* Creating attractive books

[Badger22]

Having spent this year doing a lot of family history research, I'm planning on creating a PDF version of a book with the story so far, to send to relatives for Xmas.

My original plan was to do this entirely within FH6, so that any changes in an individual's details would be automatically updated in charts and diagrams in the book, and make heavy use of the Free Text Page feature to add narrative, photos etc, rather than have a load of dry auto-generated content.

However, as far as I can see, the book design options, especially the Free Text feature, are very limited, with no facility to improve the layout with things like setting colour schemes, borders or background images, specifying where paragraphs or images go on a page etc. I've got the 'Getting the most from FH6' book and have had a play around with the ‘book’ produced in the sample project, but wanted to check if I'm missing something as it looks less than inspiring?

My questions are:

1. Are there any layout examples anywhere of what can be produced using just FH6? I’ve searched within this forum and online generally, but couldn’t find any.

2. I’d really appreciate feedback from others who’ve used another program to produce a book on how best to go about this, especially if family tree modifications are anticipated before v2 of the book. Create the bones of the book within FH6, save as an RTF and do the rest in Word? Create the book in a standard MS Office program entirely, and just insert charts/diagrams as images?? Buy a specific DTP package, Adobe or otherwise, and insert charts/diagrams as images into that??

Thanks in advance

[tatewise]

Welcome to the FHUG.

Producing a Book such as you are proposing needs a fair amount of preparation.
If you intend to use the Narrative Report style then all the Fact Types defined Sentence Templates need reviewing to make the narratives more readable, such as using formatting codes <br> and <para> to start newlines and paragraphs.
See how_to:narrative_report_fact_sentence_templates|> Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates and
maybe how_to:tabulate_multiline_text_in_records_and_reports|> Tabulate Multiline Text in Records and Reports.

To answer question 1, take a look at how_to:report_content_multimedia_format_layout|> Report Content, Media, Format and Layout under Book Free Page Content that supports word-processor/DTP style text & image box page layout.

Sorry, cannot help with question 2.

[dewilkinson]

Regarding books, I am writing a book with a chapter for each of my and my wife's grandparents, six done, two to go. I am new to FH recently switching from TMG and as Mike says sentence templates need a lot of work and I have been concentrating on getting them to my previous TMG standard. The way I have put the chapters together is each has its own MIcrosoft Word file. I chose Word as this is very flexible and does things like create automatic contents lists etc, also I had already paid for it but other publishing software will have other advantages. Photos, images of census pages etc can be easily imported and manipulated in Word.

I did spend quite a bit of time sorting out 'my style' and created an outline file (I don't call it a template as that has a specific meaning in Word) which I use as a master to create each chapter. I purchased some nice looking spring backed folders which means pages can easily be replaced or inserted as more information comes to light, 1939 mini-census being an example. I also print on acid free paper so hopefully they will last.

I use individual narrative reports to create the text and references but this still needs quite a bit of work to make the prose flow and insert diagrams etc. I haven't explored FHs mapping yet and have used the free version of ARCGis to create migration maps showing where the ancestors came from, using colours to show migrations in 50 year blocks based upon birth year.

I have spent on average 2 years on each grandparent getting all the family history information, photographs of where they lived, ships they served on etc etc for all born after 1700 (although ancestor diagrams go back further where possible). Once done I plan to go over each chapter again as more information has been made available on-line and now being retired there is more time to visit far off Record Offices and sites and to push back even further if the information is available.

Hope that helps and best of luck.

David

[Jane]

One option in FH which is easily missed is the "blank" diagram option. I have used this several times to layout single page "charts" which are actually Photo and caption pages, this works well and they can easily be included into FH books.

[EDIT by Mike Tate: Yes, see how_to:report_content_multimedia_format_layout|> Report Content, Media, Format and Layout under Book Free Page Content that I mentioned earlier.]

[craigmollekin]

If printing a book, I'd recommend using, http://www.tcgr.bufton.org/ Family Historian likes to clump all the facts into a single paragraph which doesn't make easy reading and looks awful.

[Badger22]

Thanks, all, for the input and various options which I wouldn't have thought of. I'm going to try a few out, and I've also discovered that I have MS Publisher as part of my Office package, which I hadn't realised. Never used it before, but spent some time testing layouts and it can produce some really good stuff.

One thing's for sure; as mentioned by a couple of you, a decent book is really time-consuming so I'd better get my skates on!

