Following my previous post on Interactive
Trees in Blogs Using SVG, a number of people have signed-up to try the free
utility for designing and generating their SVG trees.
These people have explored the possibilities and made
valuable suggestions, including some with developer experience, and including
one person running it under the WINE compatibility layer on a Mac (it was designed
to run under Windows).
With the release of v3.0, the utility became a proper
product rather than just a POC, and a number of enhancements and fixes were
applied during the sub-releases of v3.0. These culminated in thumbnail images
being supported in the browser output, and by the Tree Designer’s Edit-Person
form, in v3.2.0.
An installation kit, documentation, and samples were placed
in a Dropbox folder from where they can be downloaded by people who sign-up (either
by contacting me via email, or from the right-hand panel of my blog).
The main purpose of this post is to announce the release of
v4.0 of the utility, and to demonstrate a couple of the new features. The
following is a summary of the new features, in roughly chronological order:
Implemented 'id=' attributes on person-boxes so that they
can be referenced by URLs and scrolled into view. This allows narrative text
to reference specific person boxes in an SVG tree.
Support for images and captions together in the Tree
Designer person boxes, as per the browser output.
Implemented multiple-selection of persons via Ctrl+Click
operations. Affects interpretation of Copy-Person and Delete-Person
operations.
Implemented menu options to copy and paste persons or
families (e.g. between different sessions).
Include optional pan-zoom support for browser from
external source. This allows the contents of specific SVG images to be
panned and zooomed (see user guide).
Changed border and text of empty boxes to faint grey to
avoid them being too obtrusive.
The Tree Designer’s window size and position are now saved
and restored. It is no longer always maximized.
Implemented zoom control in Tree Designer via menu
options, and Ctrl/+ or Ctrl/- keystrokes (very similar to Web browsers).
Added simple HTML toolbar to help with editing person and
family notes.
Implemented a RootKey parameter to emphasise the
direct-line of a particular person up through ancestral generations.
One of the features I especially want to present is the
Pan-Zoom feature. This uses open-source Javascript code to allow a user to
navigate around a specific SVG tree image. It eliminates the need for both
clunky scrollbars and the standard browser zoom support, which affects the
whole page.
The first example is a tree that includes both images and
captions in each of the boxes. Tooltips are enabled if you let the mouse hover
over a box or a family circle. The +/Reset/- control in the bottom-right corner
shows that the Pan-Zoom code is active, and so you can navigate around the tree
and magnify/shrink it. Also, clicking on a box expands the picture into a separate tab.
The second example shows a tree in the vertical orientation.
This has the information panels enabled so clicking on a box or family circle
will pop-up a panel with historical or biographical details below the tree — Ctrl+Click
or Shift+Click on the boxes or circles will dismiss those panels. This tree
also incorporates the Pan-Zoom code.
William Ashbee was born c1803 in Hillsley, Gloucestershire, England,
and died 14 Jan 1870 at 2 York Cottages, Grosvenor Terrace, Cheltenham, of 'Disease of the heart'.
William was originally a baker and grocer but tried to get into publishing. In 1868, he fell foul of a copyright
case that proved to be important for later digital data and databases. This case bankrupted him and he died
shortly after.
Ann, or "Annie", was born c1801 in Westonbirt, Gloucestershire, England,
and died 29 Nov 1869 at 30 Smith Terrace, Chelsea, of 'Asthma, disease of the heart, many years'.
Thomas Ashbee was born c1826 in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, and died 1891 in the same county. He was a tin worker and
this contributed to a dementia causing him to be described as an 'imbecile' in the 1891 census. He was married twice
during his life.
John Ashbee was born c1831 in Westonbirt, Tetbury, and died 22 Apr 1912 at 67 Ringford Road, Wansworth, London.
Emma Jane Ashbee (later Stanton) was born c1834 in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, and died 22 Apr 1924 (same date as her father) at 59
Norland Road, Nottingham.
William Stanton was born c1833 in Bishops Cleeve, Gloucestershire. Death uncertain. Possibly in Bicester, Oxfordshire, in 1924.
Mary Sandford was born c1834 in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, and died 1871 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
William Ashbee was born 29 Nov 1836 in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, and died 24 Jan 1907 at 48 Cannon Street, Glasshoughton, West Yorkshire.
Mary Ann Hale was born c1844 in Middlesex, and died c1890 in Islington, London.
Annie Emma Isabel Stanton was born in 1873 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and died 1956 in Nottingham.
William Henry Proctor was born 21 Apr 1870 in Nottingham, and died 12 Dec 1950 in Nottingham.
Helenor Gertrude Norton was born c1868 in Leeds, and died 7 Dec 1902 at 55 Pemberton Street, Shelford, Barton-upon-Irwell, Lancashire, aged 35,
of 'pulmonary tuberculosis 10 months, exhaustion'.
Following the reading of the banns on 18 Jun 1825, William Ashbee married Ann Hayward in the parish of Westonbirt,
Gloucestershire, England.
William Stanton married Mary Sandford in c1856 in Cheltenham. They had three children.
After the death of his first wife, William Stanton married Emma Jane Ashbee on 21 Nov 1872 at Gloucester St. Catharine.
They had three children.
William Ashbee married Mary Ann Hale in Holborn, London, in c1866.
They had eight children.
William Henry Proctor married Annie Emma Isabel Stanton at Nottingham Emmanuel on 29 Nov 1891.
They had eleven children.
William Henry Ashbee married Helenor Gertrude Norton in Chorlton, Lancashire, in 1893. There were no children.
After the death of his first wife, William Henry Ashbee married Evelyn A. Graham at Sale St. Anne, Chester, on 1 Aug 1904.
Notice that the panel for Mary Ashbee includes links to blog
articles that mention her, as well as an image of her. Because such content is
HTML-based then it can also include footnotes, tables, document scans, and
more.
A larger example of Pan-Zoom that also incorporates the new direct-line
RootKey feature may be found at Fieg & Sheehan Family,
courtesy of Robert Fieg.
The tool to generate these trees is now freely shared with the genealogy
blogging community. Since the time of writing, it has undergone many improvements, including thumbnail images and searchable photos. See SVG-FTG Summary.
