* Quick Child/Family Snapshot

[tatewise]

I plan to move the buttons to the bottom, below the Siblings & Children.

If there is too much data (line too long, or too many rows) then each pane has vertical &/or horizontal scroll bars.
If the data is small enough, or window is enlarged enough, those scroll bars now vanish and give more room for the data.

Thus people like Wilfreda99 can capture a neat screenshot (minus buttons, and scroll bars) and paste it into a Word document for publishing to a wider audience.

[arthurk]

I've been giving this plugin a spin, and initial impressions are that it will be a real time-saver. However, I have a couple of comments.

First, one of my families is currently showing 21 children (further research might reduce this a little), and I've noticed a problem in the siblings list when there are so many of them. The siblings are identified with letters a), b), c) etc, but these run out after l), and the following ones just have the ). This screenshot shows what I mean:

ak-qfss.jpg (55.53 KiB) Viewed 11335 times

Second, I wonder if the plugin's name should be changed so as to avoid any possible confusion with FH's built-in snapshot (automatic backup) function. This plugin is doing a very different job, so I was thinking of something like Quick Child/Family View or Quick Child/Family Pop-up.

Despite these slightly critical comments, I think it's a useful tool, so thank you Mike for creating it.

Arthur

[tatewise]

Yes, it crossed my mind that Snapshot might be confusing, so any suggestions for names would be welcome.

You found a scenario that I knew would arise with too many Siblings, but hoped nobody would experience.
I have recently modified the Plugin to cope with unlimited numbers of Sibling and Children.

I was also thinking of including Partner/Spouse details alongside the root Individual (so they would sit under Father & Mother).

[E Wilcock]

Mike - Sorry, I seem to have lost the knack of using the short cut you taught me. Alt with T and then Q.

I deleted all other plug ins starting with the word Quick - Alt T U opens the Plug ins but I think that you did something quicker?

Or perhaps I remembered wrong?

[tatewise]

Alt T U is invoking Tools > Plugins to simply list all Plugins.
Alt T Q only works if the Quick Family Snapshot Plugin is listed in the Tools menu.
If it is not, then use Tools > Plugins and click More>> button.
Select the Quick Family Snapshot Plugin and tick Add to Tools Menu on right.

[Wilfreda99]

This is brilliant Mike, thank you.
Only one query - I noticed that it puts in a date for birth or death where there is none and the dates it chooses seem a bit random eg on the attached
John Sankey - no dates, it puts in ~1820 - ~1954 , or
Emily Clarke - birth date 1847 but no death date, it puts in death date ~ 1947 (which I think it has probably taken from my allowed age set at 100 years).

I had a feeling the jpeg/ pdf would be more trouble than it was worth.

My next project for the village is to research the family of a woman buried under the floor of the church in 1636, she having died in childbirth. From preliminary browses it looks as though her family were cavaliers in the Civil war about to start, that their manor house was confiscated when Cromwell won with the result that her father had to beg the parish some years later for a pension of a few shillings a year - the text says that the estate had been worth over £5000 in the 1640s.
How are the mighty fallen.......

[tatewise]

Where no actual Dates exist for any of the key events, it uses estimated life dates preceded by a tilde (~) as explained in the =LifeDates2(...) function with the "EXT" option, which takes account of other Facts including those of relatives, and your Tools > Preferences > Estimates.

[E Wilcock]

Thank you for explaining the Alt short cut - Now I understand the system. I moved it to the Tools menu and it works.

The penalty of old age is that one forgets. So when you made the new version I didnt remember to place it there. Sorry.

[arthurk]

I was also thinking of including Partner/Spouse details alongside the root Individual (so they would sit under Father & Mother).

That might make it a bit clearer - more like the Focus window arrangement.

I know this is still experimental, but it seems to me that the amount of information offered could become rather overwhelming, so I hope you are eventually able to include some options for how much to display.

Meanwhile, another possible use for this which has occurred to me is that as an alternative to the screenshot idea proposed by Wilfreda99, the quick plain text summaries of (parts of) families can be copied and pasted into another document or in a query on a forum like this. To this end (and to complicate it further, I'm afraid), could one of the options be to have everything in one pane, rather than 5 separate ones for Father, Mother, Individual, Siblings and Children (6 if Spouse goes into a separate one too) - thus creating a kind of Family Group Sheet-lite?

Arthur

[tatewise]

I have updated the Quick Family Snapshot Plugin Version 0.3 Date 09 Dec 2016.
[Attachment deleted as now in Plugin Store under the title Quick Family Facts.]

This has moved the buttons to the bottom and added some style to headings & names so screen-shots are neater.

