Template talk:Family tree/Archive 1

Frames
Outstanding! Would there be an easy way to turn off the frames around boxes? They don't really add much information. I guess I can hack the template myself to make my own frame-free family tree template, but it would be cleaner to provide it as an option. Arbor 12:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I suppose I could add an optional boxstyle parameter with a default of " ". Would that be OK?  Or maybe just specify the border width in pixels?  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:37, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. You can set boxstyle to fully control the box appearance, or just set border to specify the border width in pixels.  If both are given, boxstyle overrides border.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 13:47, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I changed it so that boxstyle is appended to the style declaration instead of replacing it. That means you have to specify both   and   in boxstyle if you want to override the corresponding defaults.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 16:07, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Rendering bug
Firefox 1.5 seems to have problems rendering the latest version of this template. The bug manifests as box borders extending where they shouldn't. I'm looking for a better workaround, but if nothing else helps, going back to   should eliminate the issue at the cost of some general ugliness. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:17, 23 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I've reverted to, see below.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:08, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Felicitations
Is there a Mediawiki version of the International Obfuscated C Coding Competition? I would nominate this template...:) Stevage 01:13, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

WikiTree
see --Shizhao 02:27, 13 February 2006 (UTC)


 * See also Rodovid, which has more features and is more active. Wikiacc (?) 00:21, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Missing tile?
Is it me or is a tile missing and one duplicated? There are two tiles drawing a line from left to right and from up to the middle, but not one drawing a line from up to the middle to the right. --Conti|&#9993; 19:17, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * There shouldn't be any duplicate tiles. I think what you're seeing may be caused by the border-collapse bug mentioned above.  I've removed the offending declaration from familytree/start, do the tiles look like they should now?  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 10:08, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, it looks correct now. Thanks! --Conti|&#9993; 15:50, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Autocompleting Tags
I have a slight query about Familytree installation. This wikicode runs on my own wiki running 1.6.6:

and it produces the following HTML output: to LocalSetting.php makes it work. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:24, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * More information: the problem is in, which is called by   during template inclusion.  With tidy enabled, the function only does some rudimentary preprocessing, but if   is false, it tries to close any unclosed HTML tags by itself.  I don't see any way to work around that, except maybe to rewrite the template to use wikitable syntax.  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 17:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, it seems I may end up having to do that anyway, if the plans to forbid unclosed HTML tags in templates even with tidy become reality. I already do have a mostly working wikitable version, but currently the emphasis is strongly on the word "mostly". :(  —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 20:37, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'm running into this same problem on a different wiki. Did you ever learn any more about it? Does the problem go away in recent versions of MediaWiki? Did you stop working on the wikitable version because you didn't have time to finish it or because it is not clear how to do it in wikitable syntax? Thanks... --GregU 06:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I am going to second this question. I want to use it on another wiki at work and we don't have Tidy installed to make it run correctly. Have you converted it yet to all wikicode?  immunity  talk   21:50, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Future: MediaWiki extension?
Given the popularity of this template, the obvious next step would be to turn it into a MediaWiki parser hook extension. I've started this section to outline my plans for such an extension and to solicit comments on it.

Benefits

 * Performance: The current template-based system, while optimized, nonetheless strains the servers needlessly. The more popular this template gets, the more significant the performance issue becomes.
 * Portability: Family trees implemented using a MediaWiki extension would work on all Wikimedia projects, without requiring the copying of templates to each project.
 * Flexibility: The current implementation has a number of limitations, such as the 99-column limit and the requirement to define each box on the line it appears on. A MediaWiki extension would not have these problems.
 * Nicer syntax: I'm pretty proud of the way this template uses the template parameter syntax for both layout and content definitions, but let's face it, it's a hack. And the vertical bars all over the markup, while fairly easy to ignore after a while, are nonetheless ugly.  With an extension, though, the syntax can be anything we want.

