[Q] Descendant vewi - improved viewing

RootsMagic
1

I am asking here for thoughts about this before I formerly submit a feature request.
I find the descendant view in RM not well accented. For those familiar with Family Historian, I would like something as a cross between the two.

The breaks in generations etc are not very well defined in comparison.

Screenshot sample below

Screenshot 2022-01-18 123900
Screenshot 2022-01-18 123900847Ă—583 148 KB

thanks for your thoughts and comments

Kevin

2

Much too busy looking but at the same time not providing enough information. I prefer the RM8 version and find it easy to navigate. I like being able to see birth and death places. My only feature request for RM8 would be for it to descend 10 generation or more.

3

I think I prefer the RM Descendant View to the Family Historian Descendant View. But more importantly, I prefer the RM7 version of Descendant View to the RM8 version. Here is a list of items where I prefer the RM7 version of Descendant View to the RM8 version.

  • RM7’s Descendant View supported WebHints. RM8’s Descendant View does not support Webhints. I work in Descendant View a great deal, and it’s a pain to have to switch views to get Webhints.
  • RM7’s Descendant View made it easy to distinguish siblings from the siblings’ spouses. RM8’s Descendant View does not make it easy to distinguish siblings from the siblings’ spouses. I would probably have to post some screenshots or even make a screencast to make the RM8 problem clear. Part of the problem is that the little + sign in front of spouses is indented in RM7 and it is not indented in RM8. Part of the problem is the little “outline things” with the - signs and + signs that you can use to display or not display a branch of the family have the practical effect of obscuring the indentations for the spouses and even making the spouses stand out more than the siblings.
  • When the people you are looking at are color coded, the little color coding boxes totally obscure the indentations for the spouses and make it hard to distinguish the siblings visually from the spouses of the siblings. It’s hard to know how to fix this problem. If the spouses were indented appropriately, it would probably work to have the color coding boxes immediately adjacent to the first letter of the person’s first name or something like that. Color coding with the color coding boxes has a huge impact on being able to see the indentations for the spouses properly.

Beyond those issues, I have long wished for a slightly different feature in Descendant View having nothing to do with the look and feel of the view. For example, consider Descendant View with 2 generations. It shows the Primary person, his or her spouses, and the children of the Primary person with each of his or her spouses. Often I would like to see just a little bit more and add just the spouses of all the children. But you can’t do that. If you go to 3 generations to see the spouses of all the children, you also get all the grandchildren, which can be too much. The same thing happens going from 3 generations to 4 or from 4 generations to 5, etc. The number of people I’m looking at is too few, but if I add one more generation the number of people I’m looking at is too many. So I wish for a check box to go along with the check box for the number of generations to show or not show the spouses of the right most siblings.

By the way, I was just noticing that the Family History version of Descendant View is showing the spouses of the siblings to the right of siblings instead of below the siblings. RM7 is showing the spouses of the siblings below the siblings with an indented look. RM8 is showing the spouses of the siblings below the siblings and without an indented look. As I said, I really find the RM7 look and feel for the spouses much easier to use than the RM8 look and feel. I would have to work with the Family Historian look and feel for the spouses a while to see if it felt easy to use. I would just emphasize that I do not find RM8 giving the spouses no kind of indentation from the siblings at all is at all easy to use.

2 Likes
4

to clarify – I do NOT want to mimic FH – but I want to define clarity in the indention
Maybe Bold the Break line that collapses. The grid to right with sex, DOB / location and death etc is good (although probably should be have some custom-ability) .

My issue is with the ambiguity of the family / generation groups. (at least to me)
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