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All,

I am investigating how to represent a family tree in HTML and cannot find
any of the useful "box/line" characters such as a "T" or "inverted T" and
similar used to create hierarchical diagrams.

Are these characters really not available in HTML?

Paul DS

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Paul D.Smith wrote:

> I am investigating how to represent a family tree in HTML and cannot find
> any of the useful "box/line" characters such as a "T" or "inverted T" and
> similar used to create hierarchical diagrams.
>
> Are these characters really not available in HTML?

You would probably be best off representing this as a bunch of nested
unordered lists:

* Bob Black Sr (married Mary Smith)
* Bob Black Jr (married Barbara Henderson)
* Robert Black III
* James Black
* Amy Black (married Walter Monroe)
* Jessica Monroe
* Bob Monroe

But in answer to your question, yes these characters are available in HTML
-- the whole Unicode character set is. Of course, browser support varies.

Look into Unicode characters U+2500 to U+257F.

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Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
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On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 16:37:32 +0000, Toby Inkster
<> wrote:

>Paul D.Smith wrote:
>
>> I am investigating how to represent a family tree in HTML and cannot find
>> any of the useful "box/line" characters such as a "T" or "inverted T" and
>> similar used to create hierarchical diagrams.
>>
>> Are these characters really not available in HTML?
>
>You would probably be best off representing this as a bunch of nested
>unordered lists:
>
>* Bob Black Sr (married Mary Smith)
> * Bob Black Jr (married Barbara Henderson)
> * Robert Black III
> * James Black
> * Amy Black (married Walter Monroe)
> * Jessica Monroe
> * Bob Monroe
>

I once did a similar experiment with lists like this:

<http://theodorakis.net/elvishgenealogy.html>

(It's a project I got bored with and abandoned). I used small gif as a
list marker.

Nick

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Nick Theodorakis

contact form:
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On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 16:37:32 +0000, Toby Inkster
<> wrote:

>Of course, browser support varies.

Surely for these "box characters" that would be a question of OS
support, not browser support ? AFAIR, these were a PC / DOS
invention.

There's also the issue that they're dependent on a fixed-width font.
You might get them to display, you might even use <tt>...</tt> (or
similar in CSS) to get them to align, but just re-sizing the window
might change line wrapping and break the layout.

--
Smert' spamionam

Andy Dingley wrote:

> Surely for these "box characters" that would be a question of OS
> support, not browser support ?

With Unicode it tends to be a combination of both of the above and also:

- which fonts you have installed;
- which versions of those fonts you have installed;
- whether there's a full moon;
- the breed of goat you've just sacrificed;
- the size of the pentagram in which you sacrificed it; and
- the amount of its blood that you drank.

Get all that right, and Unicode will work just fine.

> There's also the issue that they're dependent on a fixed-width font.
> You might get them to display, you might even use <tt>...</tt> (or
> similar in CSS) to get them to align, but just re-sizing the window
> might change line wrapping and break the layout.

<pre>...</pre> might be easier in this case.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
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[nigelbee]

I've found that the best way to do box characters in HTML is to:
1. Create an HTML table
2. Use a Cascading Style Sheet to define specific classes of the Table Data object, such as:
td.bottom_right { border-bottom: 1px solid black; border-right: 1px solid black; }
3. The boxing can then be done from HTML by invoking:
<td class="bottom_right">

[nigelbee]

Originally Posted by nigelbee

I've found that the best way to do box characters in HTML is to:
1. Create an HTML table
2. Use a Cascading Style Sheet to define specific classes of the Table Data object, such as:
td.bottom_right { border-bottom: 1px solid black; border-right: 1px solid black; }
3. The boxing can then be done from HTML by invoking:
<td class="bottom_right">

I've put a link to a simple example of an HTML family tree on my website:

http://www.nigelbee.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk