topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Friday March 29, 2024, 1:31 am
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Author Topic: IDEA: pop-up genogram maker  (Read 10684 times)

whitstabubble

  • Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
IDEA: pop-up genogram maker
« on: January 06, 2007, 03:24 PM »
I run a team of workers supporting families.  We have to draw genograms (family trees) and there's hundreds of fancy programs out there that will do database-dense stuff.  But my staff just type and want a simple tool that can draw a simple family tree. 

I was pleased to see a free 'simple family tree builder' on this site: http://jdmcox.com/  but interestingly, although it's very good for amateur geneaologists, it's no good for family workers.  For a start there's only squares to use and the relationships are automatically generated -which is fantastic-brilliant-except we deal with incest sometimes and that throws the automatic logic loopy!  To be honest, a pop-up that could link squares, circles and triangles with a combination of dotted and continuous linked lines would be just fine.  So long as you could write in the shapes, that'd be fine too.  So I guess a very simple flow-charter that worked on the fly and pasted image file into main program would do the job wonderfully.  I know there's a variety of flow-chart programs too, but believe me, they are all a bit clumsy for our use. Come to think of it -a lot of team leaders would like an on-the-fly f.charter anyway. Anyone interested might like to look at the proper rules at http://faculty-web.a...ram%20Components.htm  but we don't need that level of sophistication.

thanks for thinking about it.

hh
« Last Edit: January 06, 2007, 03:28 PM by whitstabubble »

mouser

  • First Author
  • Administrator
  • Joined in 2005
  • *****
  • Posts: 40,896
    • View Profile
    • Mouser's Software Zone on DonationCoder.com
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Re: IDEA: pop-up genogram maker
« Reply #1 on: January 06, 2007, 03:37 PM »
can you explain more why the emphasis on "pop up" ?
do i take it that you mean that you need to be able to quickly bring it up, draw a diagram, and then paste it into another program as an image?  you dont ever need to edit it after you paste it into another program?

do you have any non-free examples of good programs that you've found that might serve as good examples to base a new program on?

i think your idea of using an existing flowchart program with some custom symbols is not a bad idea - this is surely outside the range of a little coding snack - it sounds like a fairly involved project i'm afraid.

whitstabubble

  • Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: IDEA: pop-up genogram maker
« Reply #2 on: January 06, 2007, 04:14 PM »
"do i take it that you mean that you need to be able to quickly bring it up, draw a diagram, and then paste it into another program as an image?  you dont ever need to edit it after you paste it into another program?"

Yup -that's about the size of it.  Something simple and accessible.  Once it's pasted it's fine as an image as more sophisticated stuff might lose editable relationships.  Smartdraw has a polished genogram module -but the nifty 'add-on' I remember in one old version of Word was 'org chart' that did a similar job, but again, not flexible enough to just join up shapes you choose, how you want.

Sorry if it's too ambitious a rquest!  Just one of those things you just wished you had -and to be honest, wished I had for years.

JennyB

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • Posts: 212
  • Test all things - hold fast to what is good
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: IDEA: pop-up genogram maker
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2007, 10:54 AM »
"do i take it that you mean that you need to be able to quickly bring it up, draw a diagram, and then paste it into another program as an image?  you dont ever need to edit it after you paste it into another program?"

Yup -that's about the size of it.  Something simple and accessible.  Once it's pasted it's fine as an image as more sophisticated stuff might lose editable relationships.  Smartdraw has a polished genogram module -but the nifty 'add-on' I remember in one old version of Word was 'org chart' that did a similar job, but again, not flexible enough to just join up shapes you choose, how you want.

Sorry if it's too ambitious a rquest!  Just one of those things you just wished you had -and to be honest, wished I had for years.


      Diagram Designer could be just what you need. Fast and simple, exports as a GIF.  :Thmbsup:
If you don't see how it can fail -
you haven't understood it properly.

whitstabubble

  • Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: IDEA: pop-up genogram maker
« Reply #4 on: January 22, 2007, 03:27 PM »
thanks JennyB.  Had failed to download this before but your link worked fine and it's looking good.  Thanks
hh

f0dder

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 9,153
  • [Well, THAT escalated quickly!]
    • View Profile
    • f0dder's place
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Re: IDEA: pop-up genogram maker
« Reply #5 on: January 22, 2007, 05:38 PM »
Might be more than you need, but perhaps it's worth to take a look at http://www.legacyfamilytree.com - afaik there's a free version.
- carpe noctem

whitstabubble

  • Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 4
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: IDEA: pop-up genogram maker
« Reply #6 on: January 22, 2007, 06:13 PM »
Thanks F0dder.  I had trawled through lots of proper genogram makers -including Legacy.  It is indeed a sophisticated Genogram builder but specifically for family tree hobbyists.  I've tried complex genogram and flowchart stuff on our range of team members and they don't have time or dexterity -eg - sizeable boxes start to go awry - so I was looking for something that was dirt simple to construct - Jens Diagram suggestion is close.  Anybody with a palm might know about 'ideapad' - it's the business - a simple heirachical tree that switches to a flowchart and vice-versa but the developer does not have time to do a windows version.  Many many thanks -appreciate all ideas.
hh