* Icons INSIDE diagram boxes, instead of texts, and less space between 2 partners

[Mother10]

Hi all,

Searched for icons on the forum, but all I could find were ways to have icons BELOW the diagram boxes.

What I want is to be able to use icons instead of the words "Born", "Died", "Mar", and more.
So I would like to use them INSIDE a diagram box.
That would save space for the width of a box and it would also not be necessary to translate those words.

Now I could try to fool around with a special font and create special lines under the "used items" box.
Or maybe upload some icons and use those, although I dont know if thats possible.
But before I do that I would like to know if anyone else ever did this before.

It would be great if FH had this possibility.

image.png (11.46 KiB) Viewed 941 times

It would look a bit like the above then.
Icons are: person, birth, death, occupation.
But more are possible.

The green square means there are 1 or more sources for this fact.
When there are no sources it looks like this: (so with red squares)

image.png (5.73 KiB) Viewed 941 times

(screenshots coming from my other program.)

So you can see at a glance what it is all about.

Second:
I tried to find a way to keep the diagram boxes of the 2 partners in a marriage next to eachother.
They are now often "miles apart", depending on how many ancestors there are above them.
I want them to stick together.
Is that possible?

Thanks in advance!

[tatewise]

With a little experimentation I have achieved what may work for you.
Text Scheme items can only display text, but fonts such as Wingdings offer icons that can be a single colour.
So the following set of Text Scheme Used Items get close to what you requested.
These are quite advanced customisation techniques.

image.png (21.13 KiB) Viewed 921 times

image.png (56.22 KiB) Viewed 920 times

The items <font = Wingdings, 8 pt; text colour is ...> set the font and colour for the subsequent item.

The Birth Icon item Template is =TextIf(Exists(%INDI.BIRT%),"&",) where & is the Wingdings book character.

The Source Icon item Template is =TextIf(Exists(%INDI.BIRT.SOUR%),"n",) where n is a Wingdings box character.
Group with previous line is ticked.

The No Source Icon item Template is =TextIf(Exists(%INDI.BIRT%),"n",) where n is a Wingdings box character.
Group with previous line and Only output if previous line is blank are both ticked.

The item <font = Arial, 8 pt; text colour is Black> sets the font and colour for the following Birth item text.

The Birth item Template is =FactText(%INDI.BIRT%,"CT","E_ _ in _") i.e. the word Born: has been removed.
Group with previous line is ticked.

Under Box Type, the Remarriage and Proxy options are not ticked for any of the items.

A similar strategy should work for the other items.

For me the boxes of partners are very rarely far apart, and only for multiple partnerships that each have children.
Please post an example screenshot of where your partner boxes are far apart.

[Mother10]

Hi Mike,
Thanks very much for your explanations.
I will experiment with that.
I already found a lot of info in the help about how to deal with all this, so I expected it had to be done this way.
It is indeed a bit advanced stuff, but I dont fear that.
I also saw (I think) that FH saves these "templates", so if I succeed I will try to upload the result scheme here too.

Yesterday I also found that Tamura Jones has a page describing advises for icons to use:
https://www.tamurajones.net/GenealogySymbols.xhtml

Sofar I couldnot find a font dedicated to genealogical symbols only.

I will also add a screenshot later, of what I see for the partners.
Thanks again!

image.png (134.35 KiB) Viewed 884 times

Here you see the couples very far apart, marked with colored arrows for each couple.
Now this chart will be way bigger with more ancestors, then it is hardly possible anymore to see both partners.

[tatewise]

When creating modified Text Schemes, it is recommended that the Clone... button is used on a Text Scheme similar to the one you need to create a custom copy. Then the original Text Scheme is preserved for reference.

OK, I see what you mean regarding the distance between partner boxes.
I would be interested in what you suggest to improve that display with such a large number of ancestral boxes.

The spacing is partly due to the width of all the ancestral boxes, so changing the Orientation will help.
i.e. Use Diagram > Options > General tab, Orientation: Left-right.
Then the spacing is governed by the box height, which is less, so the partners are closer.

