Mike Talbot

Please tell me how to find Gary's original question/message. Thank you,

Example of an 8.5 x 33 inch composite chart This line of descent chart is a composite of components from about 15 standard 5 generations VCF ancestor charts and one 3 gen. descendant chart for a total of 35 generations. It is reasonably certain that no genealogy program could ever generate such a chart as a standard. So, if you want one, you must build your own. Luckily, TMG provides all of the needed tools. Start with a blank VCF chart. >One by one, generate standard VCF ancestor charts and hand select the needed boxes. Copy and paste them to the initially blank chart. Then rearrange the boxes as required by your design. Repeat until all needed ancestor boxes are included. There are VCF menu entries that assist you in aligning and spacing the boxes. >Generate a 3 generations descendant chart. Delete all connector lines and move boxes to the required locations as shown. Copy and paste them to your destination chart. >Add connector lines as shown. >Add desired explanatory text. You may now import any desired large images. This example chart took about half a day to construct, including finding and fixing mistakes. Only the order of constructing the chart is described, here. Details of performing individual tasks are described in numerous places in this forum, Note: Those confusing spouse connector lines are gone and replaced by overlapping spouse boxes. A single connector line connects a multi-generational line of boxes. Pictures and judicious use of color, make the chart more interesting. You should have identical definitions of boxes for ancestor and descendant charts. Don't forget to save your work, frequently. More lines of descent may be added, each will widen the chart by about 4 inches, For this example, details on living people were hand deleted from the individual boxes. For a composite, 4 generations descendant chart with some added ancestors that measures 8.5 inches x 16 feet, see (and scroll): http://lagenealogy.net/Talbot.aspx There are hundreds of boxes on that one. There are many other examples of completed VCF edited charts at this site. Best wishes and enjoy VCF, (what you see with this forum editor is not exactly what you get. Sorry about that. My first attempt to fix this message in quick edit mode failed. Then the fix was easy in full edit mode.) .

Virginia's advice is all good. But, there is no magic bullet for making a chart fit on one page. It is highly dependant on your requirements and your data: 1. What type of chart is desired (for a school project, I assume an ancestor chart) 2. How many desired generations on the chart 3. What level of detail is desired on birth, death and marriage data (lifespan or full dates and place names, etc.). 4. Population density on the chart (for example, a 5 gen. ancestor chart has 31 possible people on it. How many of those 31 people are in your database?) 5. How many people on your chart have images to be included? 6. TMG definitions of font sizes, max.image size, box size, inter-box spacing. 7. Are you willing to learn and perfom simple hand editing on your chart with VCF. Give us more details on the chart needed for your grandson. Maybe all of us on this forum can give you better advice. Best wishes and good luck,

The procedure in my original post in this topic does not effect connector lines nor their connections. The move to front of each of the three boxes will cover the offending connector lines if the boxes are opaque. In TMG, the chart definition option for box fill must have color or color by generation parameter selected. Selecting transparent fill would cause your symptoms. Let us know if this helps. Good luck,

In my way of looking at the requirement, a single standard VCF descendant chart can only contain 4 types of people. Other chart types have the same(hourglass) or fewer(ancestor) possible person types: 1. a person that is an ancestor of your person of interest 2. a spouse that is an ancestor of your person of interest 3. a person (such as a sibling) that is not an ancestor of your person of interest 4. a spouse that is not an ancestor of your person of interest (such as no blood relation) There are no other person types on a single VCF chart. Unless you wish to further differentiate descendants of the person of interest and their spouses, but that results in only 6 types. To get more than 4 (or 6) possible types of people, you will need multiple different chart definitions and make a composite chart of multiple separate charts. IE: different color definitions for your family descendant chart and another different set for your wife's family chart, etc. You can make as many templates of any VCF chart type that you desire, name them and use those definitions again and again. You will then need to make a composite chart of different charts to get the 16 kinds of people that you want. However, if I were to want such a chart, I would make a composite of standard VCF charts and hand color the boxes in VCF as desired. These seem to be Virginia's suggestions. Best wishes,

Examples of imported images used as (partial) background(s) of VCF charts from my website. Images were scanned, imported as per Virginia's instructions, resized and sent to back as chart background and moved to the desired location. These examples combined many of my favorite things, dear friends, genealogy, old portraits, military history and artifacts. It doesn't get much better than that. The first example shows Gen. Johnson Kelly Duncan, who commanded the defense of New Orleans in 1862. The second example centers around a portrait by John James Audubon's son, John Woodhouse Audubon. Note: Images are imported into VCF without regard to the original image's resolution (at 96 dpi in VCF, I think). Therefore, an image scanned at 300 dpi will be a little over 3 times as large after imported into VCF. If an original large image has too much resolution its import may swamp VCF with unpredictable results Best wishes,

