Relationships between windows

Current entity, current genealogy

At any point in time within Ancestris, if one or more genealogies are open, a genealogical entity is selected. It can be an individual, a family, a source, etc. This entity is the centre of the action.

This entity becomes the "current entity" and the genealogy to which it belongs becomes the "current genealogy".

Several windows for each genealogy

When a genealogy is open in Ancestris, several windows will probably be open, among the following:

All these windows will be presenting specific aspects of the genealogy.

If you have several genealogies open simultaneously in Ancestris, you will then have several instances of these windows : one for each genealogy.

Synchronised  windows of the same genealogy

Windows of the same genealogy are synchronized: their content is updated according to the current entity being selected.

Once an entity is selected in one of the windows, the other windows of the corresponding genealogy will adjust to display the view's specific information about this selected entity.

For instance, if you select an individual on the dynamic tree, you will also see this same individual in the editors and in the entities table.

This synchronisation behaviour occurs only when the relevant view contains the selected entity.

Counter-example : the dynamic tree only shows ancestors and descendants of a given root person. If, let's say, on the entity table, you select an individual that is neither ancestor nor descendant of that root individual, the content of the dynamic tree will not change.

Another example, if the selected entity on the dynamic tree is an individual and not a family, and the entity table is in family mode, the table will also not update.

This synchronisation behaviour also does not occur when the entity in a view is "pinned".

It is possible to block the synchronisation between windows from a few of them (Cygnus editor, Gedcom editor, dynamic tree, for example) by clicking on the pin button  at the top bar of the view/editor. In that case, the entity currently showing in this view/editor will not change even if you select another entity in another view.