Also the Diagram > Enable Moving/Resizing option for Box & Bar can reduce the spacing as shown below, and then saved using Diagram > Save Diagram as a Family Historian Chart.

image.png (202.38 KiB) Viewed 854 times

[Mother10]

This is what I have sofar:

image.png (12.7 KiB) Viewed 848 times

But I have these spaces that I dont want there.
Read all about those functions (on that separate function pages) but no idea yet how to get rid of those spaces.


And about what you said about cloning....
I always try to be carefull, so I always copy paste (or clone in this case) to make sure i dont ruin things.
This is my Edit text scheme sofar (named differently):

image.png (104.75 KiB) Viewed 848 times

Changed the Birth item to:
=FactText(%INDI.BIRT%,"CS","E_ _ in _")
So used an S not a T to have only the placename. And called the template "Birth no "born".
Its unfinished as the original Birth has to go and the others have to be done too.
AND i want to add occupation.
I come back when i have it working.

[Mother10]

OK, I see what you mean regarding the distance between partner boxes.
I would be interested in what you suggest to improve that display with such a large number of ancestral boxes.

Well I would like to ALWAYS have the partners next to eachother, possibly with the marriage/divorce symbol in between them.
More like this:

image.png (17.42 KiB) Viewed 843 times

Here the marriage has its own box too. As a marriage can also have a lot of extra tags, and the way FH does that now, will make that impossible to display.

[tatewise]

There does not seem to be any way to reduce the spaces between items in the box text.
However, why not combine the the Fact Icon with the Source colour as shown below?

image.png (30.09 KiB) Viewed 840 times

With partners displayed as in your last posting, how are the Ancestors of Harms Antje included?

If you remove those Ancestors from one partner in an FH Ancestors Diagram by clicking the Expansion Buttons then the partners automatically get displayed close together.

In the Diagram > Options > General tab, untick Use Fork Style for Lines Connecting Ancestors, then a marriage/divorce line connects the partners. The Lines tab, Marriage Status Line Options define the style of the connector.

You say FH makes the display of marriage tags impossible. Please explain. In the screenshot above the Marr: details are shown in the wife's box and can include any Family facts. Other text display options are also possible.

[Mother10]

Here a view of more boxs of a tree.
The arrow points to where 1 branch is closed (you see a plus-sign there instead of a minus sign)

image.png (115.33 KiB) Viewed 815 times

[tatewise]

As I said earlier, you can achieve that in FH by using the Diagram > Enable Moving/Resizing option for Box & Bar to bring partners together, and use the Expansion Buttons to close branches.

It depends on which family grouping you prefer to be closest.
i.e. partners close together, or parents near children.
In your recent screenshot some parents are a very long way from their child.

Also, your boxes have been reduced in width so that some text is hidden and spacing is reduced.
You can do that in FH too. See the Diagram > Options > Dimensions tab.

[Mother10]

Hmmm seems I cannot add my screenshots.
I try here:

Original post followws after this one.

[Mother10]

Hi all,

I had problems in uploading this message and the screenshots.
Forum didnot accept the screenshots together with this text, so its a bit of a mess now, sorry for that.

I have been experimenting yesterday, to make the diagram boxes look like I wanted, and I will write my findings in this forumpost. Maybe they are usefull for others.

Things I looked at and found:

Fonts General:
Been looking for fonts that had icons as advised by Tamura Jones ()
Problem with other fonts is that they might not have the same lineheight as the font you use for your test.
In my case I use Arial.
But because the other fonts I found have different lineheight (for the same fontsize, in my case 8) I get results like this:

(lineheight 1 and 2) in second screenshot)

As you can see the lineheight in between the separate lines is totally different from the lineheight in the yellow accented screenshot 2



Fonts found and used:
I looked for freeware fonts that had the recommended characters, but I only found fonts that had a subset, so that meant more fonts should be needed.
The Webdings and Windings fonts of windows itself, do not really have icons that look a bit like these:
(icons used found)

So if anyone wants to file a new wish for FH: Make it possible to use your own icons in the diagrams (AND in the output), that would be great!!