.Select the image by clicking on it - you will see dots at each corner of the image and at the mid-point of each side. .Hold down the shift key (to maintain the aspect ratio) .Grab any corner of the image by holding down the left mouse button .Move the mouse towards the center of the image until the image is the desired size. Release the shift and mouse. You may now move the image about and repeat resizing until you get exactly what you want. You may also use the back menu entry to pace the image as background to a portion of your chart. Good luck,

Investigate John Cardinal's TMG utility program before making a final decision. It performs miracles, sometimes, that I've never imagined. The marriage of TMG and editable VCF charts was enough to switch me to TMG over a decade ago. All else was good, but secondary. Hope you decide on using TMG. Looking forward to your clear and concise posts on TMG forums in the future. Best wishes,

May I suggest an alternative. When you have a burial date and no death date, put before "b" that burial date in the death date tag. When you lack a birth date and have a baptism date, but before "b" that baptism date in the birth date tag. When no birth/baptism data is available I make a birth year up for every person without one. Nothing is more frustrating than looking for a "John Smith" in an index, then finding most of the several dozen of them have blank dates. Equally confusing is reading a report that contains no dates for several generations. I invent unknown birth years by calculations from known dates of an ancestor, descendant, spouse or historical event. Then apply a little common sense as a check and round the calculated birth year to one ending with a 5 or 0. Invented birth years are denoted in the birth tag by following the year with a "?'. TMG will show the "?" for birth years in all reports that I use. The average child is born 30 years after its parents. Chidren are born within a few years of parents' marriage, etc. When death/burial data is unavailable, I leave it blank. Adopting these standards should give you what you want and will also make indexes and other reports more usable and clearer. Best wishes,

Follow Terry's advice. Perhaps this will help: Original.........Contents Dataset A...a = the original contents of Dataset A Dataset B...b = the original contents of Dataset B After copy A to B Dataset A...a Dataset B...ba Then after copy B to A Dataset A...aba Dataset B...ba They are not the same. Good luck, best wishes and Happy New Year,

When I upgraded my dataset from TMG 4 to TMG 5, the dataset SQZ file size grew by more than a factor of 10. I was horrified, but assumed it to be a fact of life. Recent discussions on this forum seem to indicate that this problem is not normal and is peculiar to my working dataset. Specs Windows XP home (up to date), lots of spare hard disk room. 2 gigs ram. TMG 7.04 .SQZ file size- 235,000,000 B (seems to be 10 to 30+ times too large) people- 85,500 people names- 86,100 external exhibits- 12,500 other stuff- appears to be as expectedl Help!!! Ideas? Is there a way to reduce dataset file sizes to normal? Thank you,

That was it!!!! The option in prefernces was a bit misleading and must have been the old default, way back then in TMG 5. New SQZ file size- 17,300,000 Constructing thumbnail upon access takes almost no time. Don't know why this option is there. Thank you, thank you, thank you,

Just a few thoughts: How about adding images to the boxes. Within reason, if you increase the width of the boxes, you wind up with an overall smaller chart (try 176 pixels, if you frequently encounter long names). It is usually easy to compensate for the added width by overlapping generations 1 and 2. It only takes a moment to do. Remember, individual boxes can be widened or narrowed when needed and appropriate. How about importing large images where appropriate? They can be partially overlayed by chart components. Not using custom frames will gain much room on the chart and simplify the job. Their sizzle can be replaced by having images. Nice work, keep those good ideas coming,

Directly importing other popular genealogy program databases into TMG was a great idea and feature over a decade ago. There were few popular premium genealogy programs and they were fairly stable in those days. In my opinion, all of that has been changing. New popular genealogy programs are rapidly born and soon die. Those that survive seem to change format details quite often, as does TMG. Spending resources on GenBridge appears to be becoming more and more ineffective and futile. Perhaps those resources would be more effectively allocated to GEDCOM import and export support and added genealogy report/chart oriented features. In addition, serious FoxPro problems seem to be looming on the horizon and must be addressed, eventually. Just food for thought and wishes for a great future,

I agree with almost everything that Terry and Andy have said about GEDCOM and GenBridge. Sure, GEDCOM is not much, but it's all we've got to communicate data with most people who do not have the wisdom to use TMG. More people use the many shareware and other genealogical programs than those versions covered by "one-way" GenBridge. More importantly, sharing genealogy data must be a two-way street. Besides, GEDCOM was only a third of my points. Using saved resources to add genealogy oriented features was the most important part of my plea. See all of the unanswered wish-list items over the past few years. Many have merit, even though some don't. Eventually addressing pending FoxPro problems was the third point. Best wishes,

Thanks again, Virginia. Best wishes,

Thank you for your description of Patt and Theresa's booklets. The booklets sound like a great idea !!! If any one knows Patt and Theresa, please ask them to post procedures and examples for their booklets as a topic on this forum. It would be greatly appreciated by all. Using TMG, each pedigree chart is generated separately via the subject's ID number or name. Once generated to VCF, charts may be hand edited, combined, saved to a file and printed. The chart files can be recalled later, and processeed further, using VCF. Best wishes,

