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Archiver > FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS > 2003-12 > 1071169440


From: (Alan White)
Subject: Re: [FHU] Spouse & children in diagrams - answer? (long)
Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 19:04 +0000 (GMT Standard Time)
In-Reply-To: <000d01c3bf69$49c626e0$6501a8c0@eve>


Thanks to all for the comments and suggestions on the best way of showing
multiple spouses.

I agree that this issue is rather more complicated than my simple example
made it out to be. For example, I didn't consider people marrying more
than twice.

That said, I assume that the number of third marriages is far less than
second marriages (anybody have any statistics on this?) and therefore I
suggest that the program should cater primarily for the greatest
probability, with the more unusual situations fitting in as best as
possible.

For this reason, and because it solves my problem :-), I agree with
Simon's suggestion of a man with two wives being placed inbetween them. I
came to FH from FTM, and FTM does it this way, which is possibly why I
find FH's presentation a problem. This avoids the strange presentation of
two women apparently marrying each other (no, I don't want to go down that
discussion path).

The other thing that would help is for the children to be shown as
attached to the appropriate spouse rather than to the double line joining
the spouses. Again, FTM does it this way even for single marriages and,
for multiple marriages, it makes for a clearer presentation.

On a related (no pun intended :-)) topic, the text in the boxes in the
case of multiple marriages is also confusing. In my original example , I
only seem to be able to display the first of my marriages' dates, place
etc. In FTM, the data for multiple marriages is automatically placed with
the correct spouse. So in my example the marriage data would be
automatically placed with each of my wives rather than, as default, with
the husband.

I apologise for droning on about FTM. I used it for many years and it
served me well, but I hold no torch for it. FH is far superior in many
respects, but I do find that the diagrams and queries are FH's weak
points. Both of these are done much better in FTM.

For example, as I reported when I first joined this list, in queries FTM
permits multiple instances of the same event for the same individual to
appear on multiple lines, one line per instance. In diagrams, aside from
the issues discussed above, FTM provides such useful things as different
fonts and formatting for each text line, vertical ancestor charts, and
single-column children.

Lest I appear overly critical, let me say that there are many aspects of
FH which I applaud. The near-complete GEDCOM compliance; a textual
database - thus enabling data manipulation outside the program; and the
ability to influence program design through this list are but three
examples of FH's excellence.

Regards
Alan

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