Goals

 * The stated purpose of this template is "rendering simple family trees based on an ASCII art-like syntax". This should remain the case.  While additional features are nice, they should not overwhelm the original goal.  In particular, the temptation to add every new feature during the transition from templates to extension syntax should be resisted: it is better to first make a simple extension that works and then consider additional features.
 * It should be possible to convert existing family trees automatically to the new syntax, with few or no changes in appearance.
 * The layout of the tree and the content of the boxes should be kept separate, even more so than with the current syntax if possible.
 * The syntax should remain intuitive and directly editable.
 * The appearance of the boxes should be customizable, both globally and individually.
 * The new syntax should be usable with right-to-left text (such as Hebrew). This may mean dispensing with alphabetic tiles.  Fortunately, using an extension also frees more punctuation characters for use in tiles.

Issues

 * When editing, MediaWiki provides links to all the templates used on the page. No such feature currently exists for parser hook extensions.  This may be a problem, since it means that an editor encountering the extension for the first time may have no convenient link to its documentation.
 * In the current syntax, each tile has a separate character. While simple and convenient, this does have the disadvantage that suitable characters are becoming scarce, particularly if new line types were to be added.  Also, not all the characters are immediately obvious.  With a parser hook extension, the mapping of characters to tiles could in principle be made context-sensitive, for example by insisting on lines being continuous.  This would, however, be a rather major departure from the current syntax.

Syntax sketch
Here's how the example family tree above might be written using a parser hook extension:

[ GRM ]y[ GRP ] )---.    [ MOM ]y[ DAD ] [DAISY]    ,---+---. [ JOE ] [ ME  ] [ SIS ] GRM   = Grandma GRP   = Grandpa MOM   = Mom DAD   = Dad DAISY = Aunt Daisy JOE   = My brother Joe ME    = Myself SIS   = My little sister

Comments? —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:39, 1 June 2006 (UTC)


 * That would be beautiful. I am stunned by the intricacy an beauty of this template as it is, but that would be much better.  AnAccount2 08:20, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Family tree running sideways
Interesting gadget. I've found that it can also be used to build a table running sideways; see Template talk:Blackfamilytree. However, there's no tile for 'married with children' in that orientation. —wwoods 00:33, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Now there is: "}". —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:41, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Quick work! But it needs a dashed vertical and a solid horizontal bar. Looking at the code, I'm not sure where to switch them, so I won't mess with it.
 * —wwoods 17:35, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Oops, fixed. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:41, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the inspiration; I made a horizontal tree as well: Template:Y-DNA_R. — Reinyday, 21:10, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Ahnentafel to family tree
Per request, I wrote some templates to convert Ahnentafels into horizontal trees. The templates are, , , and , and there's also a perl script for making more. You can see a usage example at.

The current implementation is actually rather inefficient, since there's no real need to use the generic familytree template for such a simple task. I'll probably fix the ahnentafel templates to generate the HTML table directly, which will allow it to be optimized significantly. On the other hand, that does mean the templates can then no longer be substed for editing. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 22:36, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Difficult to use?
I didn't find the template that hard to use. I created a bunch of trees - they can be found at: User:Nephron/Notes. Nephron T|C 21:52, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Are two line boxes possible
I am thinking for trees where you wish to include the person name then under it the date of birth and death. Though for general purpose use I an imagine a lot of stuff that might go on the second line. WOuld this increas teh compliexity prohibitivly? Dalf | Talk 06:27, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Nevermind Figured this out by tinking around seems to work fine if you insert line breaks. Dalf | Talk 09:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Divorce?
I just created Template:Walton family tree, it has a few problems:
 * Missing maiden names for two individuals in the tree.
 * Bud Walton and his wife divorced at some point, I have seen divorce represent in family trees before (I think with cross hatches in the line) Is there anyway we can add that? Perhaps with # as the symbol? Dalf | Talk 00:47, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * When I make family trees, I use an equal sign ( = ) for marriage (instead of the dotted line in this template) and a not equal sign ( ≠ ) for divorce. Please note that # is already taken as a symbol in this template. — Reinyday, 06:08, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Request
Hello,