This is the way that I do it. It takes a moment of hand editing in VCF. Define a relationship (not married or partner, etc.) tag(s) in the marriage group. Use it instead of the marriage tag for your special partner cases. Children if any, will display correctly in descendant charts or other reports. Generate a standard descendant chart. See Attachment 1 for a standard 2 generation chart. Note that married partners will have a line in the box of their spouses for the marriage date/place. Those with your non-standard relationship tag will not. Hand enter the data line that you want to appear instead of the missing marriage data line in your special partner box(es). Example: mistress. You can optionally get rid of those confusing connector lines that make spouses look like descendants and replace them by overlapping the boxes. You can also color shade the descendants of the subject of the chart. The added color highlights descendants in contrast with spouses and takes only moments to do. See Attachment 2 for the way that I do it. Note the hand entered pseudo-marriage lines. (See posts in this forum by Virginia, Robin and me for detailed techniques). Best wishes,

This attached Relationship Chart is a composite of several standard VCF ancestor charts. Its purpose was to show the relationship of people actively compiling and sharing information on their family research. It took a pleasant afternoon to constuct and the results enjoyed by many relatives. VCF standard Ancestor Charts were generated with TMG and the needed individual boxes were copied and then pasted to a blank chart. The boxes were then moved to fit on a 14 x 8.5 inches page and colored. Connector lines were drawn, explanatory text was added and the chart was trimmed. Details on living persons were deleted for this presentation. The chart was the work of a long, but pleasant afternoon. A few hours of work would have been saved if TMG would change the standard text graphics Relationship Chart to a VCF chart. Enjoy VCF to make useful charts that no genealogy program could possibly do as a standard.

Do not install VCF as a printer. VCF is a (separate from TMG) charting/drawing program and is linked to by the TMG genealogy program. TMG passes your requested report definition and user defined parameters to the VCF program as arguments. This occurs automatically when you request TMG to Create Chart. You can use VCF to hand create your own drawings without using TMG. Have you tried that? The VCF screen contains the chart or drawing, whether it was invoked by TMG or done by hand. The preview option only shows you how the printed drawing would look. I have no experience with Windows 7. But, grasping at straws: long ago with XP and TMG 5, VCF would fail to run if I had done a "naughty" in the previous use of VCF. A Reboot was needed to clear this problem. I have not experienced this problem with TMG 7. Have you tried to Reboot since you noticed this problem? Sorry, but that's all I've got,

Yes, Virginia, Robin and I have posted recommended/example box, font, spacing (always use minimum), max. exhibit size parameters and other VCF techniques on this forum over the past couple of years. There are max.width and max.height parameters for pictures/exhibits that you define in TMG for generating VCF charts. Whichever of these limits your picture hits first will determine the picture size in a VCF box. It seems like your pictures might be too wide for your TMG maximum width limit to produce what you want. If all else fails, attach a copy of your problem chart to a message here. Perhaps someone can offer suggestions. Best wishes,

Please consider my annual plea for two TMG report augmentations: Add spouses option to the Descendant Indented Narrative report. Add spouse of record option to the Ahnentafel - Direct Line report. I would love to use such reports, but without spouses they are totally useless to me. Thank you,

Please consider my annual plea for a TMG generated-VCF Relationship Chart. The TMG current, horrid, but useful text graphics chart is ugly, truncates long items, takes lots of paper and does not support images. It is also very difficult to hand edit to restore important truncations. Every change causes an alignment problem which must then be fixed. Supporting Relationship Charts with VCF would correct all of these many errors and problems. The attached hand crafted VCF relationship chart shows a 12 generations relationship on a single page. It is proposed as one possible model for TMG implementation. As is, it is a composite of 5 standard VCF Ancestor Charts and is 8.5 x 11 inches. It took somewhat over an hour to construct and edit, but was worth the effort to me. Thank you,

Not true. This project could not be accomplished with a single hourglass chart. You need to begin with a standard 2 generation descendant chart of the mother or father. Then, generate a standard 5 generation ancestor chart of any one of the children. The rest of the procedure is correct. Sorry about that,

Your assumption of the primary name tag is correct. What an imbeded nickname does to the sort order and index depends on where you put the nickname in the given name field. I put the nickname(s) last in the field, so it affects nothing but the given name field length. No other tags or complex sentence structure additions are needed. Depending on your goals and taste, though, TMG lets you put it wherever you like. I have never used the Name-Nick Tag nor have needed to explain a nickname in quotes/apostrophies in the primary given name field to anyone. Data is shared frequently with 1st thru n th cousins. Another advantage of imbeded nicknames is that no special attention is needed to get nicknames to appear on VCF charts, of which I am fond. I only use Name-Var Tags for noms de plume, stage names or deliberately disguised names. It keeps things simple. A major beauty of TMG, is that you can make things as easy or as complex as pleases you. How TMG data is entered and displayed is all a matter of taste of the individual user. Thanks for the clarification,