Book - Terrif! One question - parents?

[baddorfdeb]

The book creator is terrific! I just sent off a 92 page book to my 83 year old mother, and her 89 and 91 year old sisters. They were thrilled! It started with their parents, and covered all the descendants to date.

One curiosity I didn't notice till now -- how come everybody has parents mentioned except the first person? "He married XXX, daughter of ....." and later on their kids' spouses get their parents mentioned, if they are in the database. But the first person in the book, the one who gets number 1 - *his* parents don't get mentioned. Yes, they are in my database.

Is he supposed to be like Adam -- First Man? Is this a longstanding genealogical convention that I don't know about?

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Here are suggestions for others, that I included in my book:

I included one-page family descendant charts and also a pedigree chart for a childless 2nd generation sibling as preliminary inserts (created separately by Reunion, printed as PDFs & imported, or saved as a TIFF file, and dragged onto a blank Book page). I printed the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation on a one-page descendant chart. Then, since there were only 3 siblings, each sibling got a one-page chart for her descendants. Fortunately, that was enough separation to allow them to fit onto one page. Otherwise I would have broken it down even further. The third sibling in the 2nd generation got a one-page pedigree chart, created by clicking "fit as much as you can on one page" (which is 7 generations). These extra charts made the book look really spiffy!!

I also blew up some really old pictures to full page images, and inserted these after the MEDIA section. These look impressive too.

I also took the time to manually index all the photos in the media section (including shots with multiple people in them), and inserted a second "in depth" index, to show ALL the places each person could be found in the book. This index doesn't have live links, like the index that Reunion created (a very cool feature I noticed by accident!!) but it's still nice to have, and indistinguishable in the print version.

I'm very pleased with the Book function. Thanks a million, LeisterPro People!

[kmgenealogy]

Re: Book - Terrif! One question - parents?

How did you do all the editing/insertions in the "book"?

[mjashby]

Re: Book - Terrif! One question - parents?

QUOTE: Is he supposed to be like Adam -- First Man? Is this a longstanding genealogical convention that I don't know about?

Its not a genealogical convention, it's just that the body of the Book starts with the standard "Descendants of" report and the parents of the first individual selected therefore don't get a mention.

Mervyn

[baddorfdeb]

Re: Book - Terrif! One question - parents?

Kaye, here is perhaps more than you wanted to know. But my family isn't interested in this part of the process!

Well, I created the charts in the usual way. I saved them as a graphic file AND I also printed them to a PDF file. I chose later which way I wanted to use them.

To insert them: Start a book, by choosing the starting family and clicking Reports, Books, "make a book Project". A new BOOK window opens up.

Actually, since I initially hosed my book badly, I'll teach you to do this editing at the end of the book, after the end-page. You can then drag the newly inserted stuff into the correct spot later, once you have it right! Later, when you have the hang of it, you can insert in the right place the first time.

SO: put your cursor on the end-page of the book. Click the PLUS sign at the bottom. You get a new, blank page. Click PLUS again, just so there are 2 blank pages. Now put your cursor on the second of our new blank pages. You can drag a JPG or a TIFF image right onto that image, and then center it (some cross hairs show up to help with the centering. You can also grab the edges of your graphic to stretch and resize it, to fill the page. (below I'll tell you how I added a label to my photos)

For a PDF file, go to the FILE menu and chose CREATE SECTION WITH FILE. Select the PDF file, and it will appear as a new page before(?) the blank you created (which you now find you don't need for this kind of import, but it's helpful in getting the which-page-is-first correct). It will be inserted before or after that blank page we created (I think it's before, but I always forget. That's why we created 2 blank pages.)

A PDF import is useful if you have several pages to import. It worked nicely for my new 2nd index (created in Word, and printed as a PDF). A PDF import is also useful because Reunion will do the page centering FOR you. With a JPG or JIFF, you have to center it yourself, and I didn't do a professional job the first few times.

I had a wee bit of color problems in printing one page when it was a PDF vs a TIFF, so it was good to have the choice. However, I also changed the size of the photos when I retried them as a TIFF, so that they no longer clashed with the pedigree bars (there were pink / green bar issues) so that may have been part of the difference. Still, I think a TIFF may have more resolution when dragged in, as opposed to something that is already turned into a PDF file. So I'm not sure which is better -- probably an image, but I'm just guessing.

Both the PDF inserts and the image inserts can be NAMED in the book. In the left column, just click on the words "BLANK PAGE" or "PDF" and type in what you want the index and the page header to say. "Gramma's Descendant Chart" or "Media Index" or "Full Page 1921 Photo" or somesuch.

These can be dragged up and down in the left column, to position them.

If you put them BEFORE the table of contents, they get page numbers like "i, ii, iii" (this is configurable - see the help file) and they don't mess up the page numbers lower down. This is great, if you already hand created a new index, and now you are adding new charts at the front of the book!! (Because they haven't change the page numbers that you painstakingly put in your index.)