It colour codes the people to identify step-brothers & sisters, etc:-
The parent Father & Mother & their Children (Siblings of root person) are blue.
The root Individual is always red in the Individual & Siblings panes.
The Partner & Children families of the root person have coordinated colours.

It would be tricky to put everyone in one pane, because then the scroll-bars would not work satisfactorily for large families.

What 'display simplifying' Options did you have in mind?
Fewer types of events?
Fewer family relations?

[E Wilcock]

The bold makes those extra surnames stand out very well, Mike. Thank you. My husband has just come in to admire your work.
I managed to remove the older version and put this on on the tools menu. So showed him what you had taught me - hit the three keys and Bingo, all the names were there for him to see.
When one is decyphering old handwritten documents, it is the Names of people which are often the hardest words to read. And what you have done is going to be a great help. Thank you.

[PeterR]

Brilliant job, Mike! The use of bold, and of coordinated colours, works really well.

[tatewise]

Thank you, it gave me the opportunity to experiment with the text formatting options in the Portable User Interface (IUP).

[arthurk]

Thanks, Mike, this latest version makes it a lot easier to see who's who, especially the children of different partners.

It would be tricky to put everyone in one pane, because then the scroll-bars would not work satisfactorily for large families.

Fair enough, and if the contents of more than one pane were needed, it's still going to be one of the quickest and easiest ways of getting the list of, say, siblings or children into another document.

What 'display simplifying' Options did you have in mind?
Fewer types of events?
Fewer family relations?

I was taking my cue from your earlier post:

It has an inactive Choose Options button, that could later be used to choose which Relatives to include, and what Events to include, plus perhaps default Window & Pane size & position.

but if pressed, I think I'd go for the option of fewer Events, eg use Baptism only if Birth is missing. Or for a really compact list, how about names only, with Birth and Death years in brackets as now?

Your earlier post also mentioned window size, and this seems to be an issue with my family of 21 children. The top edge of the window is just above the top of the screen, though there's enough of the top of the frame for me to drag it down. However, the bottom of the window is hidden behind the Windows taskbar. Ideally I'd prefer the whole of the plugin window to be within the FH workspace.

With a different family and a smaller plugin window I've found that the resizing arrows allow me to increase its height, but not reduce it. I would prefer the window to be fully resizable, but so long as it doesn't start too big, I'd be happy to do this manually as required rather than with something in Options.

Arthur

[tatewise]

OK, I was thinking along similar lines.

I have slightly increased the standard number of lines per pane, and that has gone a bit too far for your screen.
A published version would offer better size control and be governed by the size of your screen.

[tatewise]

I am reviewing a few things in the display, and have some suggestions to simplify things.

Are the letter/digit points before each person's name needed any more, now that the names are bold and coloured?

If each person's name is moved against the margin, should their BMD Events still be indented a little?

Should the = sign for partners be against the margin, and the partner's name indented in line with the BMD Events?

On reflection, the root Individual does not need a different colour (currently Red) from the rest of their family, as long as it is different from their Father, Mother, Sibling colour (currently Blue).

The options for BMD Events I'm considering are:

• Full as now with every Birth & Baptism & Christening, plus Marriage (& Divorce?), plus Death & Burial & Cremation.
  (What about multiple instances of any of those? i.e. multiple Birth events or Death events.)
• Brief listing only the first Event that exists in each of the three groups above, so a maximum of three Events.
• None where only any = Partner names would appear under each person.

Are options needed for which family relations to include?
Such as Parents (Father & Mother), Partners, Siblings, Children, etc?

[Valkrider]

Mike

My thoughts.

The letters before each individual are not required.

I think it looks better without the entries butted up against the margin. Indenting the dates from the name though is a good idea.

I like how the spouse is laid out currently and don't think it needs to be indented any further.

Can you get rid of the root individual from the siblings box as I don't think it necessary? The siblings should be the siblings of the root and not the siblings of the roots parents.

The root individual does not need a different colour BUT I like the fact that it does as it stands out clearly who the root is.

I like the idea of multiple instances of each event but will that cause display issues if there are lots of children?

The options of who to include are nice to have but I would not use them as I like the 'all' display that there is now.

My thoughts others may well disagree.

[Valkrider]

Mike

I have found a little anomaly please see the images below. The first shows the snapshot with Richard Spencer as the root with two wives but shows no partner in the partner's box.

The second is with Walter as root and it correctly shows his parents.

Screen Shot 2016-12-10 at 13.16.25-s.jpg (142.97 KiB) Viewed 11233 times

Screen Shot 2016-12-10 at 13.17.05-s.jpg (239.23 KiB) Viewed 11233 times

[tatewise]

Colin, sounds like you are moving in my direction.

