Show union status (married / divorced / widowed / partners) on the relationship chart

[sabal202]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

The relationship chart currently draws a plain connector line between two partners. It conveys that there is a union, but not what kind: you cannot tell at a glance whether a couple is married, divorced, widowed, or unmarried partners. To find out you have to open the family detail page. This is especially confusing in recomposed families where one person has several unions of different kinds.

This is related to #554 (request to show the wedding/union date in the relationship chart) — the same connector is the natural place to surface union state.

Describe the solution you'd like

Render the union status on the relationship-chart connector, derived from the couple's events:

• married – marriage event, no later divorce or spouse death
• divorced – latest relationship event is a divorce
• widowed – one partner has a (dated) death event after the marriage
• partners – unmarried / civil-union relationship type
• unknown – not enough information

Concretely:

• a small marker on the connector per status (e.g. ⚭ married, ⚮ divorced, an open ring for partners, a marker for widowed, plain line for unknown);
• an optional, off-by-default toggle to also show the union dates along the connector (this is what Feature Request: Show wedding date in relationship chart #554 asks for);
• a matching status badge on the family detail card.

The status itself is locale-neutral (derived from event types and dates only), so it can be localized in the frontend.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Showing only the wedding date (#554) — useful, but doesn't distinguish divorced/widowed/partner unions. Opening each family page manually — what we do today; doesn't scale on a chart.

Additional context

I have a working implementation and would like to contribute it, split into two PRs:

• Backend (gramps-web-api): derive a locale-neutral marital_status (married / divorced / widowed / partners / unknown) and expose it on the family profile, with unit tests. The derivation logic is kept Gramps-free and unit-tested.
• Frontend (gramps-web): consume profile.marital_status to draw the per-status connector markers, the optional union-dates toggle, and the family-card badge, with unit tests for the chart helpers.

Opening this issue first per CONTRIBUTING.md to confirm the approach (event-derived status on the connector + optional dates) before the PRs land. Happy to adjust the marker design / wording. PRs to follow and will reference this issue and #554.

[sabal202]

Moving the discussion here as you suggested, @DavidMStraub — screenshots of the current implementation below. Keen to hear your thoughts on direction before any code review; I've put both PRs (#1288 and gramps-project/gramps-web-api#891) back to draft in the meantime.

What it does: the connector between two partners on the relationship chart gets a small marker derived from the couple's events — married / divorced / widowed / unmarried-partners / unknown — so the kind of union is readable at a glance. The status is computed in the backend (locale-neutral marital_status on the family profile) and the frontend just renders it. Two extras: an off-by-default toggle to also print the union years on the connector (this is what #554 asks for), and a matching status badge on the family page (If you have a better way to display this status on the family page, I'd love to hear it and improve it. I don't really like the status badge myself.).

1. Status markers on the chart

Different couples, different markers: ⚭ married · ⚮ divorced (red slash) · dashed + open ring for unmarried partners · ring + ✝ widowed · plain line for unknown.

2. Markers close-up

married:

divorced:

unmarried-partners:

widowed:

unknown:

3. Optional "show union dates" toggle (addresses #554)

Same chart with union years on the connectors. Off by default.

4. Status badge on the family page

The same derived status shown on the family detail card.

A few things I'd value your steer on:

• Marker design — glyphs/colors are easy to change.
• Should the markers be on by default, or opt-in like the dates toggle?

[DavidMStraub]

Hi,

those are two different feature request. Let's keep the modification of the family detail page out of scope here please. .

Concerning the relationship chart:

In my opinion showing "widowed" in a relationship chart doesn't make sense. Most of the relationships in a family tree are between now dead people, so one of them was always widowed at some point.

While your genealogical symbols look ok, I am against implementing them like this right now, because it would make #507 much harder.

Alternative suggestion: if we make the family nodes a little bit larger, we can make them clickable (jumps to the family detail page) and we can make them open the family preview (like the person previews opened on hovering a person), which will immediately show you marriage and divorce dates etc.