VCF accents

[TMGKev 0]

I've followed some of the helpful suggestions in Terry Reigel's TMG Tips site and have just created TMG screen accents to show relationships to my direct line in different colours. I have split my tree into the 4 main branches (my parents and my wife's parents). For each branch I've created 4 accents, being direct line, siblings of the direct line, other blood relatives, and non-blood relatives. For each branch I've used a different primary colour, with different shades to show the 4 relationships. This gives a total of 16 different accent conditions (there are only 13 colours to represent these, as I've used pale grey for the non-blood relations for all 4 branches).

 

This has worked really well (thanks Terry !).

 

Now the problem - I did the above without considering VCF. When I go into VCF chart definition, I see there are only 10 available accent conditions. This means I cannot automatically replicate my screen accents when creating charts. I'm therefore wondering whether I've wasted my time!

 

Please can someone advise if it's possible to increase the available accent conditions in VCF, or an alternative way of replicating my hard work in TMG when I create charts?

 

Thanks

Kevin

[Virginia Blakelock 0]

Kevin -

 

I don't know of a way to increase the number of accents.

 

If the people in your branches did not intermingle and the charts are limited for the most part to one branch you could have a separate set of accents for each branch. For large charts and multiple branches on a chart, say your children's grandparents, you can make separate ancestor charts and copy one to the other.

 

Another option is to eliminate the sibling accent and use a different color connector line to delineate them. I usually make the sibling connector line a very light gray and the main line black. Also, for simple one-page charts, it takes just a few minutes to manually lighten or change box colors after the chart is created if you need more colors.

 

Virginia

[Mike Talbot 0]

I've followed some of the helpful suggestions in Terry Reigel's TMG Tips site and have just created TMG screen accents to show relationships to my direct line in different colours. I have split my tree into the 4 main branches (my parents and my wife's parents). For each branch I've created 4 accents, being direct line, siblings of the direct line, other blood relatives, and non-blood relatives. For each branch I've used a different primary colour, with different shades to show the 4 relationships. This gives a total of 16 different accent conditions (there are only 13 colours to represent these, as I've used pale grey for the non-blood relations for all 4 branches).

 

This has worked really well (thanks Terry !).

 

Now the problem - I did the above without considering VCF. When I go into VCF chart definition, I see there are only 10 available accent conditions. This means I cannot automatically replicate my screen accents when creating charts. I'm therefore wondering whether I've wasted my time!

 

Please can someone advise if it's possible to increase the available accent conditions in VCF, or an alternative way of replicating my hard work in TMG when I create charts?

 

Thanks

Kevin

 

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,

Edited February 5, 2011 by Mike Talbot

[RobinL 0]

There is no current way to increase the number of accent states available in the current VCF (above about 20 becomes confusing to the reader anyway!).

 

Such a request - to increase the number of accent levels to at least match the number of possible possible values of a flag (about 60 states - if you allow for the 26 letters, digits, some punctuation marks, and and accented western European letters) was placed on the wish list some while ago.

 

To my knowledge, this request has not been evaluated.

[TMGKev 0]

Thanks to all for the replies.

 

It's a fair point that VCF does not need more than the allowed accents in any single chart. However, I was keen to create a "one chart covers all" template, so that I don't have to select different templates depending on which family branch I'm working on, or so I don't have to colour manually.

Since there's no work around to achieve my ideal, the best option seems to be to create several chart definitions with different accents, as suggested.

 

Thanks again for your help.

Kevin