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Danielle Brown
dtxn(a)yahoo.com
List Admin
--- KN Williams <knwill(a)juno.com> wrote:
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 09:13:44 -0700
From: KN Williams <knwill(a)juno.com>
To: FAMILIA-L(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: [FARA] GETTING THE BIG PICTURE--PRINTING
TREES
Information Series on Genealogy%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
This article is another of a series that I will
present to the group for
information, education, or to enlighten.
List Administrator
====================================================
"ROOTSWORKS: GETTING THE BIG PICTURE--PRINTING
TREES"
by Beau Sharbrough
====================================================
"The bigger they are, the harder they are to
follow." If you have
grown your family tree beyond six or eight
generations, you are
already having trouble keeping the big picture
straight. There are
pedigree charts, descendant charts, hourglass
charts, and fan charts,
and if you print one of them so that it fits on one
sheet of paper,
the printing looks like sugar ants and you can't
read a word. Making
charts from your family history information is a
great way to
organize yourself, spot research opportunities, and
get the whole
family motivated at the family reunion.
To print big trees, you need three things:
--- A program to create the report, usually a
genealogy program.
--- A printer, plotter, or service to do the actual
printing.
--- Something to print--information about your
family. This might
include photos as well as the more traditional
names, dates, and
places.
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE
I've printed charts three ways. I've printed out the
one- or two-page
pedigree chart and taped it on the wall in the
office for a working
document. Such as it is, that works fine for that
purpose. But for a
really big tree, my little office wall is not nearly
big enough. I've
used Legacy and it's Charting Companion to print
hundreds of letter-
sized pages and tape them together for display at
the reunion. I had
boxes and lines and photos of people, and that
worked, but the
margins and scotch tape made the chart look
homemade. It took my
little inkjet printer a lot of time to print them
all and some years
I wasn't able to draft any of the people at the
reunion to help me
tape them together. It's not such a bad job until
you have to do it
all yourself.
I've also had the chart printed on a single big roll
from a service
that has a plotter. That was the best tree I ever
had, even though I
paid more for it. I didn't have to spend any time
printing or taping
it, and best of all, it didn't look like my usual
work product when
it was done. It was classy. And I think when I get
through adding it
up, it wasn't more expensive than the inkjet, paper,
and scotch tape.
SOMETHING TO PRINT
You need names, dates, and places for births,
deaths, and marriages
so they can print in the boxes on your chart. Charts
look better to
me if they have photos. I can't find pictures of
everyone at the same
age (that would be really cool!), so I just pick the
one I like best
for each person. My current project is to make a
four-generation
pedigree chart composed solely of signatures. If you
find them and
scan them, they are just another picture, and look
great on a chart.
TRY A PRINTING SERVICE
There are many services that will do a standard
chart, six to eight
generations, on 18" x 24" paper. You can get
different background
art, and the finished products look great. Anything
outside of that
size is a custom job, and the price can vary. I am
partial to the
service at Wholly Genes Software
(
http://www.whollygenes.com/wallcharts.htm ), but
only because of the
extra effort that they made for me when I needed
special help getting
ready for a reunion. I had a wall chart about three
feet high and
almost one hundred feet long. It took two rolls of
the plotter paper!
DO IT YOURSELF
Some people like to do things themselves, and there
is a lot of
satisfaction to be gained from printing a chart on
your own printer.
If you have no photos, just about any printer will
do. If your photos
have color, you might want a color printer. Most
people have an
inkjet, but they're pretty expensive in terms of
consumables (i.e.,
ink, paper, etc.) for large charts. Plotters cost
much more than
inkjets. The 24-inch ones are over $1,000 and the
36- and 42-inch
ones are a lot more. Still, if you have access to
one at work, you
might be able to make your own charts.
WHAT'S THE PROGRAM?
Just about every genealogy program today supports
chart printing,
with photos. Some export GEDCOM files--those won't
include your
images. Some support the creation of a PDF format
file, or, in the
case of the Master Genealogist, a VCF format file.
These files often
contain the photos too. If your program doesn't
support photos and
doesn't print charts that contain them, you might
want to ask the
developer if an upgrade is available. If not, you
might give some
serious thought to changing programs.
WHAT ELSE?
I find that all of the programs and all of the
charts really struggle
to help me organize and understand information that
goes over about
ten generations. While it's possible to print a
twenty-generation
tree, that would be a million ancestors (even though
you can be
certain that some of them would appear more than
once). They say that
if you have any English ancestors, that you are most
likely related
to EVERYONE living in England at the time of the
Battle of Hastings.
It would be great if we could put our heads together
and find a
better way to talk about organizing 10 million or 50
million
ancestors. I don't want the chart to look like sugar
ants.
MORE INFORMATION
For links and more information about printing big
trees, please visit
the RootsWorks site at
http://www.rootsworks.com/trees . If you want
to discuss your tree printing challenges, please
drop by the
RootsWorks Forums at
http://www.rootsworks.com/forums . Registration
is free, and I'd be interested to know what kinds of
issues you are
facing.
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