x# Charts — Drawing objects and pictures

A chart is built from the family tree, and the tree decides where everything in it goes. Drawing objects are how you add the things the tree has no place for — a picture, a line, a piece of text. There are two kinds, and which you want depends on whether the thing belongs to a person or not.

• Objects on the page belong to nobody. A photograph of the house the family came from, a scanned certificate, a map, a note explaining something about the chart, a line drawn to divide the sheet or to point something out. They stay where you put them whatever the tree beneath them does.
• Pictures on a person are part of that person’s entry. A photograph, a coat of arms, a regimental badge. They are drawn with the entry and move with it, exactly as the name and dates do.

Objects on the page

Open the Objects section on the Style tab of the Chart Properties panel. The list shows what is on the page; the buttons in its header add, delete and reorder, and the properties of the selected object appear beneath.

Five kinds are available from the add button: Text, Rectangle, Ellipse, Line and Image. Choosing Image asks for the file first, since a picture cannot exist without one — cancelling creates nothing.

Where an object sits

An object hangs from a compass point of the page — a corner, the middle of an edge, or the centre — with X and Y offsets measured inward from it in millimetres. That is why the anchor matters: a photograph set 10mm inside the top-right corner is still 10mm inside that corner after you change the paper size or turn the page on its side. Anchor something near the tree to the centre and it keeps its place relative to the middle of the sheet instead.

Pick the anchor from the Anchor row, or from the right-click menu on the object itself.

Working on the chart

Click an object on the chart to select it. Click again in the same place to reach whatever is underneath it, people included.

Right-click gives the stacking order — Bring to front, Send to back and the two single steps between — along with the anchor and delete.

Objects are drawn behind the tree. An object that overlaps the chart will not cover it — the names, dates and lines are drawn over the top — so nothing you place can make the tree harder to read.

Text objects

A text object takes any of the chart’s own text styles, or a font of its own, along with a colour and left, centred, right or justified alignment.

Its width is normally worked out from the text: it wraps only where you have pressed Enter. Untick Auto width to set a width yourself, and the text then wraps to fit it. The width shown while Auto width is ticked is the width the text is actually using, so unticking it starts you from what is already on the chart.

Pictures on a person

Open the Pictures section on the Person tab of the Chart Properties panel, with the person selected. The ‘+‘ button asks for the file straight away.

A picture is placed one of five ways:

Which of them you use is a matter of taste. A photograph sits as happily above or below the text as beside it; the practical difference is that a picture beside the text makes the entry wider, while one above or below makes it taller. Choose whichever suits the shape of the chart you are building.

Behind entry is the exception, in that it takes no room at all and the entry is drawn over it — which makes it the one to reach for when you want a wash or a faint device behind a name rather than a picture alongside it.

Width and Height are in millimetres. Padding (mm) is the gap kept between the picture and the text for the placements that have one.

On the chart a picture is part of its person: clicking it selects the person, not the picture.

Picture files

JPG, PNG and SVG can all be used. An SVG stays sharp at any size, on screen, in a PDF and in print, which makes it the better choice for a crest or a device.

A picture is given a sensible size the moment you choose the file, so it arrives as something you can see and take hold of rather than filling the sheet. Leave Fixed aspect ratio ticked and changing either measurement adjusts the other to match, so the picture keeps its shape; untick it to stretch the picture deliberately.

If the file lives anywhere inside your project folder, only the path from there down is remembered, so the chart still finds its pictures after the project is moved to another machine. A file kept outside the project is remembered by its full path.

What SVG files can contain

SVG support is deliberately limited. The route exists for artwork — a crest, a badge, a device — and not for things the program already does properly itself.

The main things that are not brought in:

• Text. Lettering inside an SVG is ignored. Add the words as a text object on the chart instead — it is the same feature, described above, and it does the job better: the words take the chart’s own fonts and colours, wrap and align properly, and can be changed later without going back to the drawing program.
• Photographs placed inside the SVG. A bitmap tucked inside vector artwork is not drawn. Add the photograph as an image object on the chart, or as a picture on a person — again the same feature, and again better, since it can then be sized, moved and replaced on its own.
• Gradients, patterns, masks and filters. Shapes are drawn in flat colour. Artwork relying on a gradient or a drop shadow will not look as it does in the drawing program.
• Clones. A shape that is a copy of another shape rather than a shape in its own right is not drawn. Unlink it in the drawing program first, so it becomes an ordinary shape.
• Styling kept in a stylesheet. Some programs save the colours and line weights once at the top of the file and label each shape to point at them. Artwork saved that way arrives with none of its colouring. Saving as plain SVG, where each shape carries its own colours, is the cure.

The first two are less a limitation than a division of labour: words and photographs belong to the chart, which handles both properly, so the SVG is left to do the one thing it is better at than anything else — the drawing.

Everything else is the ordinary vocabulary of a drawing, and that is what the route is built for: paths, circles, ellipses, rectangles, polygons and lines; colours, line weights, caps and joins; transparency; and layers and groups, including the colours a group sets for everything inside it. Shapes that have been moved, scaled, rotated, or slanted arrive where the drawing program puts them. A layer you have hidden stays hidden.

If a file does not come in as you expect, open it in your drawing program and do these four things before saving it again:

• Convert the text to paths.
• Unlink any clones.
• Remove or flatten anything relying on a gradient, a pattern, a mask or a filter.
• Save as plain SVG rather than the program’s own flavour.

That is the same preparation a cutting machine or an embroidery program asks for, and a file prepared that way will come in whole.