Within Family Historian, a diagram is called a saved diagram, a saved chart (or just a chart) if it has been saved as a file in Family Historian Chart format. Otherwise it is a working diagram. When you click on on the Diagram menu, you are saving the diagram in Family Historian Chart format. You can open previously saved charts by clicking on on the menu.
All charts start life as working diagrams. They become charts when you save them.
There are some small differences in the way that Family Historian treats working diagrams and charts. If, for example, you close a chart, Family Historian will always warn you if you have unsaved changes and give you an opportunity to save them. You can choose in Preferences (see Preferences: Diagram Tab) whether you want to be warned when you close a working diagram if you have made changes to it. You can also decide whether simply opening or closing a tree branch should count as a ‘change’ for this purpose.
When you open a new working diagram, Family Historian will re-use the last-used Diagram Window if that already contains another working diagram, unless that window has been explicitly locked (depending on Preferences it may warn you before it does this). When a window is re- used, its existing contents are replaced. Family Historian will never reuse a Diagram Window that contains a chart. You do not need to (indeed you cannot) lock it to prevent re-use in this case.
There are other minor differences of a similar nature. The reason for these differences has to do with the different ways that charts and working diagrams are used - see next.
Within Family Historian, diagrams are used in a variety of different ways, for a variety of different purposes. The 4 main uses are these:
Working Diagrams are much more strongly associated with the first 3 activities, while charts are much more strongly associated with the last.
Browsing and Exploring is when you use a diagram to find out information. Human beings absorb information visually much faster and more easily than they can absorb information in other ways, so diagrams are very useful for this. Whether you are viewing a person in a record list, in a query result set, in a picture or in a report, Family Historian will let you access all details about them, and even instantly produce a diagram showing them and their relatives. A simple double- click on any box within the diagram let’s you see at a glance all information that you have about a person, in the Property Box.
When browsing and exploring, in this way, the ability to open and close branches is very useful. It means that you can expand and explore family lines that interest you, and close off ones that you aren’t currently concerned with. Using the command, you can keep one diagram and open another, or you can add more trees to an existing diagram - both features which are useful for Browsing and Exploring.
Browsing and Exploring includes not just finding records, but viewing their contents. For example, suppose you want to check which records are missing census information in a given family. See choose an appropriate text scheme (or write your own), and you can see at a glance who has what, laid out before you.
For Browsing and Exploring purposes, you are more likely to use Working Diagrams than Charts, although you could use either.
Editing is when you change the data in your records. Family Historian uniquely allows you to use diagrams for this too - if you want to. You can add relations to existing people shown in diagrams, by clicking-and-dragging on the diagram. You can click on buttons to re-order siblings or spouses if they are in the wrong order, or even delete entire records if you wish to. When editing, users typically use the Property Box in conjunction with the Diagram Window. Using the Property Box in this way, you can change any aspect of your data and the diagram will update itself dynamically to immediately reflect the change.
Editing with diagrams has significant advantages. In particular, it allows you to see the ‘big picture’ while you are working. Errors and omissions are much easier to spot and correct.
Family Historian has various features (click-and-drag to add boxes, the Move Up/Move Down and Delete commands) which are directly relevant for editing. Family Historian’s powerful ability to let you display any information you wish in a text scheme is also useful for this purpose.
For Editing purposes, you are more likely to use Working Diagrams than Charts, although you could use either.
Navigating is when you use a diagram to locate a particular person’s record. Suppose you are looking at a photograph of Smith and you remember that you have just learned something about Smith’s grandfather which you wished to record. How do you get to Smith’s record? In Family Historian, there are many ways of doing this, but one way would be to simply click on the Ancestors diagram button to instantly produce a diagram of Smith’s ancestors. Then just double- click on the right box and to view Smith’s grandfather’s record in the Property Box.
For Navigating purposes, you are much more likely to use Working Diagrams than Charts, although you could use either.
Producing Chart Output could mean printing a diagram (chart) to give to someone else or to put on your wall or to bring to a reunion. It could also mean generating an image file from a diagram, to send to someone else, perhaps by email. Although Family Historian can instantly create a diagram for you, you might want to embellish it by adding more diagram elements, such as titles (using text boxes and/or rectangles etc), additional trees, a frame for the whole thing, and other refinements. You might want to add in pictures, not already included in boxes (perhaps family crests or family group photographs). You might want to add diagram annotations and notes.
Features that are important for these purposes are the ability to save your work between sessions, to print it off, copy it to the clipboard (for pasting into another program) or save it as a file in a number of graphical formats. Also important is the ability to add more diagram elements, and change options dynamically to refine the look of the diagram.
If your diagram is big (and genealogy diagrams can easily become very big) you may want to send your work to a specialist genealogy printer so that it can be printed on a single sheet of paper. For ordinary printers, you should send them the chart in PDF format. With some specialist genealogy suppliers, you could send them the entire project, and tell them which Chart to print. If you do this, don’t forget to include any pictures which were not separately inserted as diagram elements, if the picture files are not kept within the project folder - the printer will need these too. And if you use a custom text scheme, you should export that as a file (see the Import/Export options on the File menu) and send it to him or her too.
Although you can produce chart output immediately from any Working Diagram, you are much more likely to use Charts for this purpose.