Pedigree Software Picture Script Language

All PediTree's database fields are named and given a GEDCOM tag which can be changed by the user. A special language, which we call picture scripts, is used to determine the way in which details are shown on the screen and in charts, trees, reports and tabular listings.

Here is an example of the way in which fields can be chosen for display. There are field-names like title, refnum, occupation or birth. Names preceeding a parenthesis, like name(), tree() or detail(…) are other named pacture scripts.

name() title [|"ref:" refnum] tree()
[| treepar()]
[| detail(occupation)]
[| "b." detail(birth)]
[| "bapt." detail(christening)]
[| "educated at" education]
[| families()]
[| "address: " detail(residence)]
[| "d." detail(death)]
[| "bur." detail(burial)]

Other more complex links can be made in these scripts, such as father.birth.source.title.

This is the detail(occupation) picture showing each occupation, employer and time period:-

title ["for"org] ["at" place] ["(" from "-" to ")"] cite(Source)

Other uses of special picture scripts are:

• To control the colour, width and style (dashed) of lines above and below a descendant on a tree or chart.
• Automatically to insert inter-record links when editing records, so as to ensure required two-way linking is maintained.
• To calculate and [[:pedigree-software:agecalcu|display ages], from birth/christening dates to chosen dates in the record or dates of e.g. a census.
• As filters, to select records from a list. For example, surname = “hancock” and spouses.surname contains “longuet”. You can filter an existing list of any type of record to make a new list. The filter script is written like any other picture script, but now has a popup list to choose an appropriate field or compound field such as shown above. Comparison commands = < > ⇐ >= between not or and contains like present absent are all available from a picklist.