FTREE(1) General Commands Manual FTREE(1) NAME FTree - X windows family tree tool SYNOPSIS FTree [-nox] [-whitewash|-regular] [-shared|-private] [-geometry geom] [infile] DESCRIPTION This manual page documents FTree, a program to allow storage and manip- ulation of family tree information. FTree uses the Xforms GUI library and at this time is available for Linux.. FTree reads and writes GEDCOM format files and interprets the Lineage- Linked grammar to produce a linked, navigable tree. The main FTree window is divided into a data panel on the left, a graphics canvas and a tree section selector on the right. The graphic canvas displays a simple, scrollable pedigree tree. This can be "dragged" using the Left mouse button. Clicking on an individual with the Middle button will select that individual on the data panel. Clicking with the Right but- ton will mark the individual. Marked individuals can be printed. The mouse button assignments can be changed (useful for people with 2 button mice) using the canvas_buttons option in the configuration file (see below). COMMAND LINE OPTIONS FTree has the following command line option -geometry geom Set initial window size and position. Overrides .ftree file set- ting. -shared Use a shared colourmap -private Use a private colourmap. This is useful if you are running on an 8bit display and have greedy applications like Netscape running. -nox This option starts FTree without the GUI and provides a basic command line interface to a small subset of FTrees functional- ity. -whitewash | -regular These options select between the 2 "styles" of FTree. The new default (whitewash) is a lighter (some would say, more modern) look that more closely fits with GTK type applications. The reg- ular option switches back to the old standard xforms default. This can also be set in the .ftree configuration file. COMMAND MODE When running in command mode (without the X GUI) FTree allows access to a subset of capabilities. This is designed primarily for maintenance but can be useful for scripting print options. The following commands are available help Print a list of supported commands set Set an internal variable. This allows manipulation of the vari- ables listed below in the "CONFIG FILES" section. textplot [ ] Text mode plot. Detailed configuration can be controlled using the plot_xxx variables. The default output is to stdout. A filename of "--" will also be treated as stdout. currentindi Set the current individual in the tree. write Write the current tree to fname. quiet Disables some confirmatory prompts exit Exit FTree. Example #!/bin/sh /bin/echo ' currentindi 211 set plot_options "descendant" textplot currentindi 61 set plot_options "ancestor descendant" set plot_ancestor_depth 2 set plot_descendant_depth 2 textplot exit' | ftree -nox mytree.ged CONFIG FILES Certain default configs and options can be stored in the file .ftree in the users home directory. Each option is of the form Lines beginning with a '#' are ignored. Currently the following options are available. Note that a number of these are changed dynamically within FTree. However they are all docu- mented here as they can be useful when using FTree in command line mode. ansel_mode If set to convert, ANSEL text in GEDCOM files will be converted to the latin-1 (ISO 8859-1) character set. Currently this facil- ity is under development and only implemented for a small subset of GEDCOM tags. canvas_buttons This sets which buttons to assign the canvas DRAG, SELECT and MARK functions to. Default value is "1 2 3" which works well on a 3-button mouse. If you have a 2-button mouse, "1 3 2" would move the SELECT function to the right button and with 3-button emulation, press both buttons to get MARK. canvas_colour This sets the background colour of the canvas. Only two options are supported black or white (the default). canvas_columnwidth val Sets the base column width (distance between generations) on the canvas display. Columns may be automatically extended where there are long names. canvas_updatetime val This allows control of when the canvas is updated while typing names. If set to 0, the update occurs when you hit enter or leave the name input field. If set to a positive value, the updates occur val * 10ms after the last character typed. Setting val to -1 will cause instant update. This option is provided because on slower machines or with large trees the delay caused while the display is recalculated can be annoying, but on fast machines its nice for the canvas to update instantly. The default is value is 0 - ie. redraw at end of input. canvasfont colour_mode Setting this to whitewash will give FTree a lighter (some would say, more modern) look that more closely fits with GTK type applications. This is now (as of version 1.8) the default. Set- ting it to normal will restore the old Xforms default. current_file Set by FTree. The name of the last file