Cygnus editor

The Cygnus editor is one of the three main editors of Ancestris.

The philosophy of the Cygnus editor comes from the desireneed for simplicity of use.

The simplicity of being able to manipulate individuals and everything aroundthat relates to them, at a glance,glance

Without worrying about how information is stored behind the scenes,

All other information, families, sources, notes, etc. are ultimately only complementary information relating to the life of the individualindividual. inFor question. Example: shouldn'tinstance, the seizure of an individual'sindividuals' marriage should be donelisted inwith the sameother place and in the same way as the seizure of his birth or death?events. This is what Cygnus can do.does.

The advantage is to see almost everything at a glance, like a bird watching the earth from the sky.

Did you know that? Its name comes from the large and brilliant constellation of the Swan. With its stars mainly arranged according to a large cross, it is represented as a bird spreading its wings.

Cygnus efficiently does a lot of work for you behind the scenes. Creating a spouse, for example, takes just one click, whereas it requires amore lotsteps of action inwith the other two editors.

The compromise is that only the most important genealogical information can be edited with this editor, but still covers the needs of 80% of users.users' needs.

There is somethinga solution for everyone, and Ancestris users often choose to use two main editors: Cygnus + Gedcom, or Aries + Gedcom. Some prefer to use only the Gedcom editor. Here is a comparison of the 3 editors if you still had to make a choice.

	Cygnus	Gedcom	Aries
Focus	The individual and his close environment	The Gedcom standard	Completeness of information
Ease of use	++	+++	+
Ergonomics	+++	+	+++
Coverage of needs	80%	100%	100%
Data Transparencytransparency	+	+++	++
Efficiency	+++	+	+
Editable Gedcom entities	Many	All	All
Compliance with Gedcom standard	100%	100%	100%

 

 

Description and Usage

Cygnus presentsdisplays the individual in the upper part of the window with the Title bar, his family nucleus just below, and the details of hishis/her life in the lower part, with the associated life events.

Title bar

The title bar displays the name of the selected individual and some buttons.

Hovering over thea buttonsbutton displays a tooltip.

Pin Button

Freezes the editor on this individual even if another entity is selected in Ancestris.

Cursor Button

Keeps the focus on the editor when changing entities.

A mouse selection of an individual in the entity table or in the tree, for example, normally causes the focus on the Cygnus Editor to be lost.

If you want to keep the focus on the editor, this button brings the focus back to the first name of the individual and positions the cursor there.

Create a new individual Button

Creates a new individual and places him/her in the editor.

Delete this individual Button

Deletes the individual displayed with a confirmation request.

Contextual menu

Right-clicking on this title bar displays the contextualcontext menu.menu.

 

Separation bar

The separation bar shown in yellow below can be moved with the mouse. It allows you to adjust the respective sizes allocated to the family nucleus and to life events.

The position of the separation bar is keptset fromfor oneeach time to another by genealogy / Gedcom file.genealogy.

 

Family nucleus

Above the separation bar is the individual's family nucleus.

Photo frame

This frame displays all the photos and other media (video, soundtrack, etc.) of the individual and of his or her life events.

The photos displayed at each moment are those of the event selected in the life events section.section.

• Photos not related to a particular event are attached to the General event.
• Birth photos are linked to the Birth event, etc.

Media included in the sources are not displayed here, but in the Life EventsSource photo frame.frame.

The media displayed for a photo media displayis the photo.photo Otheritself. For other media (sounds, videos, documents), displaythe amedia representativedisplayed is the corresponding media icon.

A horizontal scroll bar allows you to scroll through the photos of a given event.

You can specify a short description for each photo.

There are 3 buttons in the photo frame.

• The button allows you to setsets the preferred photo to be displayed by default for the individual in question,individual, in all Ancestris views.views, in particular the Dynamic tree view.
• The button allows you to addadds a photo, which will be placed in the selected life event.
• The button deletes the displayed photo

Several actions are possible regarding the displayed media.

• A single left click changes the media, whatever it is
• Right-clicking displays the media in your computer's media viewer.
  • If it's a photo, the photo will be displayed in large size in your image viewer.
  • If it is a video or a soundtrack, it is played in your favoritedefault media player.
• When the media is a photo
  • Drag and drop with the mouse to crop the photo
  • The thumbwheelmousewheel allows you to zoom in and out.
  • Finally aA Ctrl+Click allows to freeze and save the photo cropping

The choice of a photo is made via the media selection window.

