Adopted Relationships

[DigitalDreamn]

Hello. I found your plugin last week and have been testing it for use in keeping track of families in a story I'm working on. Technically, a story set in the Star Wars universe... I noticed your mentioning of that use case ;) though I haven't yet started setting up the dating system yet, as I wanted to test out the relationship tracking first. So far, I think it could be exactly what I'm looking for in terms of visually keeping track of the family trees I've been developing for my world-building.

I have a question regarding how adopted children are displayed... also, I may have encountered a few bugs. From the documentation (wiki) as well as the relationships management panel, it would appear that an adopted child would be indicated with a dotted line and cyan color. However, while I have found the cyan color used in the relationships pane, I have yet to figure out how to get the dotted line to display. I have looked in both the "Family Chart" and the generated Canvas Tree Chart.
In the Family Chart, the adopted child does not appear at all; and in the generated Canvas Tree the adopted child does show but is not connected to the adopting parents by any lines. I've checked everywhere I can think of to see if there is a toggle I've missed. Also curiously, I've noticed that while the adopted child shows up as a child on the adopted parents' dynamic note on their person sheet/page, the adopted parents do not show up in the adopted child's dynamic note on the child's sheet/page, though they are listed in the properties of the child.

As to the possible bugs... When I created the family via the wizard, I realized after the fact that one of the children was adopted, so I went to "edit person" and swapped the child's parents to their birth parents and moved the adopting parents to the appropriate section. While I got the notice that the information has been saved, the parents updated, but the adoptive parents were not added to the properties. I tried several times, thinking perhaps it was a glitch. Each time I received the notice that the information was updated, but checking the properties revealed the adoptive parents still missing. I then noticed the "relationships" > "add custom relationship" and could add the parents that way but it lumped both parents into a "adopted parents" property, which seems to be similar to what happened with #365 (comment) with step-parents?

I also created a "test child" that was identical to the first adopted child, to see if it was a glitch with the child having been created through the wizard, creating the test "from scratch" with the "create person" action and the test child's properties filled correctly.

I have also noticed that when I go "edit person" that while the links to the parents and birth location remain, the adopted parents disappear from that page every time, even if they are still listed in the properties.

I hope this makes sense. From a world-builder's perspective, this plugin has great potential. I've been looking for years to find something like this, and I'm glad to have found it. Thank you for developing it!

[banisterious]

Welcome @DigitalDreamn! Glad Charted Roots fits the worldbuilder use case. A Star Wars family tree is exactly the kind of scenario where proper adoption handling matters (adopted characters carry distinct in-universe weight, not just a structural footnote). Thanks for the detailed report.

Almost everything you've hit is a genuine bug, and the documentation has been promising behavior that isn't fully shipping. I've confirmed each from the code and filed tracking issues:

1. Adopted child not appearing in Family Chart -> #389

The Family Chart currently treats adoptive parents as a fallback. Only shown when no biological parents exist. When both are set (the normal case for adoption), biological parents win and the adoptive relationship is silently dropped. The chart also has no distinct visual styling for adoptive edges, even though the docs imply otherwise. Both gaps tracked in #389. Adoption is a distinct additional relationship, not a replacement, and the fix will render both sets of parents with visually distinguishable edges.

2. Edit Person modal silently dropping adoptive parent updates -> #390

This is the most serious one. The modal shows a "saved" notice but doesn't actually write adoptive parent fields to frontmatter, and it also fails to display existing adoptive parents when reopened. Two related defects, same likely root cause.

3. "Adopted parents" lumping both into one field -> #391

Exactly the same bug class as #365 (step-parent assignment, previously fixed). The custom-relationship path doesn't check the target's sex to split into adoptive_father_id vs adoptive_mother_id. Fix will parallel the #365 resolution.

4. Adoptive parents missing from child's relationships dynamic block -> #392

Asymmetric rendering: the adopted child shows on the adoptive parents' block, but adoptive parents don't show on the child's block. Inverse-inference logic for the adoptive_parent type appears to be missing.

Plus one wiki correction (already shipped): the Custom Relationships wiki page now notes that dashed/dotted line styles on Canvas Tree only render with the Advanced Canvas community plugin installed; vanilla Obsidian Canvas ignores edge style attributes and draws solid lines. Colors work in both. Install Advanced Canvas if you want visual distinction between relationship types on Canvas output. The Family Chart SVG view can render line styles natively once #389 is fixed, so that gap is closable inside the plugin (unlike the Canvas one, which depends on Advanced Canvas).