Can someone familiar with the syntax, please replace the Genealogy in Maumoon Abdul Gayoom and Mohamed Amin Didi with this template?. Thanks. --Oblivious 05:01, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I will give it a go. Dalf | Talk 05:19, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Done but you may want to look at the second one it has his materna grandparents as both having the sane name which I doubt. Dalf | Talk 05:37, 31 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Its an obvious mistake by the editor who origially included the family tree. I've adjusted that now. Once again, thanks :) --Oblivious 05:41, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Really big family trees
Does Wikipedia have a limit on the number of templates that can be included in a page? Furthermore, is it a bad idea to use this template for large family trees? I found this template when I was looking at Harold Godwinson and I thought it would be a good idea to recreate the family tree using it. If you look at User:Timc/Sandbox, you will see that I get an error when I have more than 32 templates included. -- timc  talk   21:12, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, it seems that it doesn't like more than 26 of this template included. For some reason, I thought it was 32, which was a convenient number to point a finger at.  On the other hand, 26 seems like a strange number. --  timc  talk   02:40, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Changes?
Have there been changes in how the familytree structure is interpreted?

It seems that something has changed. The article arterial tree has a bunch of ""s that weren't there before and somehow came from changes elsewhere. Nephron T|C 01:51, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * This seems related to my comment above on really big family trees. If you count, you'll see that there are 44 transclusions, and 18 "  "s at the top, which means that 26 of them are displayed correctly.  I am guessing that something has changed in the software, because this template hasn't changed recently. --  timc  talk   02:43, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I have found the cause of this issue. See New template limits, Special:ExpandTemplates. --  timc  talk   02:52, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Wow
Wow, wikitext is so flexible and cool and easy to program in. Let's rewrite MediaWiki in it! -- Tim Starling 03:55, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Funny! -- timc  talk   03:59, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I reduced the maximum parameter count for this template from 99 to 40, that seems to increase the maximum number of inclusions to about 42. -- Tim Starling 04:17, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't work
User:Striver/Sahaba's ancestors cant take it anymore, and there is a LOT left :( --Striver 15:28, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Distinguishing marriage vs. descent
Currently, dashed lines are being used to indicate both marriages and lines of omitted or uncertain generations of descent? Would it be practical to add double-line tiles to indicate marriages? Or alternately, to add dotted-line tiles for the other? —wwoods 22:27, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Colouring individual boxes?
Is there anyway to add style parameters to individual boxes? What I want to do is illustrate the direct line of descent by having the box background of direct ancestors from a given individual be green, or blue, or whatever. Currently, the only way see is to use the boxstyle for the whole row, which doesn't really work for this purpose. Canæn 08:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Won't Work
When I put this in it won't work:

I've fixed the chart by closing two open lines; the one with Noah, and the final line including Ham. Also, the line above Noah only had one bracket to close. You've got to close every line with Two "}" brakcets. Canæn 06:39, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!

Help editing?
Can someone who's more familiar with family trees have a look at User:Mrdini/test and see if this familytree template could help in cleaning up the two family trees from Dream_of_the_Red_Chamber? TIA! Mrdini 11:44, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Another 'help editing' request! Too big?
I was wondering if someone experienced with family trees might take a look at my sandbox page - User:Merteuil/Sandbox: Lymond - Family Tree. I think that the underlying script is correct but for some reason, parts of the family tree do not appear (even though programmed to do so) on the far right of the page - there are gaps in the lines connecting the boxes (which do not exist in the underlying script) and also missing boxes. I wondered if this results from the family tree being too large? Any help and/or advice would be much appreciated! Thank you! Merteuil 05:53, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Marriages
I am working on making the Julio-Claudian family tree into this template at Julio-Claudian family tree/Update. However, the tree is somewhat confusing because some members marry multiple wives and others adopt heirs. I have used a dashed line to indicate the heirs and I have continued to use a dashed line for marriages. In order to fit some marriages in I have had to use vertical dashed lines and in order to attach some members to their heirs I have had to use horizontal dashes. Therefore both associations use dashes in every direction. I would like to make a double line for marriages but I am unsure of what symbols I should use to recresent the other lines. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Secondly I would like to be able to include the number in which members married their successive wives but I can't think of how to do it efficiently. — David618 t 22:52, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

