Monday 31 August 2015

Genealogy: Creating Compact Ancestral Charts from Gedfiles

I've spent several hours doing some genealogical research for my ancestors. The most interesting finding so far is a remote relative (my mother's cousin's grand-grand-grand-grand-grandfather Caspar Mathisson), who was the pilot onboard the ship when the ship ran aground half a mile900 m from Göteborg in 1743 after a trip to China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6theborg_(ship)

Using Ancestry.com, and the Gramps software, I've found lots of persons back to the 17th century. 

However, I lacked one visualization tool for the shoe box situation: 
Often, one very proactive person does a lot of research. After a while, the results will end up in a shoe box on the attic for some decades. In the case of papers and photographies, it is easy to resume the research. In the case of data files, it will be much harder (just imagine how to retrieve data from a computer of the '80s). Therefore, the data must be in printed form, independent of computers or programs.

On the other hand, a family tree will be hard to read if  there are many persons in it. And printing a 100-person GEDCOM file will require 40 pages, and that is too much. 

I'll print the final results of the file now (for privacy reasons, this example starts with my grand-grandfather) and I'll describe the function and anatomy of the program later: