A snapshot of a portion of the Book of Mormon Site
Your first question might be, “How are the Book of Mormon and Scalable Vector Graphics connected?” Or perhaps, “What is the Book of Mormon?” or, “What are Scalable Vector Graphics?” There are plenty of people who can tell you about the Book of Mormon, for example at lds.org or any of these people.
Scalable Vector Graphics
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) represent graphic information in a compact portable form. Vector graphics contain commands to draw shapes at specified coordinates. This enables the graphics to be scaled without loss of image quality.
You can see this for yourself in a moment, provided you have the right browser. All major modern web browsers, support and render SVG markup directly with the exception of Microsoft Internet Explorer. However, Internet Explorer 9 beta supports the basic SVG feature set. Click on the link to get Internet Explorer 9 or get a real browser like Firefox or Chrome.
The Connection
About a year ago I wanted to show graphically on a web page how Book of Mormon characters were related. After trying various methods I settled last November on creating a large SVG graphic. I kept a few project notes. I obtained a domain called bomsite.org which could raise a few eyebrows at the Department of Homeland Security until one realizes that bomsite.org is just the home of the Book of Mormon Site.
To summarize, I used SVG because the web page size is small, only 151K bytes so far; the graphics can be scaled; and I could use free tools, like Inkscape to create the SVG.
The Site
Before you head on over to bomsite.org, remember when you get there to try scaling the graphic by holding down the Ctrl (Control) key and dialing your mouse wheel. You should notice that the quality of the graphic remains the same no matter how large you make it.
Who To Do
I still have to move the characters around so that they line up correctly with the timeline. Later I will maybe add non-family connections like who served with which commander, who fought each other, and who converted who.
Such a who to do.
We worked on a similar BOM genealogy chart for several years trying to list all the people mentioned in the Book of Mormon. Our two versions (vertical and horizontal) are book based (list people by the book in which they were first mentioned) vs. your timeline style version. Plus you have the scalability that would be nice. We scale by creating pdfs.
Anyway congratulations on your efforts. Our versions are at: http://www.mormoncharts.com/
Gary Polson
Hi Rickety,
Welcome to America! (a bit belated)
Nice job on the org chart. Just an FYI that your nodes for Lehi and Sariah’s six sons are shown, left to right, in birth order, except that Nephi and Sam seem to be reversed. I always understood Nephi to be the youngest of the four Jerusalem-born sons?
Either way, nice job.
Michael Milligan
Hi! I would love to see your whole timeline. When I click on the link it does not take me to the page. Did it move to a different page?
Thank you, Jennifer
I discontinued work on it. There are better ones than mine: https://byustudies.byu.edu/book-of-mormon-charts