Software of the Month Club 1996 May

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CHAPTER 10 GENERATING PRINTED FORMS PART A: THE PEDIGREE CHARTS Generating a pedigree chart from your folder data is easy; we can describe it completely in just a couple of paragraphs. After that, we'll discuss the different things you can do to customize your pedigree charts. Because there are so many things that you can customize, describing them may take a little longer. GENERATING A PEDIGREE CHART: The Basics: Be sure you have selected a printer and a print device from the Printer Setup Area. See Chapter 6, "Setting Things Up" for details. Enter a folder. Navigate to the person who will be the youngest (leftmost) person on the pedigree chart that you want to create. If you're just interested in experimenting with the pedigree chart's abilities, any person will do. From the Folder Area, press F3 to get to the Forms Area. You can also navigate to the person you want after you have entered the Forms Area. From the Forms Area, press F1 to generate a pedigree chart. The number of generations and appearance is selected from the Forms Styles Area. At this point if your computer is capable of displaying graphics, you will see the image of what the form is going to look like when printed. If your computer does not have graphics capability, (for a variety of long and terribly complicated reasons) the GIM Authors have elected to represent the text of all of the forms as a set of dashes on the screen. What you will see will give you a general idea of what the form will look like, and you can use the arrow keys to modify your view of the form, but to really see it, you'll need to send the form to the printer. Once again if your computer can display graphics, the preview show look normal. To send the pedigree chart to the printer, make sure that your printer is turned on, and is connected to the same print device -- usually LPT1 -- that you selected in the Setup Area. Then press F8. The pedigree chart will then appear on your printer. READING THE PEDIGREE CHART The Pedigree Chart includes the date and place of birth, marriage, and death for each person. If birth information is not available, christening information is substituted if available. If death information is not available, burial information is substituted if available. The Pedigree Chart also includes submission information and the date the chart was printed. GENERATING A PEDIGREE CHART: A Maintenance Checklist: When you start to use GIM's pedigree charts as a serious research tool, you'll want to make sure that the following things have been taken care of for each of your folders. You should only need to take care of them once per folder, and they'll remain taken care of from then on; but you'll want to examine each of them at least once: 1. Have you entered your submission information? See the first section of this chapter for details. 2. Have you set your typesetting options -- your margins, your vertical zoom, your number of copies, your printer fonts, and so on? See the first section of this chapter for details. 3. Have you set your numbering, connector, and LDS ordinance preferences? See the rest of this section for details. STYLES: Optional Configuration Settings: The Pedigree Chart can be configured to accommodate a number of stylistic preferences concerning: - the number of generations (4 or 5) - the appearance of a 5-generation pedigree - the use of LDS temple information - numbering systems to use - the use of connecting lines between persons - the use of graphics characters - the inclusion of LDS ordinance notes Each of these preferences can be specified by pressing Shift-F1 from the Forms Area. The resulting Styles menu includes preference settings for most of the various GIM forms. We will discuss the Pedigree Chart preferences here, and preferences for the other forms will be discussed in later parts of this chapter. STYLES: LDS Temple Ordinances Each pedigree chart optionally includes information about LDS temple ordinances. You can turn this off in one of two ways. You can either set the LDS/Generic setting on the Styles menu to Generic, or you can set "No LDS ordinance information" as described below. The difference between these two methods is that setting the LDS/Generic setting to Generic turns off LDS temple information on both the pedigree chart and the family group record form, regardless of the other LDS-specific settings on these forms. STYLES: Numbering Systems Each 4-generation pedigree chart contains room for fifteen persons: a leftmost or "root" person, his or her parents, grand-parents, and great-grandparents. Each of these fifteen persons is identified by a number. Also, if the ancestral lines continue beyond the edge of the chart, there can be up to eight "continued on chart" indicators, one for each great-grandparent. In addition, there are other numbers used on the chart, to identify the number of this chart, and to tell how to connect this chart to charts of younger ancestors. In all, there are 27 numbers on the Pedigree Chart that help to identify the information on the chart, and the numbering system preference tells GIM what to use when these numbers are required. STANDARD The simplest of these preferences is called "Standard numbering (1-15)". It means that the numbers 1-15 are used to identify each of the individuals on the form, and that empty underscores are used for all others. Try this, and you'll see what we mean. This option provides the most uniformity between the different Pedigree Charts that you produce -- each of them will produce the same set of numbers, no matter which ancestors are the subjects of the chart. This can be advantageous when you are sharing printed forms with someone who isn't related to your ancestors in the same way you are, and who therefore wouldn't have the same GIN numbering system associated with those ancestors. On the other hand, it is also a lot less automatic, and it requires a lot more work on your part, filling in all those blank spaces. All other things being equal, we, the GIM Authors, prefer the other two options. ENHANCED The next option is called "Enhanced numbering (GIN/ Ahnentafel)", and is the most automatic of the three preferences, but it is also a shade less flexible than the "Prompt for numbering" preference described below. The enhanced numbering system uses the GIN numbers of individuals