More on SVG Family Trees

 

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.

Articles and mentions:
A Copyright Casualty — Part I
A Copyright Casualty — Part II
A Copyright Casualty — Part III

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.

Articles and mentions:
A Copyright Casualty — Part III

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'.

Articles and mentions:
More of a Life Revealed

William Henry Ashbee was born 1866 in St. Pancras, Middlesex, and died 1922 at St. David's Care Home, Ealing.

Articles and mentions:
More of a Life Revealed

Evelyn A. Graham, or "Eveline", was born c1884 in Leeds, and died 1918 in Wigan, Lancashire, aged 34.

Articles and mentions:
More of a Life Revealed

Mary Phyllis Ashbee was born 28 May 1905 in Bradford, Yorkshire, and died 13 Jun 1984 while on holiday in Switzerland. She never married.

Articles and mentions:
A Life Revealed
More of a Life Revealed

Evelyn Ashbee was 14 Mar 1909 in Chorlton, Lancashire, and died 1997 in Tower Hamlets, London.

Articles and mentions:
More of a Life Revealed

Patricia Ann Ashbee was born 26 Dec 1910 in Chorlton, Lancashire, and died 1973 in St Andrews, Fife, aged 63.

Articles and mentions:
More of a Life Revealed

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.