The root Individual is in the Siblings box (but with no Events) so you can see them in relation to their siblings.
Were they the youngest child, or the eldest child, or what?

The Siblings are the siblings of the root, including step-brothers/sisters in a different colour (Thomas SPENCER in black your screenshot), so not sure what you mean by 'siblings of roots parents'.

The snag with root Individual having unique colour is it is not so obvious, which are their Children with 1st partner.
That family group of root Individual + Partner + Children would have a unique colour, and there is only one Individual box.

The scroll-bars handle large lists of people & events per box.
If the user wants to avoid scroll-bars then must use Brief or None option, or get a bigger monitor.

I will investigate that anomaly, which looks like where 1st Marriage before 1849 has no Wife recorded.

[Valkrider]

Mike

The unknown first wife I have been unable to track down the only reason I know there was one as he is shown as a widower in the PR for the second marriage.

OK I now understand the reason for the root in the siblings list. My 'siblings of the roots parents' was a misspeak on my part what I meant to say was it lists all the children of the roots parents rather than just the siblings of the root.

The unique colour I like but I can see the issue you are having, so rather than a unique colour what about underline instead so it makes the root stand out a little more?

[tatewise]

I have found and fixed the bug with the missing 1st Wife, and like your idea of underlining the root Individual.

[arthurk]

Discussion has moved on a little since I was last here, but here are a few thoughts, if they're not too late:

Are the letter/digit points before each person's name needed any more, now that the names are bold and coloured?

No, probably not.

If each person's name is moved against the margin, should their BMD Events still be indented a little?

Yes, it makes the names stand out more.

Should the = sign for partners be against the margin, and the partner's name indented in line with the BMD Events?

I think the current layout is fine, so that the only things against the margin are the names of the Siblings/Children. Being Bold, the spouse names stand out reasonably well already.

On reflection, the root Individual does not need a different colour (currently Red) from the rest of their family, as long as it is different from their Father, Mother, Sibling colour (currently Blue).

I was a little confused by the use of Red for the root individual and Blue for the siblings because of the convention (in some places) of blue for males and red for females, so anything that avoids the use of red and blue in the same pane may be a good idea.

Underlining might look OK, or would some kind of highlighting be possible in the coding/language you're using? Either just the name, or like a band of colour across the whole width of the pane? (However, for aesthetic and accessibility reasons it might then be better to have the main sibling names in Black, with alternative colours used for spouses and half-siblings.)

The options for BMD Events I'm considering are:

• Full as now with every Birth & Baptism & Christening, plus Marriage (& Divorce?), plus Death & Burial & Cremation.
  (What about multiple instances of any of those? i.e. multiple Birth events or Death events.)
• Brief listing only the first Event that exists in each of the three groups above, so a maximum of three Events.
• None where only any = Partner names would appear under each person.

Those options look right to me, and I think Divorce is needed - without it people can potentially look like bigamists.

One possible slimming down if you can think of a way to do it, is that currently the Partner and Marriage information is shown under the root individual as well as in the Partners pane, and there's similar duplication between Father and Mother. I can see that since the Marriage fact applies to both, this may be the right way to do it - unless the panes are redefined so that partners share one rather than having one each. But that's quite a major change, so I'm not asking you to do it just for me.

Are options needed for which family relations to include?
Such as Parents (Father & Mother), Partners, Siblings, Children, etc?

I don't think any of those could reasonably be omitted, but one option that occurs to me is to include/exclude any other marriages of their parents that the root individual didn't descend from, and the root's half-siblings - these two things belong together. (I'm struggling to find any step-siblings in my tree, so I can't tell whether they're part of the scope of this plugin, but if they are, I think they should be optional too.)

Arthur

[Wilfreda99]

I agree with Arthur for all points.

I guess that if there are lots of children or siblings then it might be preferable to just display the BMD as you describe to reduce content. Could this be a choice in the 'Options' button in the fullness of time?

[E Wilcock]

Mike - Sorry I called you John - Now corrected.
I had been playing about with Gedsite by John Cardinal, for which you wrote the Plug In export.

[tatewise]

I have tried to incorporate most of the requested ideas as per attachment Version 0.4 Date 11 Dec 2016.
[Attachment deleted as now in Plugin Store under the title Quick Family Facts.]

The root person is highlighted in italics and offers the possibility of the Father, Mother, Individual, full-Siblings, and the 1st Partner plus their Children all having same nuclear family colour?

The BMD Event options are chosen from drop-list at bottom, but not 'sticky' at present, so always starts with Full BMD Events.

I have avoided red and blue and the colours are easily changed for a different set.