Fonts I found and installed in windows, all are free fonts!!:

Segoe UI Symbol font, didnot have to find that, it was already on my windows 11.
Otherwise try to go to (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segoe) or microsoft itself (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/typog ... -ui-symbol)
To the left of that page is a menu with more info.

You could also try github, there are segoe fonts there too.

Noto Sans (symbols):
Coming from Fonts.google (https://fonts.google.com/?query=noto+sans)
or the symbols font (https://fonts.google.com/?query=noto+sans+symbols)
This font seems to have a higher lineheight!

Quivira font:
Coming from (http://www.quivira-font.com/)

These are all free. There are more, but I couldnot find any font that had a lot of Genealogical symbols. (Did not look at payed fonts!!)

Material Design icons:
There is also Material design icons, also free from Google. But as said, FH cannot work with icons so thats not possible.

Finding the right character in your font:

Online there are charactermaps here and there that show which characters are in your font.
But I use the Windows Charactermap tool for that:
I found this a very very usefull tool, so I have it always ready in my taskbar.
In English the tool is called "Character map", so you can search for that to find it, if you have never heard of it.
If all else fails you can search for Charmap.exe in your windows/system32 directory, and make a shortcut from there.
I took a small screenshot of how it looks in the taskbar
screenshots in first screenshot in previous post)

Experimenting with FH's possibilities:
Great fun (not always ) but the results are not what I want sofar.
So I need to try out more.
If you ever do that, make sure to keep the Help at hand, and regularly click on the Helpbutton on a certain FH-screen, so you can see what is supposed to be used and filled in.
Also the Function-chapter of the FH-help is very usefull.
As it describes each parameter of every function.

O, and Mike, I even experimented with a function call as a parameter of another function.
FH did not complain, but sofar not the results I want.

What I want is the following:
a persons name at the top, first and lastname different colors.
(did not try that yet, but that cannot be difficult)
Dont want pictures, as they take up too much space. I have boxborders in different colors and look, for men and women.

I use the generation colors, that helps a lot in understanding. And I colored the root boxes white so you can easily see the root of a diagram.

Next line in each box, ALWAYS a birth icon. For now I use mark icons to denote if sources are present or not for a fact.
But as Mike suggested, I can also color the icons instead, that saves the extra marker.
But because I want special things (as I always do ) Thats more complicated, so i try first with the marker present.

About the lines following the persons nameline (s):
First on each line, there should be an icon, denoting what line it is, so with a birth icon, a baptism icon (this line only when there is a BAPM present) a DEAT icon, a BURI icon (only when there is a burial), a MARR icon, only when they have a relation, so not for kids or people without relations.
An Occupation icon, even if they had no occupations mentioned.
(for occupations I think I only want the first one mentioned, otherwise boxes get too high)

O Mike, I think I noticed something when using all occupations. I gave them a value for initial indent, and indeed the text of second and further lines indented, but it seems the list line (if short) does not??
I checked and indeed same results, see in screenshot.

Now if a line has a source, I want a green mark. If a line has no source, or has no data filled in, I want a red mark. So for example if there is no information about the birth, I still want the icon and the red mark.

Sofar I have this now:
(see results on screenshot in previous post)

[Mother10]

Ok, before I continue experimenting, I wanted to just give the results as I have them now.
Its almost what I want:

Results-now2.png (30.89 KiB) Viewed 696 times

Looks almost right here.

Results-now.png (11.92 KiB) Viewed 696 times

Only thing is I get a green and red mark, where I only want a green one.

So I will go on trying and show the used function lines when I am finished.

[tatewise]

Instead of using the 1st Occupation you could use the preferred Occupation.
The preferred Occupation is marked in the Properties Box with a Fact Flag.
i.e. %INDI.OCCU[1]% versus %INDI.OCCU[preferred]%

To help with the problem of a green and red mark please post the Used Item Templates for the marks.

[Mother10]

Thanks Mike for the fast answer.