You can also insert a blank page and leave it blank, so that a chart has a blank back when it is printed. It looks better to have some whitespace in your book! It you rename it, as above, to be just "", then it won't say "Blank Page" in the index.

COVER pages and END pages: if you download the zip file Reunion has provided (see a sticky note somewhere in this forum) there are alternative cover and endpage images). I chose a naked tree image, so my aged mother would stop saying "And which relative is this?" on that very lovely cover shot. Import the new cover shots or end pages (see menu item) and drag them around to the right place too. I imported to a scratch book, till I had the hang of it. I think I had 2 or 3 covers at a time and just deleted them till I had the one I wanted, with no trouble, so perhaps the scratch book isn't necessary.

[Very early on, I had deleted the existing cover and almost couldn't get it back, till I found a previous book in the trash, and saved the cover shot to a Reunion .reunionBookSection type file and was allowed to re-import it. Whew! That was before we had a batch of spares. I put a file lock on that file, at the OS level, so I couldn't lose it again. ]


Now that I had inserted some full page photos above, I got fancier yet. I used Reunion's Chart to produce labels for my photos. I created a descendant chart and deleted ALL the text in the boxes except for the name. I also deleted the boxes for all other people except the people I wanted in this label. I then selected each box and TURNED OFF THE LINES to the parents. Now I had a pretty box with a name for each person, and no lines. I moved those around on the screen till they were where I wanted. Then I used the GRAB utility (Mac OS built in) to take a screen image of just that little bit. Voila -- a tiny TIFF with fancy names in it. Close and don't save the descendant chart; we don't really want it (and we messed it up royally). I dragged that TIFF onto the bottom of the full page photo I had added above, and I now had a LABELLED photo. All spiffy and neat. (Am I proud of myself, or what?!)


When binding or stapling a book, you probably want a larger margin on one side to allow for the stapling (or plastic "comb" binding). Check the book SETTINGS for an "alternate page" setting, so that the larger margin only has to be on one side. [ However, my setting would not STAY checked, so if you can't remember to always re-check it, and if yours won't stay checked, then perhaps just make both margins wider. ] But that's a lovely built-in feature, to allow for printing double-sided. Make sure your page count is a multiple of 2, if you plan to print. And add extra blanks so that your end page is always last. I added extra blank pages at the beginning, to make sure some things appeared on a right hand page, such as my title page. (That was another PDF image, created in Word, printed to a PDF, and IMPORTED.)

But, Staples has a cheaper-paper alternative which is NOT double sided, so you then want to create an alternate version with that setting turned off -- in case some relatives want to download and print a copy to the cheaper weight paper. No sweat, it's just a click and another moment to create that version. "MyBOOK-V1.0.0-SS (single-sided)" I created that version at midnight-30 last night, when this occurred to me. Only the 3 primary parties over age 80 got a printed copy. And me. I got a printed copy too.


Did I remember to talk about everything I did? Ask again, if I forgot to talk about it! (Heck, nobody *else* cares, and I had fun doing this!)

I’ll create a minimized version of my book (removing most of the people), and put the sample up somewhere. LeisterPro, do you have a section to display things like this?

[Susan Freas Rogers]

Re: Book - Terrif! One question - parents?

This is very interesting, thank you for taking the time to write it out. I am waiting until the update comes that allows us to edit content after it gets into Book format, but otherwise will find your information very helpful in the future.

Susan

[baddorfdeb]

Re: Book - Terrif! One question - parents?

I just noticed that the default font for The Book, while fairly large (13pt something or other) is perfect for loading the PDF book onto a kindle. It is quite legible, without needing to be blown up or turned sideways. The photos are B&W of course (unless you have a color kindle Fire) but it's a great way to carry around the work I've just created, in case the Internet isn't available to see my web site.

I could have changed the font, but because I had little to say about many of my people, and a whole photo's worth of white page space to fill, I left the font at the default. I'm glad of that, now!

[kmgenealogy]

Re: Book - Terrif! One question - parents?

Kaye, here is perhaps more than you wanted to know. But my family isn't interested in this part of the process!

Wow! Thanks for the detailed instructions! I appreciate the time you took. I'll get back to this later. Right now I'm into some intense research.

Regards, Kaye

[indy14]

Re: Book - Terrif! One question - parents?

Super Explanation. Thanks for taking the time. It really helped me!

[Robin Helmond]

Re: Book - Terrif! One question - parents?

I'm glad others like the book format. I find it a very convenient method of sharing my research with others, though I haven't actually printed one off yet. I just send the PDF around. It contains all the information I have collected and entered into Reunion. I have re-written the 'Memo' sections of the 'Events' to read better in the Book format. That is good because one day I hope to write a real book. In the meantime Reunion's Book format will do just nicely.

I included some charts saved from the Tree view, but I had to augment some of them in Word because Tree view doesn't cope with multiple spouses too well. I haven't tried importing Charts, that will be my next experiment. The text in some of the imported Tree view charts ended up being rather small because of large families, but I think it is just OK.

Thanks for your detailed instructions, very much appreciated.