This dialog box will show different fields depending on the type of item being edited. All possible items of all types can be selected from the list of Available Items in the Edit Text Scheme Dialog. The Item Type is shown in the second column of the Available Items list.
The following item types are called standard data items:
| Event | An event (e.g. Birth) |
|---|---|
| Attribute | An attribute (e.g. Occupation) |
| Data | Some other kind of data item (e.g. a note). |
| Calculated | An item of data which has to be calculated - e.g. an Ahnentafel number. |
| Identifier | e.g. a record identifier, or a custom identifier. |
In addition to the standard data items, there are also the following special items:
| Font Change | Insert one of these whenever you want a change in font. You can use a font change to change any aspect of a font (size, colour, type, etc) and also whether the text is underlined, in italics, in bold, etc. |
|---|---|
| Gap | This item type is used to space out items within a box vertically. You can specify any size of vertical gap to leave. For example, you may wish to leave a slightly larger gap than normal immediately below a person’s name. |
| Picture Marker | In the Pictures tab of the Diagram Options dialog you can option to position pictures either to the side of the text or Within the Text. If you choose to picture them within the text, the Picture Marker is used to mark where exactly the picture should go. This item has no effect if you have no picture for a given box, or if you are not positioning pictures within the text. |
| Pre- Formatted Data | The ‘<all events and attributes>’ item is an example of a Pre-Formatted Data item. If you insert this item, a complete set of a person’s events and attributes, in chronological order, will be displayed for that item. |
| Text | A text item is an item which controls exceptional display of
text in a box, where the text is not directly related data in a
record. The only example of this currently is ‘No Record’ text.
Very occasionally, Family Historian may create a box for which no corresponding record is held. At present, this only happens if you are displaying a diagram in which spouses appear in their own box, and a given person is recorded as having children by more than one spouse, but the other parent for one or more of the children is not recorded. Unless an extra spouse box was displayed, the children would have to appear under the wrong parent. So a spouse box is added for the missing parent, even though no record is held for him or her. For this very unusual situation, you can specify which text you want to appear (e.g. ‘unknown’ or just ‘?’). |
| Template |
Standard data items only. There is no need for ordinary users to create or edit templates. Family Historian will generate templates for you as required when you simply add an item to the list you wish to use in the Edit Text Scheme Dialog. Advanced users, with very specific requirements, can however write their own templates, or edit existing templates, if they wish. Use the button to insert data references into a template. Most users will never need, or wish, to get down to this level; but if you wish to do so, you can. See Understanding Text Templates for an explanation of how templates work. See Understanding Data References for an explanation of what data references are and how to use them. And see Understanding Functions for a complete list and specification of Family Historian functions. |
|---|---|
| Font | Font change items only. Click on the Select button to change any aspect of the font (including style such as colour, or italics, underline or bold). |
| Vertical Gap | Gap items only. Specify the height of the gap to be left, using your preferred units of measurement. |
| Description | A brief description of the item. |
| ‘No Data’ Text | Standard data items only. Normally if a given item has no data
associated with it, that item will simply not appear. However, you
may wish to display some text (e.g. “<no birth info>”) if
details are missing.
If you wish to display a blank line for an item if there no data for it, tick ‘No Data’ Text but leave the associated text field blank. |
| Start on New Line | Standard data items only. Normally an item will start on a line of its own. Tick this box if you would like the item to continue the previous line. |
| Group with previous line | If this is ticked, the item forms part of a group of items. See Item Groups. |
| Only output if previous item blank | Tick this box if you want this item to only be output if the previous item is blank. For example, you might want to display baptism details if, and only if, there are no birth details. |
| Alignment | Each item can be aligned Left, Right, Centred or Justified
(bearing in mind that a given item may occupy more than one line,
and may even consist of multiple paragraphs).
A common approach is to make the name field centred at the top, and make other items left-aligned. |
| Initial Indent | This is the indentation of the first line of this item. Most items only occupy one line. But if the item happens to be a long note (say), it could occupy multiple lines, and even multiple paragraphs. You can specify an initial indent for items that do not start on a new line and it will be used if space permits. |
| Paragraph Indent | If an item does (or could) involve multiple paragraphs (e.g. a long note), this is the indentation to use for the start of each new paragraph (after the first line of the item). |
| Wrapped Line Indent | This is the indentation to use for 'wrapped' lines. Normally this setting affects all paragraphs that belong to the current text scheme item (and remember, that athough most items will only generate one paragraph, some may generate multiple paragraphs). But if this item does not start a new paragraph (because 'Start on New Line' is not ticked) this setting will not affect the first paragraph that this item is part of. This means that 'Wrapped Line Indent' will have no effect at all on text scheme items that only have one paragraph, if 'Start on New Line' is not ticked. |
| Box Types and Conditions | See the discussion of Box Types and Conditions below. |
| Flag Condition | Family Historian allows you to create as many record flags as you like and set them on Individual records. If you like, you can condition an item on the presence of a flag. For example, you might have an item that tells you a person’s sex. But you might only want this line to appear if it cannot be easily deduced from their name. So you could create a Display Sex flag (say), and condition this item on the presence of that flag. Then you would set the flag on all Individual records if their name did not clearly indicate their sex. |
| Test | Click on this button to test whether a template is valid or not. Is only useful if you are editing or writing your own templates. |
See Box Types for an explanation of the 5 different types of boxes that can appear in Family Historian diagrams.
For each item that you add to a text scheme, you can specify which box types it applies to. You may have information that is relevant to ancestors (e.g. an Ahnentafel number) but which is not relevant to other box types.
When you insert marriage information, you need to decide which box types it applies to. If you don’t want marriage information to be repeated in both boxes of married ancestors, you may decide to only show it for female ancestors (say). In that case, tick the ancestor box, and click on the box below ‘Sex’ labeled ‘any’. When you do this it will switch to ‘males only’. Click it again and it will switch to ‘females only’ (if you clicked it again it would switch back to ‘any’.
With descendants, life is more complicated. You can specify that marriage information is only shown in Spouse boxes. That is fine as far as it goes, but what if you aren’t showing spouses? Do you want your text scheme to be able to show appropriate marriage information, no matter what Spouse Display Option is being used? If you do, you need to think about what to display if the Spouse Display Options is One Box per Marriage.
If you add an item of data about a person’s marriage, Family Historian will by default use the following conditions for displaying that item of data (but you may choose to do it differently):
The effect of these conditions is that marriage information will always be displayed somewhere for Descendant boxes unless the Spouse Display Option is ‘No Spouse Information’, in which case neither Spouse Boxes nor Remarriage Boxes are displayed.