* FH Charts

[jameswignall]

When I look at many charts they always seem to need a lot more paper than is necessary. Having the ability to control every box and generation spacing in any direction would help.

Is it possible to move individual boxes sideways, and the gap between generations up or down, to minimise the number of sheets for a chart?

Jim Wignall

[tatewise]

Jim, I have moved this to General Usage which is more appropriate.

Have you tried the Avoid Page Boundaries option?

Have you tried the Movement Control options?

Instead of printing lots of separate sheets have you considered saving to a single page PDF and getting a local print company to produce a large copy?

[jimlad68]

This is an age old problem common to all genealogy programs, some people like easy to follow diagrams which often means more "white space" and others a more concise and reduced amount of paper, but can be cluttered. I like to work and share "virtually" so like large page pdfs that you can move about on.

You can always use the blank space for added text boxes, other related tree branches etc.l

I brought up a similar query in this post:
Diagrams-moving a/group of box in any direction. (12637)

My version of a concise diagram and text scheme are attached, feel free to try/ amend etc.

temp 2 tree.png (36.96 KiB) Viewed 4049 times

Notes on Diagram:
- Left to Right diagram - I find this very space saving and easier to follow.
- With L>R diagram, if more than 1 page is needed, I find it easiest to stitch together Landscape pages just 1 page wide. Adjust box widths to fit page for generations.
- most of my box conditions will probably not work, but I feel the sex/spouse + box colours make it easier to follow.
- the dimensions tab is very important, not forgetting the "more dimensions"

Notes on Text scheme:
- This is a standard scheme I have amended.
- I have found the use of colour important when trying to "squash" more detail onto a page as it makes it easier for the eye to follow it.
- You will need to amend/delete my custom tags etc.
## edit - also uses ADDRess instead of PLACe, also I amended the spouse and reuploaded the text scheme ##

These posts might also help:
PDF Print Settings For Diagrams (12465)
http://www.fhug.org.uk/forum/viewtopic. ... 8&p=54240#

[jameswignall]

Thank you Mike and Jim, I am having more success following your suggestions. Hopefully with a little more perseverance I can improve them further.

Jim Wignall

[RogerF]

But there certainly seem to be some issues in this area. FH appears not to be able to reliably calculate the combined effects of reducing the "Scaling" in conjunction with "Avoid Page Boundaries", and persists in showing diagrams across X pages when in fact -- with a little manual movement of the boundary for the start of page 1 -- the diagram fits perfectly well across X-1 pages. What's frustrating is the time spend in progressively reducing the scaling, viewing the result, and then experimenting to see if the X to X-1 transform can be achieved manually; FH should be doing that for me.

[jimlad68]

........... FH appears not to be able to reliably calculate the combined effects of reducing the "Scaling" in conjunction with "Avoid Page Boundaries", and persists in showing diagrams across X pages when in fact

Whenever I scale I use the "Movement control box", alter the scale, which as you say then screws up the page boundaries, leave the "Movement control box" open and click the "avoid page boundaries" botton off > on, for me this redoes the avoid page boundaries OK. Then scale again. Yes it would be nice if it did it in real time.

As I said before don't forget the dimensions tab and "more dimensions". I have worked out a set of values for fix width boxes for Left/Right diagrams (or height for Top down diagram) which fit perfectly on the page(s) for portrait or landscape output. No need for scaling. I always feel scaling can upset fonts as they can often become too small. But I suppose it depends what kind of diagram you have.


I'm afraid you will probably find problems with most "boxy diagram" programs like this. In terms of speed I find FH very fast, as long as you are happy to "get what it gives". I suppose its "auto fit" is also a downside as you have to have what it gives you. On TMG with VCF it is very laborious to move the boxes, but nearly everything is possible, but if you want to update the VCF chart you have to do all the manual bits again. I have come to accept that if I work with the way FH works, it actually saves a lot of time.

I suppose it would be nice to be able to switch off the autofit and finalise manually.