I will give it a try again, and if I cannot find it I will post here.
(No offence, but I think I learn more when I first try myself, as I always do, if I dont find the answer, I come back)

[Mother10]

Final results.

Here are the final results.
Unfortunately I can only add 3 screenshots in a post, so each time I combined some little ones to form 1 big one.
Not really how I like to explain things but there is no other way.

This is the first of 3 consecutive posts.
The second post will explain the Text Scheme lines in detail, and also have the excel as attachement.

First I want to thank Tatewise, for his assistance in this thread!!
He made it possible I managed to get what I wanted.

There will be 3 posts, including this one.


The Excel spreadsheet AND the Scheme itself are attached, just scroll a bit furtther.




<continued in next post>

[Mother10]

<continued from previous post>

If you want to follow along start as follows:

Most important step: Work with a copy of your tree or with an example file, so nothing can go wrong.

After that:
Rightclick on your diagram and choose "Diagram Options"

There are 2 tabs on that screen I used and changed.

First the tab "Boxes".
With the button "Add Condition" you can add 1 of 5 possibilities. Each time you choose one, its crossed of the list and becomes grey.

The "Boxes tab settings" screenshot shows the edits I made for the first line, the Sex-boxes.
These are the first row of 3 pictures of that screenshot.
The second row of 3 pictures in the screenshot show the changes for the conditions "Box Type", "Generation" and "<Default>"

I changed the boxes for each sex so the male boxes are a rectangle with sharp corners, and the female boxes have round corners.
Makes it easy to see which is which.
Also I gave them different border colors.


The condition line "Box Type" is because I wanted my starting couple, the couple used to build the whole tree from, to be easily visible. They are called the Root, thats why for them you see only the "Root" box ticked, and none of the others.

To be able to edit a certain "Condition" click on "Edit features" at the bottom of that screen.

For the Generations I set that to 10 generations, and for each of them I made some colors a bit lighter.
Otherwise it might be a bit difficult to see the (small) text, thats on top of that background color.
But that is just what you like.

Now the most important tab, the "Text" tab.

To help you with that, I created an excel, so you can copy past what you need.
You find the combined screenshots in the picture: "Edit Text Screen Formulas2"

For these you select the "Text" tab on the "Diagram Options" screen.
In the subwindow of that screen you see a whole list of Text Schemes to choose from.
But what we will do is add another new one.
To do that we have to CLONE an existing one!!
So select (DONT DOUBLECLICK) the line called "Birth, Marr, Death".
When that line is selected, click on "Clone".
Give the scheme a new name and click "OK"

The "Edit Text Scheme"-screen should open, if it does not, double click on the scheme you just created.

At the top you see "Name Format", "Date Format" and "Place Format".
Fill them in according to the bottom right picture on my "Edit Text Screen Formulas2" screenshot.
So they will be: "Full", "Compact", and "Short".

Now on the left of that "Edit text Scheme" screen, there is a list of available Items.
If you select one there, you can click on the ">"-symbol in the greyish bar in the middle, and it will move to the right, at the bottom of the "Used Items"-list you see there.
(or you double click on the line you want)

Now take some time to look at the tiny little buttons at the bottom of that Used Items list.
From left to right you see:

• An Edit button, to edit the selexcted line. (But double click on a line also puts it in Edit-mode)
  A clone-button. Makes a copy of the selected line.
  A "Show templates" button. Shows the used itemslist as Formulas. Clicking on that button again shows them normally.
  2 little arrows. They move the selected line to the position you want.
  And at the end 3 tiny buttons that "Copy", "Paste" or "Delete" the line.

You will use those buttons when adding and changing lines.
(That is if you later want to change my example to be more to your liking)

The 2 topmost pictures on my "Edit Text Screen Formulas2" screenshot, show the "Used Items" list in Normal form (the left one) and in "Template" form, so as if you would have pressed that "Show templates" button. Both are from how it looks if you followed this post.

The next post will explain how to copy paste the needed lines into your Text Scheme.

