Geneaquilts
Description
GeneaQuilts is a new visualization technique for representing large genealogies of up to several thousand individuals. The visualization takes the form of a diagonally-filled matrix, where rows are individuals and columns are nuclear families. The GeneaQuilts system includes an overview, a timeline, search and filtering components, and a new interaction technique called Bring & Slide that allows fluid navigation in very large genealogies.
Article
A. Bezerianos, P. Dragicevic, J.-D. Fekete, J. Bae, B. Watson. GeneaQuilts: A System for Exploring Large Genealogies. In IEEE InfoVis '10: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Oct 2010, Salt-Lake City, USA
Video
Download the high quality avi video (41 MB).
Program
Download GeneaQuilts version 1.0.12 for free (all platforms).
Unzip the file in the folder of your choice and double-click on the file geneaquilt-1.0.12.jar. Alternatively, type the following command in a terminal: java -jar geneaquilt-1.0.12.jar. You must have Java 1.5 or newer installed.
The source project is available on GitHub.
A set of example genealogies in the GEDCOM (.ged) format are included in the data/ directory. We also added experimental support for the QTDT (.ped) format. If you want to visualize your own files, you will need to install GraphViz for GeneaQuilts to be able to generate the layer (.lyr) files (if you use a Mac, please read this).
Please post questions and comments to our discussion group or become a member of the group to be notified of bug fixes and new releases.
The Geneaquilts program has been developed by Jean-Daniel Fekete and Pierre Dragicevic and uses the libraries Piccolo2D, Freehep, and JUNG.
Examples
Below are some PDF images of genealogies displayed using GeneaQuilts. But remember, the best way to view and explore them is to download and use the GeneaQuilts system!
Most of the genealogy files come from famousfamilytrees.blogspot.com. If you use GeneaQuilts, please send us a picture of your genealogies and a link to your website to add it here.
The Greek Pantheon (compare with a node-link diagram)
The Bible Family Tree From Adam and Eve to Jesus.
The Royal Family A huge famous family tree of European Royalty from many countries (compare with a node-link diagram)
Inbreeding The bible story of Lot who had children with his 2 daughters, notice the rectangle pattern created.
Multiple marriages A zoomed in view of Brigham Young's marriages in the GeneaQuilts system.
>>> More to come!!
Follow-ups
GeneaQuilts has been integrated with Puck (Program for the Use and Computation of Kinship data).
GeneaQuilts has been implemented by the commercial software Progeny Genealogy and renamed Trellis Charts.
GeneaQuilt is also available in Généapro, a web-based genealogical software distributed under GPL2.
GeneaQuilts is available since 11/11/2016 in The Gramps Project, a free software project for genealogy, as a third-party addon called "QuiltView". Install it in Gramps via addons.
Contact
Please post questions and comments to our discussion group.
- Anastasia Bezerianos
- Pierre Dragicevic
- Jean-Daniel Fekete