TextPlus Charts

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Construction I've discovered a minor bug in mod v13b. In both the Ancestor and Descendant Text+ Charts, you cannot select 'all' as the number of generations. Instead, you must select a number (perhaps the largest number in the selection box) that is sufficient to cover all generations. Construction


TextPlus Charts
Summary Two new charts: Text+ Descendant Chart, and Text+ Ancestor Chart.
Validation
Mod Updated 28 Dec 2018
Download link v10.1.0.13b
TNG 11.0
TNG 10.1.0

Language Strings:
French, Dutch, German, Norwegian UTF8 translations: utf8_v10.1.0.13
French, Dutch, German, Norwegian non-UTF translations: iso_v10.0.1.13
Zip file that includes all three .cfg files: v10.0.1.13b-all

See the Revision History for older versions of the mod.
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Author(s) Robin Richmond with translations by Henny Savenije, Hendrik Martius, Bernard Wortelboer, & Jan-Thore Solem, and testing help from Henny Savenije and Alan Wilcox
Homepage TextPlus Charts (This Page)
Mod Support My Mod Support form or TNG Community Forums
Contact Developer My Mod Support form
Latest Mod 10.1.0.13b
Min TNG V 10.1.0
Max TNG V 11.0.1.2+
Files modified
Updates admin_pedconfig.php,
Descendant charts (descend.php, descendtext.php, desctracker.php, register.php),
Pedigree charts (pedigree.php, pedigreetext.php, verticalchart.php, ahnentafel.php, extrastree.php),
tngrobots.php,
cust_text.php (English, Dutch, French, German, Norwegian),
css/genstyle.css
Installs: descendtextplus.php, pedigreetextplus.php, tngdblib_textplus.php, English/textplus_help.php, German-UTF8/textplus_help.php, extensions/textplusmenu.png, extensions/textplusinnermenu.png
Related Mods
Notes


Purpose of the Mod

To define two new charts - The Text+ Pedigree Chart (on the Pedigree inner menu), and the Text+ Descendant Chart (on the Descendant Charts inner menu). Both charts follow a text format (basically an outline layout), and are accessed through the TNG "Inner Menu" (the link menu just below the TNG Tab Bar) on the Person Profile and on Pedigree and Descendant chart pages.

Features of the Text+ Charts

  • The Text+ Descendant Chart is very similar to TNG's Text Descendant Chart, but has several additional features.
  • The Text+ Pedigree Chart serves the same purpose as TNG's Text Ancestor Chart, but does not use the standard 4-generations-per-page Pedigree format, and can display at least 15 or so generations in one chart that is one page wide and several pages long. It also has some of the same 'additional features' as the Text plus Descendant Chart.
  • Both charts draw lines to connect people with their children.
  • Both charts display places of birth and death instead of just dates.
  • Both charts display alternate birth date and/or place (i.e. christening date/place) when the birth date and/or place is missing.
  • Both charts display burial date and/or place when the death date and/or place is missing. (In doing so, they remove some cemetery names (by searching for "Cemetery,") from burial place names.)
  • For living people (when allowed by security constraints),both charts display the last known place of residence and the date of that residence event.
  • Both charts can (when the number of generations is set to zero) display ALL of a person's descendants or ancestors rather than a specific number of generations,
  • Both charts display a summary at the bottom of the chart, and
  • Both charts have parameters that control the size and spacing of the charts. Some parameters are available in what I'll refer to as the 'standard' TNG page view, and some parameters are available only in the TNG 'print-format' view.
  • Both charts allow the user to save the chart parameters to a cookie for use by subsequent charts (whether initiated by the "New Chart" link at the end of a line, or by selecting the chart from an inner menu on a profile page or another chart).

The Text+ Descendant Chart also:

  • Displays the date and place of marriage, and
  • Displays the starting person's parents, with date and place of birth and death.

And the Text+ Ancestor Chart:

  • Can (optionally) display the siblings of each ancestor, giving a richer view of the family tree, and
  • Can (optionally) display blank lines at certain points in the chart to improve readability.

Mod Options

The options offered by this mod are implemented through the TNG Admin >> Setup >> Chart Settings menu.

  1. To select the Text+ Pedigree Chart as the default chart to generate when you click the "Pedigree" tab in the Person Profile,
    • Select "Pedigree Chart" on the "Charts Settings" menu, and
    • Select "Text+" the "Initial Display drop-down box.
  2. To select the Text+ Descendant Chart as the default chart to generate when you click the "Descendant" tab in the Person Profile,
    • Select "Descendant Chart" on the "Charts Settings" menu, and
    • Select "Text+" the "Initial Display drop-down box.
  3. If you install the TextPlus Charts mod as well as other mods that install links on the TNG Inner Menu, the Inner Menu can become awkwardly long. To save space on Inner Menu by eliminating the original "Text" links:
    • Select "Common Elements" on the "Chart Settings" menu, and
    • Check the "Yes" button next to the new "Hide Plain Text Chart Links" option at the bottom of the Common Elements sub-form.

