I would like to set up separate Groups for Collateral and Affinal relationships to myself and then colour code them for easy identification, but I can’t work out how to do it. Does anyone have any ideas please?
I was testing this outside of the RM interface – it involved some intermediate / advanced logic to get that result. Since relationships are not part of adv search – I recently did this using sqlite
- Yellow = cousin
- Orange = uncle/aunt
- Green (2 shades) = spouse of Cousin or aunt or uncle
- #34 would have green#2 but is also sibling law of both
- Parents in laws of spouse has purple
- Red is ancestor or immediate relative
so one question would be how far out would one want “Affinal relationships”.
Currently, inlaws of any spouse who married in basically (with family) is what my current script.
Now the other issue is “Affinal” people can have 2 or more connections due to double relationships such as #204 above
here is another example
brown = sibling inlaw of cousin
#13485 has diff color because also spouse of
I am just confirming what kevync1985 has already reported. This kind of color coding cannot be accomplished from within the RM user interface. I have been accomplishing this kind of color coding for rather a long time using SQLite queries. The limiting factor in doing it from within the RM user interface is that RM’s Advanced Search capabilities do not support access to RM’s relationship flags that are created by the Set Relationships tool, nor do they support access to any characteristics of other family members. So for example, you cannot query for things like second cousin three times removed nor for spouse of a person who is color coded red.
RM’s database is an SQLite database. It is open, by which I mean it is not encrypted or anything like that. So for users with programming skills to write SQLite queries, there are a lot of very useful ways to supplement all the features that are already provided by RM. The RM company does not support user use of SQLite in this manner and they recommend against it. If a user uses SQLite in a way that damages their RM database, the user is on their own to repair the damage.
The color coding scheme accomplished by my SQLite script is fairly complex, probably more complex than I need. The basic idea is that anybody I’m related to is color coded red and the spouse of anybody I’m related to is color coded green. And very important to me, if the same person is both related to me and is a spouse of someone related to me, I make sure they are color coded red rather than green. With one distinction to be described below, I do not make any distinctions between seventh great grandfathers and third cousins four times removed. They are all just red.
But I don’t stop with red and green. I have a color for parents of spouses, a different color for other spouses of spouses, I have a different color for siblings of spouses, etc. I also have a different color for people with the Bryan surname to whom I’m not related, a different color for people I cannot yet connect to the rest of my people but for whom I want to do more research rather than remove them from my database. And there is even more complexity than that to my color coding that I won’t bore you with.
I leave nobody without a color code. If no other color code fits, I color code the person yellow. I’m using the yellow color code as a “to do list”. For every person color coded yellow, I’m researching them and connecting them to other people in my database or else just deleting them. For the most part, these were people I imported into my database 25 or 30 years when I was just starting out with genealogy and didn’t realize that you shouldn’t just import a bunch of people without evidence.
The one exception to my rule that everybody I’m related to is color coded red is that I am now color coding myself, my direct ancestors, and my direct descendants as mauve (I know, but I was running out of colors that I could tell apart on the screen). For example, if I am looking at the family of a distant ancestor, I can tell which of the children is my direct line. I find this very useful when following lines that I don’t work in very often and am therefore not as familiar with as, for example, I am with my Bryan line.
A new feature in RM10 completely broke my script. Namely, RM10 added “spouse of” relationships for people such as spouse second cousin once removed. In and of itself, that didn’t break my script. However, RM10’s new feature will often categorize somebody as a “spouse of” person even if they are also a person to whom I am related. i don’t like that aspect of RM10’s new feature, even just in RM, and even if I didn’t have my own script for color coding. I think the Set Relationships process should always give preference to blood relationships over spousal relationships when both exist. But for my color coding script, I found it totally unacceptable. So I rewrote my script so that it calculates relationships and colors without making any reference to RM’s own relationship flags that are set by Set Relationships. So my color coding always gives preference to blood relationships over spousal relationships.
I want to stay in RM, not use SqLite (way beyond my simple brain) so the best I’ve got to so far is to start a Group with my whole tree and then add BUT NOT rules to exclude my immediate family, my direct paternal ancestors, and my maternal ancestors. The result is a Group containing Collateral and Affinal people together. It’s just the last bit I can’t work out i.e. how to split out Affinal i.e. those related to me only by marriage/partnership (spouses, in-laws, step-relatives).
Jerry, I was writing my previous comment when you posted your (as usual) comprehensive note, so unfortunately I’ve only just read it. I’d hate you to think my brief reference to SQLite was me being dismissive of your explanation! Quite the opposite in fact, I’m in awe of how you’ve constructed all such complex colour coding rules - and keep them all in mind as you work! I have no programming skills and know nothing about SQLite so I will be sticking with RM’s advice I think. Thank you anyway for your comments.
yes this and similar scenarios with multiple paths — sometimes a blood relative is missed because their closer path via RM calculation method say spouse of is their “primary” *kinship (most likely because its considered shorter in hops).
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I have plenty of people who married include two cousins, two siblings, or one uncle and one cousin that married into family that create all kind of multiple paths connections.