Chapter 4: Your view of the data

[4.1]

You can arrange the windows within Family Tree SuperTools to suit your preference. Drag the borders of a window to resize it.

The size and position of the windows can then be saved as a named "layout."

This screenshot shows a custom screen layout with five open windows. Higher resolution screens provide more flexibility for configuring windows.

A later chapter in this tour provides more examples of custom layouts.

[4.2]

Layouts can include custom configurations of toolbars as well.

The Layout toolbar is active by default and you can use it to quickly switch between layouts which you have designed.

The Layout toolbar also includes a button with which you can quickly open or close each of the main display windows: Project Explorer, Details, Flags, Children, Siblings, Image, and Focus Group. Each of these will be described in more detail later.

(Red circles like the one in this screen shot are added for demonstration purposes only. They do not appear in the program.)

[4.3]

The Details window shows data about the focus person in three formats: Person View, Family View, and Tree View.

When you double-click on an event in the Person View, it displays all of the details of that event (or "tag") on the Tag Entry screen. That includes the date, place, memo, citation(s), and all participants (to the extent that those features are supported by the program from which the data was imported).

[4.4]

Notice that the Person View automatically calculates and displays the subject's age at the occurrence of each event.

Here you see, for instance, that John Alexander was 23 years old upon the birth of his son, Samuel.

The "~" or tilde means approximately and is used when the age was calculated using an inexact date.

The "M" and "S" columns indicate the presence of memos and sources, respectively.

[4.5]

Family Tree SuperTools includes a Relationship Calculator with which you can determine the blood relationship and common ancestors of any two people in a data set. If more than one relationship exists, it will itemize them.

If you identify a focus person within the data set, an optional Auto-Relationship feature will display the relationship between that person and the subject of each Person View to which you navigate.

For instance, if you make yourself the focus person, then each Person View will reflect the blood relationship between you and the subject of that screen.

[4.6]

The Family View shows the subject, his or her spouse, and their parents.

In the layout shown in the screen shot, the Children and Sibling windows are also configured to be visible at the same time.

[4.7]

The Tree View shows the subject's ancestors through five generations. As on other windows, you can double-click on any person to change the focus of the window.

[4.8]

A standard Windows convention is to display the meaning of a toolbar button simply by pointing to it with the mouse. That feature is called Tool Tips.

Family Tree SuperTools also supports a similar feature called "Item Tips" with which you can display data which you could otherwise only see by zooming in on it.

For instance, if the place and memo of an event consume more than one line and are therefore truncated on the Details window, simply point to it with the mouse in order to pop up a window displaying the full text. This convenient feature minimizes the need for navigation and mouse clicks.

[4.9]

You can also use a configuration option to allocate more than one line for each event so that the full text can be shown with wordwrap.

Right click on the Tag Box to access this option.

[4.10]

This variation of the same layout has options enabled to display lines between the rows and columns of lists. Some people think that it makes the lists easier to read.

There are many such Preference settings that let you control the way that the data is presented.

[4.11]

As shown in some examples above, many of the configuration options are available from the right-click menu. In this screen shot, the tags have been filtered to display a chronology of the subject's residences over time.

The option to integrate historical timelines in the event list is described in a later chapter.

[4.12]

The Flag Window contains Sex, Living, and other one-letter classifications for the person (insofar as they are supported by the program from which the data is imported).

You can right-click on the Flag Window to customize the sequence flags in the window or to disable/enable individual flags.

The "Other info" box to the right of the subject's name on the Person View has similar configuration options.

[4.13]

The Tools menu includes options for the Master Source List, Master Respository List, Master Place List, and other tools for viewing your data.

These lists can be searched, sorted, and filtered in various ways.

[4.14]

You can view the details of a source, for instance, with the Source Definition Screen.

This window contains four tabs with all of the information about a single source.