T H I S  I S    W A A A A Y    T O O    B I G
The templates render IMHO too wide, screwing up e.g. Elizabeth of Aragon. Please try to make it smaller. -- Matthead discuß!    O       00:11, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Family trees are big by their nature. They grow exponentially or geometrically (depending).  That said someone can format them in diffrent ways to make them smaler, but using smaller fonts is not especaily useful as some people cant read them that well. Dalf | Talk 00:56, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * You can use something like  to make the font smaller.  For simple ancestor trees like the one on Elizabeth of Aragon, however, a horizontal tree may be more compact, and can be easily created from an Ahnentafel using the, , ,  and  templates, like this:


 * —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 19:01, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Pretty easy to do horizontally with this template too like in Walton family. Dalf | Talk 21:01, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Request for Enhancement
More mixed tiles, please! For example, see Carniv%C3%A0le (where dotted lines are used to represent adoption). Vagary 08:45, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Along the same lines, for a complicated table (such as the one I'm in the process of fixing at Hart wrestling family, we need a "{" to compliment the already existing "}". JPG-GR 02:54, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * With a little work, I managed to get that one created. What are you looking for exactly, Vagary? JPG-GR 00:19, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I really know nothing about family tree syntax, but I'm trying to present this: Lucius and Plemina are the biological parents of Justin and Iris, who were adopted by Norman. I believe that there should be a solid line (preferably horizontal?) between Lucius and Plemina that branches to Justin and Iris, and a dotted line going from Norman to Justin and Iris. It will be obvious from article context that dotted means adoption and solid means married, but please let me know if there is a better syntax. Vagary 00:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh! I just realized that each box is three tiles wide and therefore can have up to three lines entering on each side. So my problem is solved. Should such an advanced example be added to the template documentation for poor readers like myself? Vagary 00:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Opposite of "y"
For the sake of completeness, I'd like to create the opposite of the "y" tile. Ironically, the more challenging part at the moment is trying to figure out what character to assign it. Any suggestions? JPG-GR 01:32, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * How about "h" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Xallium (talk • contribs) 13:26, 28 April 2007 (UTC).
 * Duh. Sheesh, must've been having a bad night. Thanks. JPG-GR 16:01, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Help?
Hi. Can somebody take a look at the family tree I created:

The problem is that after a certain point to the right, it becomes congested and things after a certain point don't appear. (such as everything after the ! on the 5th line of code).


 * It's failing at the 40th parameter, could have something to do with Template_talk:Familytree? Vagary 08:13, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Needed tiles
Could somebody make two opposites of the "}" and "{" tiles where the solid line runs verticle? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Xallium (talk • contribs) 21:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC).
 * I'm not quite sure what you mean. JPG-GR 06:05, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing this is what they had in mind:


 * row1 "]"=......|
 * row2 "]"=   |


 * row1 "["=......|
 * row2 "["=   |
 * Vagary 07:59, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah I think that should be it. Can you add it to the template please? =D —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Xallium (talk • contribs) 11:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC).
 * I'm afraid to! I tried to setup a sandbox, but the output is wonky. :( Vagary 20:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It looks like those are producing the same tile as "~". I'm still not quite sure what tiles you're trying to produce, so I don't know where to start in terms of creating them. JPG-GR 06:15, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I ment like this: http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/4008/tilseyp3.jpg -- Xallium (talk • contribs) 12:04, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh duh, I fixed my sandbox and implemented the extension. I'd still feel a lot better if there were a test suite! ;) Vagary 19:28, 1 May 2007 (UTC)