It can generate a JSON Canvas file that shows any individual’s ancestors or descendants given a GEDCOM file (what sites like Ancestry export).
Thinking of expanding it beyond direct lineage, to show siblings and sibling’s spouses and such. Could even make it so each node on the graph is actually a link to a note with the person’s full details.
Would anyone be interested in a family tree plugin? Or would a standalone tool/website that lets you just upload a GEDCOM and download the .canvas file be better?
If I did the latter I probably couldn’t link to a note with the person’s full details, would need full vault access for that, but it’d definitely be easier.
The generation of a Canvas is interesting, but I think the real juice would be to generate (and sync) with a whole vault from a GEDCOM file, including photos, multimedia, notes, etc, and return trip after editing in Obsidian, back to GEDCOM. A big endeavour, but properties and embedded links could do it all. The Canvas would display link all the pages together, selecting from various: 1) all relatives, 2) descendants, 3) ascendants.
Now that the Bases core plugin is in place, what about the idea of populating GEDCOM field into Frontmatter (Properties) such that Bases could query based on the data?
I didn’t recall the GEDCOM format of the top of my head, but relationships could be linked by their numbers. I envision all sorts of tables for analysis by age, dates, relationships, etc.
Importing GEDCOM to Canvas would be a very useful feature, I was thinking of implementing it myself. Could you share your work perchance? I’m trying to create a plugin that does something similar, but interactively (if what I have in mind is even possible in Obsidian – I’m still researching).
This is a really cool idea. I love genealogy and have a lot of family data that I would rather keep private, so a way to do this using Obsidian notes would be quite welcome.
I have just started looking for ways to set up a simple website to which my dad can publish stories about the people he’s found in his research and link to the related people etc. Like a semi-interactive way to publish his findings and especially the stories which give life to the names and dates.
I don’t know much about GEDCOM and don’t know that much about genealogy either, but I find the idea of being able to import GEDCOM data into an Obsidian vault being a really promising solution.
But like @ces and @jbarr said, preferably one would store rich data to get the ability to aggregate it in all sorts of ways I believe.