to identify them on the chart. It also uses the GIN number of the leftmost person for the chart number, and the GIN numbers of the rightmost persons for the "continued on chart" notices. This preference works well for your own records, and for sharing records with close relatives who would use the same GIN numbers for your ancestors as you do. This is also a no-hassle preference, because it requires no interaction from you when assigning numbers. This is the preference that Blaine uses. On the other hand, depending on your research needs, you may want to interact with the Pedigree Chart as it assigns numbers. If so, you'll want to use the "Prompt for numbering" preference. PROMPT The final option takes the enhanced numbering system and adds the ability to edit the choices for numbers before they're used. This option starts with the same default choices used by the enhanced numbering system, allowing you to review each of them before they're printed. This isn't a no-hassle option, because it adds an extra step to the printing process, but it is a low-hassle option, because this review process is quick and easy. This option adds extra flexibility for those cases where you need it. This is the preference that Brian uses. On the other hand, depending on your research needs, this extra step may seem useless or annoying. If so, you'll want to use the enhanced preference. STYLES: Connecting Lines As we've said, a 4-generation pedigree chart has room for fifteen persons. But what happens when GIM only knows about some of those persons? For example, what if (as seems to be the case with a lot of the research that we've seen) a person's father's genealogy is completely documented, but that person's mother's line is a dead end? Obviously, GIM can provide connecting lines for people it knows about. But should it provide connecting lines between people it doesn't know about, on the assumption that information about them will come along in the future? The answer to this question is the reason for providing a connecting lines style preference. When you specify graphics characters to use (see the discussion below), such as "ASCII" or "graphics", you can specify whether or not these characters should be used to create "complete" pedigree charts or not. A "complete" pedigree chart is one that includes connecting lines for persons that it doesn't know about. If this doesn't quite make sense, read the next section too, and then things should start to come together. STYLES: Graphics Characters We don't see this much any more, but when IBM and IBM- compatible computers were first introduced, it was fairly common to find printers that couldn't draw the graphics in the IBM's graphics character set. In those days, printers could always print the standard ASCII character set -- letters, numbers, punctuation, also called the "lower 128" ASCII characters, or the "7-bit" ASCII characters. But older printers often had difficulty when printing the "upper 128" or "8-bit" characters that IBM added to the ASCII character set. By now, IBM and IBM-compatible computers have become so commonplace that it's difficult to find a printer that can't print the graphics character set, but we know that they're lurking out there somewhere, just waiting for us. So, recognizing that the Pedigree Chart uses these "upper 128" ASCII characters to draw connecting lines, we've provided an alternative for those persons with older printers. From the Styles menu, you can select "ASCII character connecting lines" or "graphics character connecting lines" or "no connecting lines". ASCII Selecting ASCII character connecting lines will tell the Pedigree Chart not to use the "upper 128" character set, but instead to substitute hyphens and vertical bars and other replacements from the "lower 128". This option looks less professional and visually less appealing than the "graphics character connecting lines" option, but it's better than nothing. GRAPHICS Selecting graphics character connecting lines will tell the Pedigree Chart to use the "upper 128" character set. We recommend this option. NO LINES And just in case you don't like any of the options, "no connecting lines" will tell the Pedigree Chart to use no connecting lines whatsoever, either ASCII or graphics. Obviously, when you select this option, there's no point in deciding whether you want a "complete" pedigree chart. STYLES: Connecting Lines and Graphics Characters To put it all together, the Styles menu allows you to pick any of these choices: ASCII character connecting lines ASCII character connecting lines, complete Graphics character connecting lines Graphics character connecting lines, complete No connecting lines The "complete" options refer to drawing connecting lines for non-existent persons, as discussed above. The ASCII and graphics character options refer to the character set to be used, as discussed above. We recommend the use of either of the graphics character connecting lines options, depending on your preferences. STYLES: LDS Ordinance Notes When LDS ordinances are included, the Pedigree Chart includes some markings to indicate whether these ordinances have been completely performed. We recognize that some researchers may not be interested in this information, and so the Styles menu allows these markings to be turned on and off. If they are turned on, each person's name will be preceded by some variation of "[BESP]", such as "[Besp]" or "[bESp]", and so on. Each of these letters is interpreted as follows: B is LDS baptism E is LDS endowment S is LDS sealing to spouse P is LDS sealing to parents For each of these letters, if the letter is in lower case, that ordinance has not been performed and recorded. If the letter is in upper case, then the ordinance has been performed, but recorded incompletely -- such as recorded with a date, but no place. If the letter is in upper case and is in boldface type, then the ordinance has been performed and completely recorded. With LDS Ordinances turned on, the form will include notes that "Completed ordinances are in BOLD", and will also note that "B = baptism" and so on. The form will also include the note that "F = Person appears as parent on FGR" and "C = Children's ordinances complete". Both of these features are not implemented. These comments should be ignored at this time. Blaine recommends that this feature be turned on; Brian prefers to have it turned off.