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There's a new addition to the notation key on each page of this site. To indicate a divorce (or separation) I have reintroduced the 'x' as an alternative to the '+' as a prefix for individuals who have contributed to the family through marriage or children.

Although this device works well to make this distinction, it highlights an interesting question regarding the purpose of a family tree. Should the scope of a family tree be limited to the birth and deaths of the members of the family, or is it a 'social' history where the relationships within the family are a significant part of the record?

The existing tree includes many individual's professions. What someone does for work is about the families contribution to the greater community and clearly something to be proud of. It's my guess that information on failed marriages is not recorded as diligently because they don't engender the same pride.

The information on a family tree is kept easy to read as much by what is left out of the tree by what is left in; But this sacrifice should not be at the expense of the accuracy of the information. Appropriate interpretation of the information is important to consider. Where something is left out it should be clear that it has been omitted for the purpose of succinctness rather than it's absence suggesting something else entirely.

Consider a member of the family has a recorded birthdate of 1517 with no time of death noted. (1517). It's pretty safe to presume they are no longer alive and the reason there is no date of death marked is that it is unknown. The notation could be more explicit like this: (1517—†?). There is not a real problem here as we can safely presume the lifespan of an individual in limited. Whereas if we look at the tree to see if this person had children and see none - we are morely likely to presume they had none rather than guess this information is unknown.

Bringing this back to relationships - if a mariiage date is recorded with no subsequent marriages - we are likely to presume that the marriage continued until one of the people concerned passed away. Divorce is a great deal more common than it used to be - just as it is becoming increasingly difficult to sum up the life activity of an individual with a single profession. These changes challenge the simplicity of what is imagined to be a typical family tree and what belongs on it.

The existing tree indicates separations through divorce but doesn't go as far to indicate the time span of the marriage. Perhaps this is a good compromise between the history and personal information? I'm uncertain.

last updated 1 year ago #

This afternoon I added the day/month details to the last page of the tree lacking them! I have neglected the tree for a while, so it's good to hit a milestone after just a few more hours work.

I've also spent some time reassessing the notation I have been using and made a few changes. The X to indicate a marriage has been replaced with a +. More 'positive' I think, and looks better too. Also I was italisising dates which were associated with evidence of someone's life rather than dates of their death or birth. Instead I have prefixed these dates with a colon ":". It seemed appropriate by it's distinctiveness alone, a more explicit alternative may be called for at some point.

Lately I have been thinking about how great it would be to see the tree as a timeline. I imagine each individual represented by a line spanning the length of their life on a common horizontal scale. Such a chart would likely be inefficient space wise compared to a traditional tree layout, but I believe if the relationships between individuals could be made clear it would be sufficiently rewarding to warrant the extra size. The tree is already big enough to make wallpaper!

last updated 1 year ago #

After adding a few days and months to the dates of birth and death in the tree I thought it worth more carefully considering the consistent format for doing so. Up to now most people's dates were represented with only the years like this (1831 +1903). The 'plus' standing in as an easily typed substitute for a cross to help distinguish it as the year of death from the birthdate before it. I did some reading on http://wikipedia.org and it turns out there are two symbols readily available literally designed for the purpose. The '*' asterix as a symbol for birth and the '†' dagger for death.

So with more detail added I've settled on this format for dates: Hubertina Bloemen (*25 Apr. 1831 - †2 Jun. 1903). Obviously lots of work remains to add the days and months to all the years.

last updated 2 years ago #

The work continues!

For my last few online tree sessions, as well as spelling out more initials, I have a made a few additions to each page which I feel have greatly improved the legibility of the information.

Most evidently I have added to the top of each page the names of the parents of the individual who 'heads' that page. Linking these names to the page of the tree where they appear - provides the most commonsense means to move 'down' the tree. This has made it much easier to navigate around the pages generally.

Secondly, I have strongly emphasised (bolded) the names of family members (in preference to their partners) who have had children. This is a device borrowed from the printed format of the tree to again to make the information easier to interpret.

Still much to do. Aside from more proof reading of what I have already entered (help is welcome!) I'd like to experiment with entering the dates in full (day month year) while consiering the cleanest clearest way to indicate exactly what each date referrs to. Currently a number of the dates are not birthdates - rather dates found on the documents on which those individuals names appeared. I have been using an '_' (underscore) as a general shorthand to indicate when a date is unknown or a break from the general pattern. This needs to be made much clearer.

