Any plans for a narrative widget?

Question

I'd love to see a narrative widget - it's exactly what i need for my blog, and i'm sure others would use it too. it would obviously be in a set format, something like:

X was born on X, in X. She/he is the daughter/son of X and X.

In X she married X, in X.

In X she had a son/daughter, called X, in X.

As so forth. This would be such a cool widget. Is there any plans for anything like this? I come from a programming background, and would love to help work out all the if/then type statements if it was needed.

Comments

Actually further to this, i see that on the family tree widget, it kind of does it at the top, which proves it's all possible, and maybe even able to just get the narritive from there? I don't want the boxes, just the wording, but would love it as a widget so it auto updates when info changes.

Answer 1

Hi Kirsty,

Sorry for the delay in replying. Looks like people were waiting for me to answer, and I was on vacation last week.

First off, with your programming background, it would be awesome if you'd join our "WikiTree Enhancements" Project. That's been rather loosely organized and inactive in the past, but it may be changing. There are a handful of great WikiTreers who are starting to discuss an API that would essentially enable a new style of widgets.

As for the narrative widget you're asking for, you're right that it would be pretty simple. We could whip this up for you.

Can you tell me more about how you want to use it? How do you envision using it for your blog?

Thanks!

Chris

Comments

I want to have pages on my blog (so I don't have to update them) using a narrative 'story' style telling - rather than a family tree.

See page https://sites.google.com/site/kangarooislandpioneers/first-8-ships/duke-of-york/william-holmes-hamilton as an example. I can do this using my family tree program, but of course, that means putting data in here, AND on my personal program, then updating the page etc. Would be so much more simple if I could simply link to live data in a widget from here. Maybe you could select how may generations back (or all generations back) that you want to go.

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Hi Kirsty,

The Enhancements Project I mentioned before is now called the Apps Project, and we have a simple API. I think we could do this via the API if you were ambitious about it. That would give you maximum control over the narrative presentation, of course, and it would lay a foundation for others to build on in the future. Any interest? Do you do PHP or Javascript?

See http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Project:WikiTree_Apps and e-mail me personally if you want to go this route.

Otherwise I could put a narrative widget on the to-do list. A simple one like in your original post above would be easy. If you want it to have all three generations in one widget like on the example blog page, it would take longer.

Chris

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Hi Chris, yes I do PHP. I'd love to work on it. I'll email you now :)

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Thank you Kirsty for quoting my website.

It is now https://sites.google.com/site/kipioneers

It was simple to create. My main database is tribalapages (I frequently back up tmy valuable data to my own computer) and I run a "Report" for a chosen person, and simply copy and paste the report into the blank google sites page.