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From: "Kevin Slingsby" <>
Subject: Re: [FHU] Spouse & children in diagrams - answer? (long)
Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 04:36:49 -0000
References: <009101c3beb0$06adc980$1730a8c0@adkhome>


The logic of this is surely that the general principle of having the man on
the left and the woman on the right is maintained as far as possible.

When a man is the centre subject of the diagram, then his wives are listed
all to the right - a child by wife number 2 then appears between wife 1 and
wife 2 as Alan suggests, but if you look it is significantly closer to wife
2 than wife 1, thus indicating it is a child of wife 2 and the subject, i.e.
the man.

When a woman is the centre subject, her first husband appears to the left
(as per general principle as stated above), and other husbands appear to the
right - I don't think the order of the husbands could be shown successfully
any other way (I suppose the husbands could be lined up all on the left of
the woman, but I don't think it would fit with the ingrained habit of
reading from left to right very well as you would see the woman last).
Similarly, children of husbands 2,3 etc are shown significantly closer to
the relevant box.

When a man and woman are jointly at the centre of a diagram, then no other
spouses are shown at all (this would be difficult, as both husband and wife
could have other spouses).

When a man or woman appears as a descendant in the diagram, then the same
logic applies as described above for men and women separately.

Hope this helps!

Kevin

----- Original Message -----
From: "A. Kirk" <>
To: <>
Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2003 11:56 PM
Subject: RE: [FHU] Spouse & children in diagrams - answer? (long)


> I was intrigued by this question as I had also noticed it, however lets
> also ask the question - how do you manage a man who marries three times?
> I have this in my tree, and there is only a left and a right to the man,
> so logically on one side or the other there must appear at least two
> wives.
>
> In my tree it shows as M=W=W=W
>
> I think that the logic behind this - looking at the case of three wives
> - is that as it is impossible to show it following the pattern suggested
> by Alan (W=M=W, where does the other wife go?), then it would have to be
> shown as W=W=W=M / W=W=M=W / W=M=W=W / M=W=W=W
>
> Foloowing on from this, and assuming that a man or woman could have more
> than three spouses, the logical approach is to always have it as W=W=W=M
> or M=W=W=W and as the program always places the person in the tree on
> the left and their spouse on the right, it is logical to have the
> pattern M=W=W=W
>
> However, I then noticed a female in the tree with two husbands where it
> has placed it as requested by Alan: W=M=W.
>
> The only difference I could think of was that this family was added when
> the file was in Family Tree Maker, not Family Historian, so is there a
> difference in the GEDCOM file?
>
> Looking in the GEDCOM the following shows her entry after I have added
> another (spurious) spouse (result M=W=M=M):
>
> 0 @I127@ INDI
> 1 NAME Diana Mary /Kirk/
> 1 SEX F
> 1 BIRT
> 2 DATE 8 MAY 1929
> 2 PLAC London
> 1 FAMC @F34@
> 1 FAMS @F41@
> 1 FAMS @F42@
> 1 FAMS @F1055@
> 1 CHAN
> 2 DATE 9 DEC 2003
> 3 TIME 23:18:10
>
> The entry FAMC relates to the children, the entry FAMS relates to the
> spouse's family number. You can see that no. three is 1055, the others
> 41 and 42 as I have entered them a long time ago, and no 3 today (new
> entries go to the end of the GEDCOM file).
>
> If you change the numbers around you will change the position of the
> spouses: i.e. from M=W1=W2=W3 to something like M=W2=W1=W3,
>
> I then created a small family of parent and son in family tree maker and
> gave the son two wives in FTM it shows as W=M=W, in FH it shows as
> M=W=W, looking at the gedcom shows no obvious difference.
>
> However, when creating a small family in FTM of parents with daughter
> and giving the daughter two husbands, it shows as M=W=M in FTM and in
> FH.
>
> So, current observation (and getting late!) is that you can have M=W=M,
> but not W=M=W! so change the sex and hey presto no problems - except in
> real life!
>
> regards
>
> Alasdair Kirk
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alan White [mailto:]
> Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2003 6:00 PM
> To:
> Subject: [FHU] Spouse & children in diagrams
>
>
> Try as I might I can't get my family to appear correctly in a diagram.
>
> I had a wife W1. We had no children. I have a second wife w2. We have a
> child C1. This appears in diagrams like this (fixed font required):
>
> Me=W1=W2
> |
> C1
>
> This is obviously nonsense as it shows my two wives marrying and having
> a
> child when, so far as I know, they've not even met :-)
>
> I can get the diagram to duplicate me, thus showing the child with the
> correct parents, but this is obviously unwieldy and confusing.
>
> I must be doing something wrong. How can I get this family to show
> correctly as:
>
> W1=Me=W2
> |
> C1
>
> TIA
> Alan
>
>
> ==============================
> To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy
> records, go to:
> http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237
>
>
>
> ==============================
> To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records,
go to:
> http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237
>

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