Fun Feature

[aaannndddyyy]

It's called a family tree, and just like real trees there are branches that are dead and those that are alive.

So why not consider our tree like a real tree, a living organism that tries to survive but probably loses some branches.

Someone who dies without leaving any offspring, is a dead end, on a dead branch. And also those who had offspring but those later unfortunately died before they could have children on their own, or decided not to have, or could not have, ... They too do not have any living descendants anymore.

So you could also show that, optionally, in the graph by kinda graying out entire dead branches. Only those who still habe living descents are in bright color and with green lines connecting them , whereas those who no longer have any living descendant, will be still shown, but grayed out or fading or half transparent.

And in the statistics you could add a vitaliy measure by dividing the number vital persons (people alive and people with living descendants) by the total number of persons in the tree. Or do it based on one pivoted person, and show how vital his induced subgraph is, how many living descendants he has in total and number of descendants/2^number_of_generstions_of_descendants. (Other stats unrelated to this ticket would be nice too, like average lifespan overall and for women and for men or per generation, average number of children, and such)

I know it's not a vital feature. Just a little gimmick so low priority. Or you may not like the idea at all, who knows

[michelesalvador]

Thank you. Interesting. It must be said that this would rely on entering complete dates for each person, which is very difficult in real trees. You remind me that the coloring of the connecting lines is underused to highlight the various branches. Furthermore, the thickness of the lines could vary to represent the number of branches that unfold from the pivot person.

[aaannndddyyy]

Yes , different line thickness would be a nice visual cue too.

For the simple vitality measure, I think it's not such a nice feature . The more ancestors you enter, the higher the proportion of dead people (unless you go back down the lines to all descendants which is practically impossible) and the vitality measure decreases, whereas you would like your tree to have a good vitality. For the second measure , you don't need all the dates , you'd just need all descendants of the person in question, if the person has zero descendants, then he gets a zero, if he has three living children , it's a 1.5, and with four grandchildren but no more living children it wound be a 1.0. for the coloring of alive and dead branches you only need to know if there is at least one living descendant. For line thickness , again you need to know how many