Ability to show both adoptive and birth lines at the same time.

LegacyUser

Angela LaBenne said: I'm working on a family tree for my son. My husband is adopted and when I started the tree I used his adoptive parents as his parents, however since then we have found his birth parents. I also added them and I'm glad that is an available option and that you can switch back and forth between preferred parents, but my suggestion would be to have an option to show both birth and adoptive family lines at the same time.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: Welcome to the community support forum for FamilySearch. FamilySearch personnel read every discussion thread and may or may not respond as their time permits. We all share an active interest in using the resources of this site and as users, we have various levels of knowledge and experience and do our best to help each other with concerns, issues, and/or questions.

Some day, it may be possible to do that, but you will need to be able to display a tree in more than two dimensions. I cannot envision any way to display both parental lines at the same time without extending and being able to print the tree in more than two dimensions.

Maybe someone else can envision that and even give us a sample of what that would look like with our current two-dimensional displays.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: It's an interesting challenge! I'm not sure we'd need to use more than two dimensions but it would certainly require a lot of thought and then effort to come up with a design of tree that would show two pedigrees at once.

I'm just looking at my own pedigree in FSFT and I hadn't realised but I can only show my maternal great-grandparents or my paternal great-grandparents at once. Never both sets together. I guess the reason for that would be, with the way it's programmed, if I showed both sets, then my two sets of grandparents would probably need to be pulled further part to fit their own parents in "above" - or the tree goes very off balance.

It's not a silly or bad idea at all. But it is a lot easier to say than to draw up - especially given the relatively fixed way the pedigree trees work now.

LegacyUser

Brett said: Angela

I do understand the premise of your post, to some degree ...

But ...
That said ...

We can ALREADY see the different (Sets) of Parents at the SAME time ...

Admittedly on the "Landscape" 'Pedigree' view (I do no use; and, am not familiar with the OTHER 'Pedigree' views) for an individual/person as a CHILD, you DO NOT see an "Indicator" that there is MORE than one set of Parents; but, against the Parents you DO see an "Indicator" that there is MORE than one Spouse/Partner.



Whereas, on the "Person/Details" page/screen for an individual/person, you DO see where an individual/person DOES have MORE than one set of Parents.

Perhaps, there IS a NEED for an "Indicator" on the "Landscape" 'Pedigree' view (I do no use; and, am not familiar with the OTHER 'Pedigree' views) for an individual/person as a CHILD, that indicates that the CHILD has MORE than one set of Parents.

There may be more; but, in a quick look, I could only find one "Knowledge Article" in "FamilySearch" on the matter of "Preferred Parents":

How do I set the preferred spouse or parents?
https://www.familysearch.org/help/sal...

Where is states ...

Quote
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Here are the impacts of setting the preferred spouse or parents:

• You see all spouses and parents on the person page.

• You see only the preferred spouse and parents in pedigree views and on printed family group records. Only the preferred spouse's or parents' descendents and ancestors show.

• Only you see your changes to the preferred spouse or parents. Other users can choose their own.

• The preferred spouse or parents remain set until you change it.

• Setting a preferred spouse or parents affects how Source Linker works. The Source Linker only aligns the preferred spouse and children of that couple.

• The person page displays couples by marriage date. Setting the preferred parents does not affect the order in which the parents are shown on the child's person page.
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I agree with 'Tom' and 'Adrian' ... much easier 'said', rather than 'done' ...

Great suggested enhancement though.

Brett

.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: Here's an interesting thought... You're going to have to read this and visualize in your head, I'm afraid.

Consider the current landscape format of a family tree centred on a person - the one who happens to be adopted.

Over to the right (at least on my screen!) of the box containing the main person, is the tree showing their pedigree (i.e. their ancestors). Let's say for sake of argument, that's their purely biological pedigree.

Currently on the left (on my screen) is a tree showing their descendants.

Now imagine that the new diagram looks just like the above on the centre and right. It's centred on the adopted person, on the right is their purely biological pedigree.

On the left, however, in my idea, the descendants have been removed. In their place comes a pedigree based on the adoptive parents, but as the "root" is in the centre of the screen, the pedigree is effectively a mirror image of the usual pedigree, rooted on the adoptive person, going through their adoptive parents. It's not unlike a "bow tie" diagram except time goes backward on both sides of the root as you move away from the root, rather than as now when time moves consistently backwards as you go from left to right, across the entire screen.

So - two pedigrees, one for biological, one for adoptive. They can both fit on the same screen if one is a mirror of the other. That might work...

Of course, you can't see any descendants, but you can't have everything :-)