Compatibility With Other Mods

No known conflicts with published mods. However, there is a conflict with older versions of an Add New Items mod that was written by Ian Fettes.

This mod adds "Text+" links to the TNG "Inner Menu" of the Person Profile and distributed chart programs (the Pedigree Chart, Vertical Chart, Register Chart, etc). It coordinates with the Count Descendants, World Map, and Fan Chart mods so that

  1. In the Text+ Chart programs, links to the programs by those three mods will appear if and only if those programs are installed.
  2. In the programs installed by those three mods, a Text+ link will be displayed if the TextPlus Charts mod has been installed - no matter whether it was installed before or after the other mod.

However, some other mods also install chart programs that add links to the TNG "Inner Menu". Programs installed by those mods will not have Text+ links, and the Text+ Chart programs will not have links to those programs.

Related Mods

Starting with mod version 14, this mod does not require that Show Mod Names or Blue Info Button be installed. It does use the functionality of Show Mod Names if Show Mod Names is installed, but it does not depend on it.

Through mod version 12...
this this mod required that Show Mod Names and Blue Info Button be installed. (Well, the presence of those mods would not affect installation of this mod, but the Text Plus charts would generate a run-time warning if Show Mod Names were not installed, and buttona intended to look like a blue information icon would not be formatted properly Blue Info Button were not installed.

Visualizations

Text+ Descendant Chart - The "main" screen (as opposed to the "Format for Printing" screen)
  1. The "Text+" link is highlighted within the "Inner Menu" in this visualization. It is placed in the same position on other Descendant chart programs.
  2. This program extends the "Inner Menu" to add run-time options. The two options on the second line of the Inner Menu are available on the main screen and the Print Formatting screen.
  3. This program has a help file, like many administrative programs.
  4. Before you print a Text+ chart, you should generally use the "Format for Printing" button in the Innermenu to finalize the chart format.
  5. Note the abbreviations
    • "chr." to indicate that this is a christening date
    • "b." to indicate that this is the birth place
    • "bur" to indicate that this is the burial location.
  6. The vertical dotted line formed by colons connects spouses of one person
  7. The little minus signs allow you to collapse a branch of the family. The summary at the bottom of the page reports the number of people who have been hidden by collapsed branches.
  8. The hyperlinked arrows link to subsequent generations of descendants.
  9. A chart summary reports the number of people and generations in the chart, the number of people hidden in collapsed branches, and the number of lines that have been wrapped by program logic. Lines that wrap because they bump against the edge of the browser window cannot be counted. They also disrupt the flow of the chart. The "Format for Printing" screen has controls that help you avoid browser-driven line wrapping
Textplus charts-descend.png
Text+ Descendant Chart in the "Format for Printing" Window
  1. Here, the "Print" button actually prints. The options and buttons DO NOT print with the chart.
  2. The text size and width options are only available in the Print Format window.
  3. You must click "Submit" for the options to have an effect in this window.
  4. The "Save Settings" button saves a cookie with your current text and width options. (The "Hide data" and "Hide descendants" options do not get saved.)
  5. The "Hide data..." and "Hide descendants..." checkboxes and the Help button are still available.
  6. The Expand/Collapse controls are still operational in this window.
  7. The red arrow points to the Width option, which is "Portrait", meaning that the page is laid out in anticipation of being printed in Portrait orientation on regular 8.5 x 11 paper.
  8. Because of the "Portrait" width and the font size defined in the Chart Formatting Form, several lines in this chart are wrapped by the program. Three that have not been hidden are outlined.
  9. Among the distinctive features of the Text+ Descendant chart that were in the screenshot above, but were not mentioned there are
    • Double question marks to indicate that the date of death is "Unknown"
    • The word "alive" to indicate that the person is living, along with the most recent date and place from a Residence event.
  10. The visualization above referred to trimmed branches, but they were all in the portion of the page that was cut out of the screen clip. Here, you can see that little minus signs buttons have been changed to plus signs where branches have been trimmed.
  11. Another feature of the Text+ Descendant chart is that it reports marriage dates and places.
  12. The summary at the bottom of the chart reports that 5 visible lines have been wrapped by the program.
Textplus charts-descend2.png
Text+ Pedigree Chart
  • This chart was generated with the parameter Generations=all, so that all of the starting person's ancestors are shown.
  • Four checkboxes control the content of the report. Checkboxes that are not applicable are shown but are disabled - such as the "Sibling Count" checkbox, which only appears if both the 'Siblings' and the "Show Generation #'s" boxes are checked.
  • Note that, as with the Text+ Descendant Chart, the chart width for this screen is equivalent to a "Landscape" setting, and all seven generations can fit on the screen without any wrapping.
  • The summary footer reveals that the chart displayed seven generations.
Textplus charts-pedigree1.png
Text+ Pedigree Chart in the "Format for Printing" screen
  • This is the same chart as above.
  • The five print-formatting controls in the "Chart Formatting Form" are exactly the same as those in the Text+ Descendant chart.
  • The four content-control checkboxes in the "Chart Formatting Form" the same ones that are used in the "main" screen of the Text+ Ancestor chart. These four checkbox value are not saved to a cookie when the user clicks the "Save Settings" button. Only the print-formatting controls are saved.
  • The arrows point to places where the program has wrapped the text because the text reached the margin set by the program. Note that if we simply allowed the browser to wrap text, the text would wrap to the left margin, and interrupt the vertical lines.
Textplus charts-pedigree2.png
Full Pedigree Chart Examples saved as PDFs

