Re: Xaraya for family & genealogy website?

"[email protected]" <[email protected]> Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:32:20 +0100
Newsgroups gmane.comp.cms.xaraya.user
Organization Xaraya
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Banzai wrote:
> Reply see below...
> 
> [email protected] wrote:
>> Some thoughts. Such a module would likely consist of 2 parts:
>>
>> 1. A detail display of a person in the modules db.
>> This would include various text areas, pictures etc.
>> The display would need to be configurable because folks documenting 
>> their family history tend to have different opinions as to what kind 
>> of data is important and how it is to be presented.
>>
> Do you mean able to set previlages level for certain datas (sensitive 
> personal info)? I agree.

That's one possibility of course. I was referring more to the
less exciting task of designing an extendable way of presenting the data 
in screen or print format. Different genealogy applications offer often 
very different ways of visualizing the data.

> Also, as in PGV chart (hourglass chart ie tree), the info visible is 
> very limited. I would like the genealogy module to be able to display 
> more than just name, birth, death (date). Maybe aliases etc...

Same problen. An ahnentafel with several generations can get very 
crowded as one adds data such as aliases to be displayed. Since there is 
likely no generally satisfactory solution, DD can likely help make the 
solution chosen more configurable.
> 
>> One also needs consider things like references to sources, perhaps 
>> access to a common picture gallery, links to other sites for cross 
>> referencing, comments to the single persons and so on. While DD I 
>> think pretty much already offers the tools to implement this, this 
>> part of the module would involve a lot of initial design discussion.
> 
DD would be fine for display/create/modify of single entries. I suspect 
for the trees direct SQL would make more sense.

>> "Multilinguality": this sort of boils down to name aliases, i.e. a 
>> person can be known by different different names and spellings. For 
>> the spelling problems the soundex system gives a sort of standard, at 
>> least in a single language, but then we have cases like:
>>
>> Richard the Lionheart/Richard of Aquitaine/Richard Coeur de Lion
>>
> Would the below be appropriate... following GEDCOM format
> eg.
> 
> 01 INDI @I33@       <---- ie individual with tag no. I33
> 02   NAME Richard the Lionheart
> 02   ALIA Richard of Aquitaine   <---- Alias
> 02   ALIA Richard Coeur de Lion  <---- Alias
> 
> or something similar. Im not to familiar with GEDCOM, but I think the 
> above is OK.

GEDCOM can certainly handle exports/imports. I'm referring to how such 
data would be modeled and stored in the module. In the example you give 
above you have made a decision about which is the primary name and which 
are the aliases whcih would probably suit some English speakers but 
probably less so the French speakers. Others might just as well argue 
the name should be Richard I of England.

This may seem a bit academic and is probably not much of a consideration 
of you are creating a closed family site. On the other hand if you are 
creating a multilingual community site then the difference between 
alias, translation and alternate spelling can become important.

For instance I have folks in my family tree that go by the name of 
Bradbury and Bradberry. Is that an alias or an alternate spelling? How 
do I model it? And how do I make sure that others wanting to link their 
sites or add their GEDCOMs to mine be able to do so in spite of such 
differences?

Marc