Full Chart

The 'full' charts show all people in the GEDCOM file related by blood to the base individual, with the exception that only two marriages are normally shown for each individual; so that if any individual has children from more than two marriages, children from third and subsequent marriages, and their descendants, may be excluded from the chart.

The options are also available, in the Full Chart Options dialog box, to show ancestors only, or descendants only. In the latter case, descendants are shown of up to two marriages of the base individual.

Two styles of chart are available, drop-line and boxchart, of which the boxchart will usually be the more compact. The program will produce large charts, of 1000 or more families, 30 feet long or more, but it is designed primarily for charts smaller than this. Print preview displays the whole chart, not individual pages; and in the case of very large charts, the text may not be legible on the screen, because of constraints within Windows on the allowable display size.

Choosing Full Chart, then either Tree or Boxchart, from the Charts menu opens the Full Chart dialog box. (If a base individual has not been selected, the Select base individual dialog box will be displayed first.)

Pressing List Individuals will open the Select base individual dialog box.

Pressing Run will produce a chart with the base individual shown.

The routine to produce the chart normally takes a few seconds; but in the case of very large charts and a slow processor, it could take some minutes: the time taken increases non-linearly in relation to the size of the chart. The number of pages will be specified, and this is the number of pages containing data: blank pages are excluded, and are not sent to the printer, unless the option is selected to display page numbers on otherwise blank pages. The size of the chart is also reported, and this is the actual size of the printed output, plus margins, the horizontal figure shown first.

You can adjust the positioning of the chart across the pages by choosing suitable margins. However, the effect of the page margins will only be visible on the screen in the case of a single-page chart. In the case of multiple-page charts, the page margins are not shown, since this would entail the chart becoming fragmented.

Best results will be obtained where the data is evenly distributed, with a balance of ancestor and descendant families. If, for instance, within the context of large chart, there occurs a family with 10 children, all of whom married and had children, all of whom are to be shown on the chart, it is doubtful whether there is any tidy way of accommodating such a localised 'explosion' of data, whilst keeping the chart compact.

Since all links are shown, ancestor and descendant links will necessarily cross, and the option is provided to use differently coloured links to improve clarity. If, however, you have a monochrome screen, some colours may not be visible.

The 'base individual' need not actually be at the base of the chart. If the 'descendants only' option is selected, the base individual must have at least one descendant family for a chart to be produced. If this is not the case, the required chart can be produced as a 'selective tree', by choosing a child of the family as base individual, and a parent as ancestor.

The chart is formatted so that family groups do not cross page boundaries, which has the consequence that charts will be slightly more compact if a larger media size is chosen: a long-axis plot 9 feet long might yield a 20% reduction in width compared with using A4. The layout of the chart may also be improved when printing on large media, and especially long axis plots, because the need to observe page breaks imposes constraints on the formatting mechanisms. A chart will not be produced if a family is wider than a page: this can usually be avoided by choosing landscape mode, and is unlikely to occur in the case of the boxchart. Nor will a chart be produced if a family is taller than a page, which might occur on a boxchart: you will need to reduce the amount of data shown in the boxes, or choose a smaller font.