(The charts were saved as PDF using Google Chrome's built-in Print-to-PDF capability.)

Text+ Pedigree Setup in the Admin >> Setup >> Chart Settings Form
Textplus charts-setup.png
This mod adds a "Text+" option to the "Initial Display" selection for Pedigree Chart and for Descendant chart. This allows you to set up the Text+ charts as your default Pedigree and/or Descendant charts.

Margins and Line-Wrapping

Because the Text+ charts draw lines connecting the generations, these charts cannot simply allow long lines of data to wrap at the browser window's (or printed page's) right margin. The Text+ chart programs have to know the window (or printed page's) width and the font size so that they can wrap lines of data at the appropriate point.

As a result, the Text+ chart programs contain a form with fields that specify printing parameters. Some parameters are visible in the 'main' program window. Other parameters that deal with font size and page width are visible only in the 'Format for Printing' window. Those parameters are described in detail in a help page associated with the Text+ chart programs.

(Author's note: Most web applications with such constraints would generate PDF files, which allow print characteristics to be controlled with more specificity, but I first wrote versions of the Text+ programs long before the PDF format became standard, and I've simply continued to use HTML with each new implementation.)

Installation

Requirements

  • A working TNG installation.
  • An installed current version of the Mod Manager.
  • You should backup files listed in the panel on the right.

Installation Steps

  1. Uninstall any previous versions of this mod.
  2. Backup the files updated by this mod. They are listed in the panel at the upper right.
  3. Download the .zip file, and extract its .cfg file and its subfolder to the mods folder.
  4. Follow the normal automated installation for Mod Manager, as shown in the example Mod Manager - Installing Config Files.

In the event of a problem

  1. Try using the Mod Manager Remove capability
  2. Contact me through My Mod Support form.

Reducing Line-wrapping

I have used the following techniques to reduce the amount of text required to display a person's data end place information, and thus reduce the amount of line-wrapping required to print these charts:

  • I use "??" instead of "Unknown"
  • If a person was born and died in the same place, I only display the place name once, like this:
    (Cleveland, Bradley, Tennessee, USA;15 Nov 1815 - 04 Jan 1887)
  • I also have use an unpublished mod that stores two shorter versions of place names (e.g. "Cleveland, Cuyahoga, OH" and "Cleveland, OH" for "Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, USA". This scheme uses "place normalization" techniques to standardize the format of USA places, and then generates the shorter place names algorithmically. These mods affect several programs, such as the Person Profile and placesearch.php. If you're interested in trying to use this scheme, let me know, and I'll share the mods with you.

Remove an Innermenu Link

If you install the TextPlus Charts mod as well as other mods that place links on the Ancestors or Descendants Inner Menus, those Inner Menus can become awkwardly long. A utility program that eliminates the native Descendant and/or Ancestor Text chart is available through a link in the mod description in Mod Manager. Be aware, however, that, with TNGv11, the native Text Descendant chart has a new ancestor-tracking feature that is not found in the Text+ Descendant chart. The Text+ Descendant chart can count generations and children, but the native Text+ chart's ancestor-tracking feature conveys more information.

Revision History

(The most recent mod versions are at the top of this table.)

Mod Version TNG Versions Date Note
10.1.0.13b 10.1.0 - 11.0.1.2+ 5 Dec 2017 * The only meaningful functional enhancement is that, in the Descendant Text+ Chart, the counts in the summary at the bottom of the chart change as you collapse and expand tree branches.

User interface changes:

  1. The fontsize, page size, and indentation controls on the "Pretty-print" page are highlighted more clearly, and do not print on a printer.
  2. Checkboxes on the innermenu now are shaded out when they are not applicable. Previously, they were hidden.