There are a number of individuals who appear on the printed tree for whom there is no date of death. Obviously most of these people are still with us! While others are mostly likely not; For example, Petrus born 5th March 1718. In this case we can safely assume poor old Petrus has passed. Regardless I think it would be sensible to explicitly mark the year of his death unknown. Furthermore I would like to see this convention extended to indicate the difference between unknown and none generally. In particular to marriages and children.

last updated 2 years ago #

Tonight I have split up the branches of the tree to make it hopefully easier to read. The choice of exactly where to make these divisions was largely arbitary, although I did attempt at least a rough level of consistency.

My first few clicks have made me realise it would be very useful to have a link back to the 'parent' of each branch. This would ensure you can move up and down the branches of the tree with equal ease.

I have expanded the initials of the men whose names form the links into and headings for their respective branches. This was mainly to help distinguish between individuals with very similar names. It remains important to keep at least the birthdate with each name as I noticed a number of them are otherwise identical. This woould be a problem with the system as if I was to link every name, but for the moment the links represent branches of the family structure. The idea of potentially having a page for each individual is still in the back of my mind. Incorporating all those links into the current layout will be tricky without making a mess. That's a problem for another day.

Remaining is a great deal of double checking of the details I have typed in. I would be extremely surprised if there were no errors at this point, so if you have a printed tree give me a hand by pointing them out!

last updated 2 years ago #

After saving another bunch of additions to the basic tree I feel like I'm getting pretty close to the next stage in the process.

For the last couple of name entry sessions I've started going through the printed tree and ticking off the individuals whose details I have entered fully (at least how they appear on the most recent printed tree). There's still a lot to tick off but I suspect there are not many missing from the site at this point. I have chosen so far to leave out details such as professions and world locations - it may be cleaner to put this information on separate pages - will just have to see how it pans out.

Every now and then I've come across something on the existing tree I suspect requires some translation. Most of these I have marked at the end of the line with '???' to make these easier to find later.

Before I pick up the older printed tree and start filling out the many intials that are listed in the newer tree (to save space I guess) I'm considering breaking the tree up into sections first. This ought to make it easier to find corresponding people between the printed document and the digital list.

last updated 2 years ago #

It's always going to be a difficult to represent the structure of the family tree in the same way that the printed document does - without the problems associated with that approach.

I have been imagining a site where each individual has their own page - with links to the pages of their immediate family. (Parents, siblings, partner/s and children). Otherwise the content of each page could be completely flexible.

This is what I started Derick Boermans 1395 before doing some further research that is leading me in a different direction.

Inforgami could be well suited to this 'one page each' approach - although I suspect the text editing method would require a little more study for some people to grasp. Adding images is more technical, but otherwise it is simpler and more flexible than wetpaint.

There's probably many people out there who have already solved many of these problems. Most family tree software is designed to run on one person's computer rather than enabling a collaborative effort. Some research revealed an exiting, well established, site using a wiki in a similar way to what I imagined: http://www.wikitree.org/.

Most of the people are not linked within the site - rather the site has links that lead elsewhere. Some random examples:

• James_Stewart
• Katherina_Verhovnik

It may still make more sense to add to existing structure such as this rather than starting from scratch.

Right now I'm attempting to reproduce a structure similar to what the author calls Hypertext Indented Narrative which he developed for his family tree. Have a look at a typical page. His approach is in keeping with my initial thoughts of avoiding a restrictive and complex database and so far seems to work well with plain text with Markdown as used here in infogami.

I'm still in the process of typing in the basic details as they appear on the printed tree. Working through it in a layered manner, I have entering the minimal detail first before going back over it to add further dates and partners.

The following stage in the process is to split this list up into meaningful manageable chunks - connected with links so the tree can be still explored as a whole.

Information such as professions may be better included on separate pages. These profile pages would then have space to be a little more informal, with photos and other more personal touches. Wetpaint is looking like an excellent option for putting these together. Frank has made a start.

last updated 2 years ago #

After talking about it a great deal, I'm finally doing something about getting the Boermans family tree online. Rather than spamming everyone in the family I have decided to write about the project progress here. Initially I'm aiming to capture the basic information that appears on the printed tree. By keeping the format as simple as possible I hope to make it possible for anyone in the family to correct, update and add to it as the family grows.

last updated 2 years ago #