned off the option to have remarriage boxes - using the Diagram options (General tab, the options button to the right of the 'Spouse display options').

However, once I had found the way to display Remarriage boxes (which were by default in pink), I found that the Gender made no difference, since I had both variations in the diagram I was using to find this answer).

I think, therefore, that the answer lies elsewhere and the only possibility that comes to mind is the order in which the marriages occur as I believe that the definition of a Remarriage is 'second or subsequent'.

You may find that the reason for the 2nd marriage being the one that is pink is that the data for this was entered into FH before the data for the 1st marriage. In this case the 2nd marriage would have the designation marriage(1) whilst the 1st would be marriage(2). IF this is the case, simply go to the tool bar, select Tools then Re-order Out-of-sequence data ...

Hope this helps
Bilko [smile]

Thanks to all who have commented. Peter's suggestion, coupled with some additional tweaking of individual box text schemes, gives me what I need for the wall chart I am preparing but having started this thread in may be helpful
for others in future if I set out what I have found.

The issue concerns descendant trees using the 'one box per marriage' option and when I talk of 'main box' below I mean the ordinary descendant box which is cream by default; by remarriage box I mean the box which is pink by default. I have restricted my comments to the cases of descendants in the tree with two marriages. I have not experimented with three or more marriages.

I agree with Peter that Simon's suggestion merely reverses the oder in which the two marriage boxes appear in the diagram. In my tree at least, it does not affect which is cream and which is pink.

I agree with Bilko that linguistically one might expect that it would be the second marriage box that is the remarriage box. This was what I was experiencing for female descendants but not for males. Given that Bilko was not finding a difference between males and females here, I have done some further experimenting.

Nathaniel married first Charlotte and subsequently Jane. In a later generation, Florence married first Harold and then Percy.

I have now found that for males, one gets different behaviour depending on the option selected for spouse layout. Selecting '2nd spouse on other side' makes Jane's box the main one, with Nathaniel's details in it, with Charlotte's box being the remarriage one even though hers was chronologically the first marriage. Selecting either of the other two options (2nd spouse on right, all spouses on right respectively) makes Charlotte's box the main one with Jane's now the remarriage box.

In Florence's case, however, Harold's box is the main box in all three cases.

I haven't worked out in my mind why this should all be so, but as I say, Peter's tip gives me a practical way forward.

Thanks once again to all who commented.

Sorry for my unhelpful suggestion, incidentally, which was written in haste and, as has been pointed out, doesn't work.