James Monroe Cowan

Graphical formats

1. "Standard" charts have a marvelous graphical format and show a fair amount of data for each person, but they generate so much whitespace that they tend to be wider than the screen (or a printed page) They tend to be hard to read and almost impossible to print if you generate more than three or four generations of data.
2. "Compact" charts have similar graphical layout, and are easier to read and print, but don't display any data other than each person's name.
   Note that if you want to print a "Compact" chart with more than three or four generations of data, you should probably specify "Landscape" orientation when you print.
3. The "PDF chart" is kind of a cross between the standard and compact formats, generated as a PDF. On most computers, any web page can be printed as a PDF, but this PDF format handles page breaks for specific paper sizes, wheras PDF printouts of web pages just run the text through the page breaks

(The graphical charts' connecting lines sometimes disappear at certain zoom level. When they are missing, you can use you mouse scroll whell or hit control-plus or control-minus to change the zoom level.)

Text formats

1. "Text" charts follow a standard outline-style format that provides more (i.e. denser) data than the graphical charts do.
2. "Text+" charts are kind of a cross between the graphical and text formats. They can display much more data in less space than graphical charts or the "Text" chart. (That's good news and bad news). In particular, they requires much less horizontal scrolling, and can accommodate large charts in one printed page width (albeit sometimes with legal-sized paper in landscape mode). They are also much more flexible than the other formats, with several (perhaps too many) run-time options.
   However,
   • The process of printing a Text+ chart can be a bit daunting, and
   • When you are looking at just a few generations, and when enough data is visible on the screen, the graphical charts tend to be easier to read.
3. "Register" charts are detailed descriptive reports. They contain almost all of the data that I have for each person, including free-form notes. But they aren't really 'charts' in the normal sense, and don't give this kind of overview of the family tree that the other charts give.
4. "Count" charts don't list descendants at all; they just show how many descendants a person has, broken out by generation.