Graphiz_Dot

by Michael Gibson Original June 25,26 2005 rework June 27 2005

I love graphs with Genealogy. They can be quite helpful. Unfortunatly, over complecated graphs can be a serious hinder to sort though. When an application completely relies on graphs like GenoPro, this can be an advantage and biggest weakness. Using GenoPro with very complex, greater than 3000 individuals, can become very cluttered and almost impossible to decipher.

With the latest version of FTree, »http://www.vjet.demon.co.uk/ftree/ version 2.0, introduces a new report type based on "graphviz" dot. This new reporting mechanism generates a colorful graphical tree. Basically FTree is turning to others for the display mechanism or complex graphs.

»http://www.vjet.demon.co.uk/ftree/ring-part-dot.png

Graphviz, »http://www.graphviz.org/ , is an external application for graphing - Graph Visualization Software. The software is available for free on almost every popular operating system including Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows.

Giving it a wirl

Next some details of this newer feature - Ftree's dot exported family tree graphs. In this part I will discuss briefly my opinion of FTree's use of this and what I think in general of graphviz's dot format.

First I loaded the graphviz's 3 main packages on a standard Fedora Core 3 Linux installation. I then exported a large tree in dot format from FTree. The exported text file was fairly small, a little over 40K and 1368 lines long. To open the graph file I exported, I used an application that came with graphviz called doted - or other wise known as "The dot Editor". Written in TCL/TK, the application was very simple in nature to use. It used the mouse's wheel to zoom in and out with and scroll bars to navigate with. To open a file was a simple file/open from a pull down menu system.

The results were very clean and easy to read. Not necessarily visually stunning results though. The graph was actually very generic, plain and simple, but very well organized and linked. No annoying visual overlapping of individuals that I have seen with some products.

Should graphviz become a tool for genealogist? I don't know. I will say this, the results were nicer than some I have seen with larger sets of data. Additionaly, the data is stored in a light weight format. With me that is always a plus when dealing with a lot of data. It would be more convenient if FTree could incorporate the use of these libraries and mechanisms internally.