After you have done that, you might want to use the new scheme as a default.
If you do, look at the bottom-left picture on my "Edit Text Screen Formulas2" screenshot

There you can see how to do that.

The next post will explain the Text Scheme itself.


<continued in next post>

[Mother10]

<continued from previous post>

Make sure you have installed the fonts that are used!

The icons used in this scheme are a bit different from the ones you saw in the previous posts.
Thats because the fonts, the items were in, had a higher lineheight that caused that gap in between the texts in my boxes, and I didnot like that.
But you can always change it later.

Further, I changed the shape of the mark (that denotes if there exists a source or not), to a tiny circle.

When you start with your new scheme it will look like this:
(color marking of the lines, is the same as used in the excel!!)
"Edit text Screen Start"


Grey Part:
The first Name line will be replaced by the lines from the Grey part in the Excel.
First I grabbed the <font ....> line and moved that up to the top.
Double click on it and change it according to the excel.
Insert/Modify the next lines from the Grey part of the excel.

The next 3 lines "<gap>", "<picture marker>" and "Name (a.k.a)", were deleted. If you want you can let them in.


Blue Part:
The Birth line will be replaced by the lines from the Blue part in the Excel.

The Baptism line is deleted. If you want it in, you will have to create the correct lines yourself.


Orange Part:
The Marriage, and Spouse Name line, will be replaced by the lines from the Orange part in the Excel.

The line "Spouse Name...." stays in.


Green Part:
The Death line will be replaced by the lines from the Green part in the Excel.

The Burial line is deleted. If you want it in, you will have to create it yourself.

Yellow Part:
This is added at the end, here we will show the occupations.
The last line, with the occupations, looks like this:

=FactText(%INDI.OCCU[1+]%,"CS","A_ _ _ in _")
You see it has "[1+]" behind "OCCU".
Thats because there can be more occupations. So this is the way to denote all occupations.


How do you add your own event/attribute?

Suppose you want to add Education.
Then you first add the "Available Item" called: "<Custom item>".Next you press the button labeled "<<Insert" at the top right.
Then you will see a screen like at the bottom-right of the screenshot "Excel-Icons-Inside-Boxes-and-INSERT".
That gives the "Data Reference Assistant".
Here you open up branches till you have the one you need.
Here Education.
When you click on it, it appears in the box at the top.
From there you can add it in the scheme line, at the position you want.
On this screenshot the template line is empty. You should have a function there.
And then insert the education at the correct place.
See the chapter about functions in the help.

It would be too much to explain all that here.
But there are examples with each function to help you.
But suppose you cloned the occupation line that would be this:
=FactText(%INDI.OCCU[1+]%,"CS","A_ _ _ in _")
And you delete the part
%INDI.OCCU[1+]%
Then you can replace that with what you just found for education.

Hope this helps some people.

Maybe its a good idea if people who created their own schemes from this one, to show it here in this thread, and maybe add a few words to tell how they did it.
Then this thread can serve as examples of what is possible, for other users.

<this is the last post>

[tatewise]

You could attach the spreadsheet Excel file and the FH Text Scheme file instead of images.
Then users can copy & paste the expressions.
The Text Scheme can be exported using File > Import/Export > Export > Diagram Text Scheme...
Also, it can be found in File Explorer at C:\ProgramData\Calico Pie\Family Historian\Text Schemes\Custom\

To preserve customised Diagram settings use Diagram > Save Diagram As... > Custom Diagram Type...

[ADC65]

Thank you for taking the time to explain it so thoroughly, it will be very useful to have step-by-step instructions for others that wish to do something similar.

I would agree with Mike and say it would be ideal to attach a copy of the spreadsheet itself; it will be much easier to copy and paste than to try and type in some of those expressions.

[Mother10]

The spreadsheet is attached.....
But you have to look closely to the attachements.

Its at the second post in the row.

Ok I attached it again here now.

AND as tatewise said, the scheme itself too.

[ADC65]

But you have to look closely to the attachements.

Oh yes Well hidden

Thanks again.

[Mother10]

[uktony]

I love this thread. So many interesting ideas