Tree view ancestor like descendant

dontiknowyou

I would like to be able to see the ancestry tree in the same compact style as the descendancy tree. Benefits of this tree style include:

1. Works even with very large trees.
2. Useful to work offline; user can collapse and expand parts of the tree as needed, and print to PDF. If the tree is large, the PDF simply runs many pages long, but all the text is readable.
3. Searchable on the web interface using the web browsers' built in search function.

Gordon Collett

So basically you would like an ahnentafel report, which is the traditional way to do this? Or a different style? Such as?

dontiknowyou

I don't know what to call it, but just like this descendancy, only an ancestry instead.

Gordon Collett

I was just wondering what format you were picturing or how this would be arranged, the traditional report or something else.

This traditional version is called an ahnentafal and is just a numbered list of direct ancestors like this:

1. Focus person
2. Father
3. Mother
4. Paternal grandfather
5. Paternal grandmother
6. Maternal grandfather
7. Maternal grandmother
8. Paternal grandfather's father
9. Paternal grandfather's mother
10. Paternal grandmother's father
11. Paternal grandmother's mother
12. Maternal grandfather's father
13. Maternal grandfather's mother
14. Maternal grandmother's father
15. Maternal grandmother's mother

And so on. If you take the number of any person listed and double it, that is the number for that person's father. Add 1 and that is that person's mother. Basically this is just reading off a fan chart from left to right, starting at the center and going outward. It is a much more dense listing of names than any graphic chart.

Or were you picturing some other type of design entirely?

genthusiast

@dontiknowyou

I know this isn't what you are requesting, but just pointing out...

In Descendancy view you can view and select from a couple generations of ancestors:

When selected you get a popup ancestor tree (I see two generations back) to choose for which ancestor you wish to view descendancy:

If FamilySearch removed the focus person maybe they could squeeze in a third generation of ancestors?

Descendancy branches from a single unique source/focus person - while ancestry forks to 2^n (or less if collapsing) per generation. So I think that's why they don't have that tree view - pedigree and fan chart views already do it. I do agree that it would be nice to have a bowtie sort of view (where focus person(s)/generation is the pivot point between ancestry and descendancy.

dontiknowyou

Yes, I know how to expand the top of the Descendancy tree. Notice that it expands only one ancestor line.

I'd like the same tool but running in the opposite direction, so I could expand all ancestor lines just as in the descendancy tree all descendant lines can be expanded.

Ignoring step parents etc., ancestries grow 2^n per generation. Descendancies potentially grow much faster. Many well worked out early colonial American descendancies are closer to 6^n. Here is an example drawn using Puzzilla: a 4 generation descendancy tree, and the reciprocal 4 generation ancestry tree of one descendant.

[let me try the images again...]

and

So the decendancy tree view is actually the harder case.

dontiknowyou

Here is a very sketchy sketch. Not an Ahnentafel because no numbers, just the structure. I added markers to help count the generations, align the tree across page breaks, etc. I "expand" the maternal line until GGG then switch to the paternal line.