Feature suggestions - Illegitimate children / layers

The old version of our genealogy database program.

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Dave Pickles

Feature suggestions - Illegitimate children / layers

Post by Dave Pickles » Sun Dec 18, 2005 10:15 am

A couple of small suggestions.

The first one is for a way of dealing with illegitimate children. Unless I've missed something it is necessary to create a 'family' from the mother and father in order to enter the child - resulting in a very confusing chart if the parents were already married to other people. Our ancestors did not do things this way!

Secondly how about adding the concept of 'layers'. The main K&K chart gets very cluttered with all the different family lines, the application would scale better if each could be allocated their own chart layer.

Nick Hunter
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Post by Nick Hunter » Sun Dec 18, 2005 10:15 am

Thanks for your suggestions.

That is the correct way to display illegitimate children - they do belong in a separate "family" - usually one where the father is unknown.

I'm not sure what you mean by layers. Do you want to be able to "turn off" parts of the chart?

Dave Pickles

Post by Dave Pickles » Sun Dec 18, 2005 10:16 am

Perhaps the relationship giving rise to the illegitimate child could be displayed differently, ie don't show the 'marriage' tag in Treedraw.

Re. layers, I find the main chart is becoming very cluttered, and when expanding one part of the family tree it is often necessary to 'nudge' other unrelated ones out of the way. If the chart could expand into the third dimension then for example each grandparent of my starting family could have their own layer, and others could be introduced further back as needed.

Just a thought.

Richard Johnston

Post by Richard Johnston » Sun Dec 18, 2005 10:16 am

think Dave is onto something...I find my chart is very very wide and difficult to sort through at times, I was wondering the same thing, if a 3rd dimension could be added in some manner to allow a quicker view of the charts. Perhaps it could be sorted by having the fathers family on one dimension, then you go back one "page" to reference the mothers family.
How do most people sort big trees now? I sort by mom on the right, dad on the left, but then I go with grandmother on the further left, grandfather on further right and so on. I just started adding my wife's family to the tree and the line stretching to her familty is very very very long to the right, and interseting several other trees. (I try to keep each "generation" on the same horizontal line)

hope this insight helps, I find my tree is getting tangled looking.

Richard

John Rastall

Post by John Rastall » Sun Dec 18, 2005 10:17 am

A third dimension sounds promising. My chart is very very wide as I have traced my parents and my wife's parents back to the 18th century. I've also been married twice and that got too complicated, so I had to create a second tree just for that. To avoid duplication, I've only put her ancestors on that otherwise I could never keep both up to date. Now if that could be linked through a 3rd dimension - or even a forth?
I follow K&K's default of all males on the right and all females on the left so I, too, have a lot of crossed lines!

Richard Johnston
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Nick- thoughts?

Post by Richard Johnston » Fri Jan 13, 2006 2:35 pm

Just wondering what you thought about these suggestions Nick, I didn't see any comments from you on them

thanks,

Richard :)

donne
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Post by donne » Sat Feb 04, 2006 8:15 pm

Personally, I see a family tree as two-dimensional, and I don't see how you would use layers. I prefer to keep all my family on one database which is easier for updating. If I want a particular view of a family branch, I find that this can be done by selecting 'ancestor of' or 'descendant of' and exporting the selection to a separate database.

Frank
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Layers or Selective Presentation on Tree Area

Post by Frank » Sun Feb 26, 2006 9:56 pm

I am new to the forum and would like to add my bit on the Layers thread. One of the reasons I use K & K Pro is the Tree Area.

I think the idea of layers is just to have a quick and easy means of showing selective family lines without having to export families to another data base. I too have multiple tree branches that spread out. I am also interested in descendants of ancestors These descendants spread out like roots but from the top of the the area I use on the Tree Area. I also have a couple of first-cousin-once removed marriages. These branches and roots overlay each other producing a entangled web.

Here are some suggestions for a future version. I would like to be able to have selective views as well as the full view. Examples would be selective descendants (family boxes) of a chosen person as opposed to a family since one person may have multiple spouses. Similarly, all the ancestral families of one person and maybe a combination of both with possibly more than one 'root' person. The setting for a particular view to be savable for calling up in the future.

Whether the term layers or selective views is used, I think they add up to the same thing.

Nick, I hope you take this as constructive and as I have no knowledge of what I am asking in terms of programming, please bear with me.

Richard Johnston
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Post by Richard Johnston » Mon Mar 20, 2006 7:27 am

Nick...Can you comment on some of the follow-up ideas on this thread...??? :?

thanks

Richard

PS: any idea when can we expect the next K&K upgrade?

jayrae
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Illegitimate children

Post by jayrae » Sun Aug 13, 2006 12:44 am

For illegitimate children, I would suggest putting into a seperate family, and in the Marriage field just put something like "Not Married". Makes it obvious when printing from Tree Draw, or right clicking the family in the tree view.

rich
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Post by rich » Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:46 am

This "Meatballs & Spaghetti" could be alleviated if we could restrict the tree area to be shown & worked on eg sketch out a freeform area with the mouse, around the section that you want to focus on, press a "Restrict" button, and everything else disappears. While in Restricted mode, all search, Edit Family etc dialog boxes restrict their listing to the present context, so that in virtually all respects you're working on a small, handy-sized database. Press the "Show All" button and everything returns.

- To prevent misunderstanding, it should be visually obvious that you're not working on the whole DB eg odd-coloured background, red titlebars on the dialog boxes etc.
- Even when in ShowAll mode, the mini-trees could remain evident by their individual-coloured backgrounds, ready to be chosen again, or purged. Would also be remembered from session to session
- Families added while in Restricted mode would usually end up in other territory when reverting to ShowAll, making a right mess. Ditto if you rearrange things, so you'd have to space it slightly away from neighbours before you start
- If when editing a person, you double-click on a marriage that's outside your Restricted area, there could be a box that pops up, with buttons: "Edit this time only", "Incorporate into Restricted Area" or "Cancel" (guess you'd get a warning if it was currently in another defined patch)
- Restricted Mode trees could be presented in two ways:
1) In situ, possibly with the rest of the tree faintly visible around it - this might be the most useful
2) Top left corner all by itself, for easier navigating & no ghosts

I go upwards in an ever-bifurcating tree: Gentlemen to the left, Ladies to the right.
When the M&S started, i split into 4 DBs - one per grandparent and yes, it does reduce the confusion, but has too many downsides, eg not showing all in PrintPreview, multiple imports into TreeDraw, etc, so i think i'll be reintegrating. I gather that Merging DBs creates new P & F nos, wonder what doesn't - maybe Copy & Paste? Or maybe i'd have to Cut, to reassure KK that i'm not trying to have the same people in 2 different places at once?

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