written. This will be used as the default file to open if FTree is started without any parameters. export_nonameinference fieldtags A list of tags to use on screen and in reports to replace those like "b. " on the birth date. The default list is equivelant to fieldtags "b. " "d. " "m. " "p. " "chr. " "bp. " "bur. " "cre." flip_names If set to "yes", christian and surname order will be reversed in the canvas display font geometry Initial geometry of main window. Standard X-windows format ("700x500+20-20") lastnode Last INDIvidual selected when FTree exited. Updated every time ftree exits. If next time FTree starts, it opens the same file, this node will be selected as current. logfile Sets the name of a file to log any anomalies in the data being read. It is useful to set this when when reading files from other programs. The data logged largely duplicates the informa- tion provided on the file read panel, but may provide more detail. If not set, no error log is written. metacharacters plot_ancestor_depth plot_cutlines If set to yes then cut/alignment lines will be added to multi- page postscript plots. plot_descendant_depth plot_filename plot_font This allows an override on the defayle Times-Roman postscript font used in chart plots. Any installed fobt can be used eg NewCenturySchbook. plot_language If set to hungarian the postscript plot output will support Hun- garian Umlaut O and U characters. If set to polish the post- script will support a number of polish characters plot_mode Holds the current plot mode. This can be either text or post- script. plot_options A list of the current plot options selected separated by a sin- gle space. The list can include ancestor, descendant, html, html_indilinksand nolivingdates. Plot options determine how text mode plots will be generated. The html option will add HTML tags around the plot to make it suitable for display in a web browser. If the html and html_indilinks options are enabled, HTML links will be added to all the individuals in the plot. At this time there is no tool to provide something to generate the pages to link to, but this could be done manually if required. The link will have the form "" with the ID number inserted in the "%04d". nolivigdates removes dates from text mode plots if the person has no death record and was born after 1900. plot_output most recent plot output selection. Can be either spooler or file. plot_papertype Sets the paper type (size) for the postscript mode plot. Current options are A0, A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, B0 B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, ArchA, ArchB, ArchC, ArchD, ArchE, Foolscap, Letter, Legal. plot_paperwidth Paperwidth for text mode plots. Ignored if html mode is selected. (default 233) plot_printertextprefix plot_scale Scale to use for the postscript mode plots. (default 50) [being phased out by report_scale] plot_select Most recent plot selection. Can be either current or all. plot_spoolqueue (default ps) print_file (default "data.tmp") print_outputdevice (default "ps") recover_ids if set to yes FTree will attempt to guess the ID's used when the file was last saved and preserve them. If not set, FTree will renumber sequentially. This will not impact on imported trees. They will always be numbered sequentially starting above the highest existing ID. If FTree finds duplicate IDs or is unable to to recover or reallocate all the IDs, the tree will be renum- bered sequentially. report_dot_direction The default dot report is generated left-to-right. This option allows right-to-left ("RtoL") and top-to-bottom ("TtoB") order- ing. report_fileformat text report_filename report_output spooler or screen report_output_device report_paperwidth report_plot_options report_scale Scale to use for the postscript mode plots. (default 50) report_select all | marked | selectedfamily report_type number representing the last report type generated save_backup_mode can be set to either single or version. In single mode the old copy of a file is renamed to have a .bak appended before the new one is written. In version mode a version number is appended to the old file. For example "fred.ged" would become "fred.ged.bak" in one case and "fred.ged;1" in the other. In the version case, the version number increments each time and the old files are preserved. wm_trapclose If this is set to 1, then using the windowmanager to close (not iconise) the main FTree window will force FTree to do its normal exit processing. If this is not set, closing the main FTree window will check the current tree hasn't changed and if so exit immediately. SEE ALSO fdesign(1), forms(5) AUTHOR FTree was written by Clive Stubbings starting about 1995 and is still supported in 2016. It has evolved a great deal and may continue to do so. The latest version and info about reporting problems etc is available from http://www.ftree.org/ FTREE(1)