Also:

  1. The innermenu now has a button labeled 'Format for Printing' that is equivalent to the 'Pretty-Print' button, instead of just a reminder to use the TNG button.
  2. Reworked the style classes that this mod defines in genstyle.css so that
    • They have a prefix of "cg" and are less likely to affect other programs, and
    • The rrnoprint class is no longer used - removing a dependency on Show Mod Names
  3. Fixed the fan chart link in the innermenu
  4. Removed the second line from cust_text.php target location search strings so that
  5. Added a standalone program to remove or restore the old Text chart links in the innermenus of various programs.
  6. Removed the mod-parameter that tried to hide the old Text chart link.
  7. Rewrote the Help file, added several screen clips, and moved the screen clips to the language folder.
  8. The DisplayModNames mod is now optional
10.1.0.12 10.1.2 - 11.0.1 15 Jun 2016 Added the system parameter that suppresses the link to the plain text charts, and the mod and its install programs now coordinate with the Ancestor Map and the Fan Chart.

French, Dutch, German, Norwegian UTF-8 translations: 10.1.0.12.zip
French, Dutch, German, Norwegian ISO translations: 10.0.1.12

11.0.0.11 download 10.0.2 - 10.0.3 17 Feb 2016
  • Fixes a comment typo in css/genstyle.css
  • Registers the mod and displays mod names using the Display Mod Names v2 conventions. (Thus requires Show Mod Names) (The dependency was removed in subsequent versions)
  • Implements label tags and no-wrap styling to improve the wrapping of the Text+ menus.
  • Adds help links to affected fields on the Administration >> Setup >> Chart Settings form, (Thus uses Blue Info Button)(The dependency was removed in subsequent versions)
Languages 10.0.2.10b 10.0.2 - 10.1.2 14 Sep 2015 Modified a few German, Dutch, and Norwegian strings that Google Translator messed up.

UTF-8 language strings v10.0.2.10b.zip
ISO language strings v10.0.2.10b.zip

10.1.0.10b & 10.0.2.10b 10.0.2 - 10.1.2 6 Sep 2015 Added annotation to make the Chart Formatting Form and help text easier to find and use, especially on the pretty-print page. Also fixed a bug that prevented non-English language installations from saving printer formatting settings to a cookie.
languages 10.0.2.8b 10.0.2 - 10.1.1 27 May 2015 New German translations.
10.0.2.10 & 10.1.0.10 10.0.2 - 10.1.1 25 May 2015 In the config file:
  • To avoid conflicts with a new mod from Eric Hoppe, changed a couple of target locations to put my Text+ innermenu link AFTER the text link instead of BEFORE the register link.

In descendtextplus.php and pedigreetextplus.php:

  • No longer changes the font family for the chart - uses the same font family and size as other charts
  • Removes an extra that could have affected the footer of some sites.

In descendtextplus.php:

  • Positions the conditional descendcount.php link after the PDF link, instead of before.
10.0.2.9 & 10.1.0.9 10.0.2 - 10.1.1 12 Apr 2015 Displays christening data if birth data is missing, and burial data if death data is missing.
10.0.2.8 & 10.1.0.8 10.0.2 - 10.1 3 Feb 2015
  • Added two content-control parameters to the Text+ Descendant program.
  • The Text+ content-control parameters are now on the "main" screen as well as the Pretty Print screen.
  • Added the two Text+ programs to tngrobots.php.
  • Minor user interface enhancements.
10.1.0.7 10.1 12 Jan 2015 Updated database function calls for TNG v10.1 compatibility.
10.0.2.7 10.0.2-10.0.3 10 Jan 2015 Moves the printer-configuration form to the "Pretty-Print" page so that users can view charts without having to fuss with the printer configuration settings.
10.0.2.6 10.0.2 12 Aug 2014 First production release

Sites using this mod

If you download and install this mod, please add your site to the table below.

URL User Note Mod-Version TNG-Version User-language
Robin Richmond's Genealogy Database Robin Richmond Mod developer 10.1.0.12 11.0.1 English
Mitchell Families Online Roger Mitchell Another great tool for visitors, very well implemented! 10.1.0.8 10.1.0 English
Turner mob Margaret Grogan Turner Another great tool for visitors, thanks! 10.0.2.6 10.0.3 English
Hooley Family Links Rick Hooley Public Site 10.1.0.10a 10.1.1 EN
Wortelboer Genealogy Bernard Wortelboer Public site 10.1.0.10b 11.0.0 NL, EN
Solem Jan-Thore Solem Not public 10.1.0.7 10.1.0 Norwegian
Moss family tree Chris Moss Best text-based display. Public. 10.1.0.12a 11.1.2 EN, DE, FR
Brady Family Tree in Western Australia Darryl Brady Public site 10.1.0.12 11.0.1 EN, DE
Roots & Relatives Remembered Ron Krzmarzick Public & Private 10.1.0.13b w/minor tab chgs 11.1.2 EN,DE,CS,ES
Our Family Links Chuck Filteau Public site, modified Template 12 10.1.0.12 v10.1.2 EN