The media are displayed on the right hand side.

The left hand side displays the selected media.

The media titles have three possible colors.

• In black the media whose title is filledincluded in with the media 
• In blue the media whose title is deduced from the entity that uses it
• In red unused media

The Choose this media button associates it with the individual and closes the window.

The Look for media files button Gois used to another file allows to retrieveget a file from your computer, not yet used in the genealogy.

Description of the individual

This panel section allowsis youused to specifyedit the name and gender of the individual.

Two drop-down menus allow you to define the firstFirst and last names.names are edited with two drop-down menus.

• The First namesFirstname drop-down menu allows you to selectselects a first namefirstname among those already used in the genealogy.
• The SurnamesLastname drop-down menu allows you to selectselects a surnamelastname from those already used in the genealogy.

The button   allows you to specifyspecifies the other elements of the individual's name invia another windowpanel that is then displayed.appears.

The radio buttons buttons  allow you to enterset the gender of the individual.

The checkbox checkbox  allows to markmarks this individual as private. For more details on this subject, see the Private dataPrivacy page ofin the Preferences)Preferences.

Above the first and last names is indicated the identification number of the individual and histhe Sosa number when it wasis generated.generated.

Around this description are arranged 6 relationships buttons Relationships concerningfor the parents of the individual, his brothers and sisters, his spouse and his children.

These Relationship buttons arehave multi-function.multiple functions.

• A left click on the button will not have the same result depending on whether the related individual in relation already exists or not yet.
  
  • If the individual already exists, it is selected and the editor will navigate to this individual and display it.
  • If the individual in relationship does not exist, heit is created.
• Right-clickingA right-click on the button displays a menu with the choices that seem most relevant to that individual and for the relationshipcorresponding inrelationship. question.
  • These choices are arranged in four categories
  categories:
  • Navigation to the related individuals concerned,, if there are several brothers, sisters, spouse or children
  • CreatingCreation anof the related individual in the genealogy and connectingcreation of the relationship with him/her with others
  • AddCreation anof the relationship if the individual already exists
  • Detachment of the relationship if the relationship already existing in genealogy
  • Detach the individual relationshipexists

  Close Family Tree

  This tree structure presents.presents:

  • in yellow, the selected individual,
  • hishis/her parents at the upper level
  • hishis/her siblings at histhe same level in the chronological order of births
  • his or his/her spouse(s) are listed below
  • and the corresponding children at the lower level

  

  A double-click on oneany of the individuals selects it.

   

  Life events

  This part of the Cygnus editor details the events of an individual's life.

  A vertical separation bar delimits on the left the list of events and the media of the associated sources, andsources on the rightleft, and the details of these events.events on the right. It can be moved and its position is memorized from one time to another.another for each genealogy.

  Events

  List of events
  

  We distinguish the General event from the others.

  • It is a particular event that allows you not to define a particular event precisely.
  • It allows tocan associate notes and sources to the individual to characterize the whole of his life, without attaching them to a particular moment of life.

  All other events are those that the Gedcom standard allows to define. They are very numerous (birth, marriage, profession, residence, death, burial, etc.).

  All events are listed in a single lifeline, including unions.unions. You can therefore create a baptism event and a wedding event in the same place and in the same way. 
  

  Indeed, unlike the other two editors, Cygnus being centeredfocused on the individual, there is no distinction ofto captureedit betweenall theevents, eventswhether ofthey are the individual entity and the events ofor the family entitiesentity concerning him/her as spouse.events.

  The list displays the default events in chronological order, using date as the event logic when a date is not indicated (i.e. a death occurs after a birth).

  The list can be sorted by clicking on the column header, in ascending order with one click, or descending order with a second click.

  The width of the columns can be adjusted with the mouse.

  Selecting an event displays its details on the right hand side, and its associated photos in the photo frame at the top of the editor,editor, and source documents in the source media frame at the bottom left of the editor.

  Buttons for creating or selecting events

  A set of 10 buttons allows you to manage the most common events more efficiently.

  

  • The first 8 buttons from the top are the most common events used in genealogy.
    
    • The first is that of birth. A click on this button creates the birth event if it does not already exist, and selects the birth event otherwise
    • The one underneath is that of the profession.occupation. As there can be several occupations for the same individual, a click on the button displays a drop-down menu asking if you want to create an occupation or offers you to select one of the existing occupations. When there are none, it creates one.it.
  • The penultimate button is a button that displays all other possible events in a list. It is up to you to choose the one you want to create
  • The last button deletes the selected event. The General event cannot be deleted

  Details of an event

  For each selected event, the right hand part of the panel allows you to fill inenter the same information, except for the General event which does not need some of it. All this information is providedaligned into the Gedcom standard.standard tags.

