On Large Genealogical Graph Layouts

Classical ancestor trees, descendant trees, Hourglass charts, and their visual variants such as node-link diagrams or fan charts are suitable for assessment of people’s relationships when one is focused on a particular person (the so-called main person) and his/her direct ancestors and descendants. Such tree-based representations miss a broader context of relationships and do not allow quick assessment of several interlinked families together. We propose utilization of directed acyclic graph visualizations with constraints specified by layers and ordering of groups of nodes within layers. The computed constraints can be mapped, at least partially, into the DOT language property directives used by the Graphviz toolbox. We demonstrate achievements on datasets containing 1600 people (a private family tree collection) and 3000 people (an Egyptology database of officials from 4th, 5th, and 6th dynasty).