[Jane]

If printing a book, I'd recommend using, http://www.tcgr.bufton.org/ Family Historian likes to clump all the facts into a single paragraph which doesn't make easy reading and looks awful.

Don't forget as of V6 you can add newlines into your fact type sentence templates if you want to spread things out a bit.

[tatewise]

Yes, I mentioned the formatting codes <br> and <para> to start newlines and paragraphs in my original reply.

[E Wilcock]

I have come back to this thread after much searching in the book and on line for information on formatting Note fields.
It relates to Mikes recent explanation to me of how TMG sentences arrive (or do not arrive) in fh.

Yes, I mentioned the formatting codes <br> and <para> to start newlines and paragraphs in my original reply.

Formatting Codes of <br> and <para> force a New Line or New Paragraph, and the special {blank} code inhibits the sentence completely.

There is much information in the help about how to manipulate formatting to produce tables in fh report output, and Templates for in put of b m d and census documents.

Please could you point me to a simple explanation of how the new line and new paragraph codes are used to enforce a break in text from note fields attached to events.
What is the difference between <br> and <para>

I mentioned yesterday problems bringing into fh a tmg Project where I had done much work on local sentences to produce a complete Narrative report destined for the website builder Second Site (Gedsite).

I am considering how one might reproduce that formatting in fh.

First, are these codes <br> and <para> part of the sentence structure? Or can one type them directly into a Note field in fh.
If one uses a new line (carriage return) in a Note field in fh, will that carriage return be preserved in Report output?

In TMG, if the amount of information about a person produced a Narrative report that was so long it was hard to read through without a break, one could force a paragraph break in two ways (I think) . Would either of these be acceptable in fh?
1. By selecting the Event/Tag which one wanted to start a new paragraph and writing a local sentence that started with the formatting code for a paragraph break. Or even two of them for a wider gap.
2. By creating a custom Event Tag called PARA for which the sentence was simply the carriage return code. This worked in TMG as TMG Events with no date could have a notional sort date - this ensured one's paragraph Tag/Events remained in the right place. I suspect one could not do this in fh.

[tatewise]

There is much information in the help...

I think here you are referring to the FHUG [kb]|[/kb] rather than the FH Help.
Remember the [kb]|[/kb] is our FHUG supplement to the FH Help pages, but only where extra advice is worthwhile, and does not duplicate all the FH Help pages. There often is a cross-reference to the relevant FH Help pages.

What is the difference between <br> and <para>?

It is not explicitly explained, but a simple experiment shows that <br> produces one newline and <para> produces two newlines so there is a blank line between paragraphs.

First, are these codes <br> and <para> part of the sentence structure?

YES.

Or can one type them directly into a Note field in fh?

NO - see next answer.

If one uses a new line (carriage return) in a Note field in fh, will that carriage return be preserved in Report output?

YES, any white space characters such as newline, tab, space, etc, are faithfully preserved in Reports.
The only problem is with tab characters due to the tab stops in Note boxes being different from Reports and the font sizes are different as explained in how_to:tabulate_multiline_text_in_records_and_reports|> Tabulate Multiline Text in Records and Reports.

1. By selecting the Event/Tag which one wanted to start a new paragraph and writing a local sentence that started with the formatting code for a paragraph break. Or even two of them for a wider gap.

YES, see how_to:narrative_report_fact_sentence_templates|> Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates under Specific Fact Sentences.

2. By creating a custom Event Tag called PARA for which the sentence was simply the carriage return code. This worked in TMG as TMG Events with no date could have a notional sort date - this ensured one's paragraph Tag/Events remained in the right place. I suspect one could not do this in fh.

You could do this but would have to use the standard Date field. You may need to exclude such dummy facts from non-narrative Reports, but that is straightforward.

[AdrianBruce]

For what it's worth, I have defined virtually all my sentences to start with <para>, e.g. this is the sentence for the Confirmation event:

Code: Select all

<para>{individual} was confirmed {date}< {place}>.

One of the few events that doesn't start with a <para> is the baptism event. This means that if a birth event exists, then the text about the baptism occupies the same paragraph, while if a birth event doesn't exist then any baptism is probably the first fact so gets a new paragraph anyway by default of the structure of the report.

All this assumes the "normal" order of birth and baptism events in the file. Hmm. Must check my G-GM who was baptised as a teenager! Might need a <para> in her own sentence there....

PS - The Birth event sentence doesn't start with a <para> either for similar reasons of it being the first fact generally.