  Description of the event

  It is a dropdown list to store dataof already filleddefined descriptions, in for other events ifcase the description can be reused.

  Date and time

  See the dates page for more details.

  Below the date is displayed the day of the week if it is dated, and the age of the person at the time of the event except for the day of birth.

  Place

  The drop-down menu allows you to choose an existing place from the ones known in the genealogy. The first characters entered display a filtered list of places containing these characters. If the place does not already exist or if you want to modify it, click on the place button next to it. See the description of the places or the Place Editor for more details.

  Notes

  It is possible to enter one or more notes, specific or shared. See the difference in the Shared Information section.page.

  

  Cygnus recognizes,can displaysrecognize, display and editsedit both shared and specific notesnotes, but will only createscreate shared notes.

  The mouse wheel is used to scroll through the note text if it requires more lines than there is room to display. The right scrollbar allows you to do the same. It appears when all the lines cannot be displayed.

  By pressing the <Ctrl> key and using the mouse wheel, you can scroll through the notes. The other scrollbar on the right allows you to do the same thing. 

  Hovering the right scrollbar with the mouse displays the rank of the displayed note in relation to the total number of notes attached to the event.

  The first 3 buttons allow you to create, modifychange and delete a note.

  The last button allows you to enter the note in a large window in which it is possible to enlarge the font size.

  The creation and modificationchange of a note withopens the note selection window of an existing note.window:

  

  The right part lists all the known notes of the genealogy. They are of three origins.

  • In black, the notes used byin the genealogy and contained in Note Entities (shared notes)
  • In blue, the notes used byin the genealogy and contained in notesNotes specific to givencertain entities.
  • In red, unused notes.

  Sources

  It is possible to enter one or more sources, specific or shared. See the difference in the Shared Information page.

  For example, here is a source of the baptismal certificate of Louis XIV.

  

  The information for the sources is as follows:

  • The name of the source
  • A text that is generally used to present a transcription of the source text. Indeed, it is better to make the effort once to
  • decipher a handwritten text that is difficult to read, rather than to do it every time you readneed it.
  • The name of the repository where the source can be found
  • Media associated with the same source (on the left)

  Sources work on the same principle as notes in terms of :

  • the 4 buttons
  • elevatorsscrollbars
  • the use of the mouse

  The photo frame of the source of an event works on the same principle as the photo frame of the individual.

  Clicking on the media displays the source selection window.window:

  

  The Repository field allows you to choose the repository from which the source is taken with the button on the right. .

  

  This window contains all the information of the repositories already created or that you would like to create when editing the current individual.

   

  Relations

  This is where we captureenter other individuals in relation to an event, such as witnesses at a wedding or the godparents of a baptized person.

  

  The relationship field is actually a drop-down menu listthat lists all the relationships currently entered for thisthe selected event.

  It is possible to select one of them and then click on the button  to navigate to the corresponding individual.

  The button allows you to manage individuals in relation to the selected event. Clicking on this button brings up the following window.window:

  

  In the upper part, this window allows you to add, modify or delete relationships.

  For each relationship in the list of relationships that appears, it is possible to define the event to which you wish to associate a relationship, the type of relationship (witness, declarer, etc.), the name of the relationship, its sex and profession.occupation.

  In the lower part, it displays, for information only, the events of other individuals for which the selected individual is himself or herself associated.

   

  Time stamp of last modification of the entity

  The last information visible in the Cygnus Editor is the last modification date of the individual.information.

  

  This date is updated automatically at each update.

   

  Synchronization with other views

  As we have seen, in Ancestris, at every moment an entity is selected to be the object of the work area.selected.

  When this entity is an individual, this one appears as the main person in the Cygnus editor.

  When this entity is not an individual (a family, a note, etc.), the Cygnus Editor displays the individual related to this entity. You can then edit the selected entity fromas whichper the various screens described in this entity can be edited.page.

  The selected evententity iswill be related to the oneevent to which the entityautomatically selected in AncestrisCygnus.

  Example: if a family is attached.selected in the Entities table, Cygnus will display the husband, select the spouse in the family tree in Cygnus, and select the marriage event.