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A quick ask to help with the edit-modal bug (#390): would you mind sharing the frontmatter of the adopted child's note (just the properties block, redacted if needed)? That'd help reproduce the modal behavior quickly without my having to guess at the exact setup.

Thanks again for the structured report. This is genuinely helpful, and several of these bugs had been quietly misleading users for a while.

[banisterious]

Appreciate the detailed context, and the Star Wars Legends deep cut; I kinda wondered if Galen Marek was involved somehow when you said "adopted character from a decade-long AU project."

Anyways, good news on timing: v0.20.60 shipped this morning with the full adoption fix batch (#390, #391, #392). The Edit Person flow should now actually save adoptive parent fields when you use it. Worth retrying on Galen's note; remove the biological parents first (since those were the wizard's adoptive parents originally), then open Edit Person -> set the adoptive parents in the Adoptive parents section -> save. It should persist this time. If it still misbehaves, let me know; the fix was tested against this exact scenario but real vault data always surfaces things test data doesn't.

Your Create Family Wizard observation is a good one, nice catch there. You're right that the wizard currently has no way to mark someone as adopted during creation. The workaround (create via wizard -> Edit Person afterwards to swap parents) is clunky enough that the wizard probably should handle this natively. Filed as #400 to track.

Thanks again for the detailed reports across all of these. Your bug reports were instrumental in shaping the adoption-fix batch that just shipped!

[DigitalDreamn]

Yeah, this AU has been bouncing around in my head for a long time 😂.

So, last night, I had successfully added the OC adoptive parents to Galen's page, which is what created the doubling effect (listed as both adoptive father/mother respectively, with the additional gender-neutral "adoptive parent".

Seeing your note here, I did as you suggested and unlinked the biological parents via Edit Person for Galen (as well as the adoptive parents, since they were there from testing last night). I got the notice that the changes were saved, but noted that in the properties pane the biological parents and the adoptive parents are still listed (also still listed in the dynamic text field). I suppose this might be because he's still linked in their files? (Went and tested this idea) that does seem to be what's happening. Unlinking the parent(s), both biological and adoptive, from the child page isn't updating the bio./adoptive parents pages. When I removed Galen from Kento Marek's page, Kento (correctly) disappeared from Galen's page.

[banisterious]

Thanks for the follow-up testing!

Ah, the behavior you described (save says "saved" but parents still show, and the parent's page still references the child) turned out to be two bugs stacked on top of each other. Filed as #405 and fixed for the next patch release.

Short version: the modal wasn't actually clearing the fields when you unlinked a parent (a subtle "undefined vs empty" wrinkle in the writer), and even once that's fixed, the other side of the link needed to be cleared too so reverse inference wouldn't put it back! Oops. Both halves now handled: unlinking a parent, spouse, or child on one side propagates to the other side's note. Next release.

[DigitalDreamn]

Hey @banisterious, I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, so I'll point it out here since it is within this same topic. I noticed on Galen's person sheet/page in the dynamic block that only his biological parents and adopted parents show no matter what the dynamic block is set to... which makes sense; I suppose. I'd propose having any siblings via adoption show under the "extended" or "all" settings for the dynamic block, if not showing siblings from the adopting parents is the intention.

I experimented to see if I could get the siblings from the adopting parents to show on Galen's page using the Relationships > Custom menu, which made Galen show up on the other child's dynamic block but not their properties... (edit: I take that back, Galen already shows on their dynamic blocks without the custom relationship being set) which is when I noticed biological siblings show up in each other's dynamic block (once set to "extended" or "all"), but do not show in the front matter / properties? Galen's properties do list them in the "siblings" section now, but not in the dynamic block.

Which leads to a related observation: that for a custom symmetric relationship (such as indicating twins), the target's properties are not updated as well, meaning the custom relationship needs to be set from both directions... is that intended? Also, where do the notes about custom relationships go? The wiki seems to indicate it should be in the frontmatter / properties... so that might be a bug?

Like I said, I couldn't quite decide if these were bugs, working as intended, or perhaps a feature request, so I put them here ;)

Thanks for all you're doing! It's nice to finally get all of my world-building character/family notes somewhere a bit more organized.

[banisterious]

Thanks! Each of these was worth separating into its own thread, and each surfaces something distinct.

1. Adoptive siblings missing from the dynamic block -> filed as #417. The gatherer's sibling-derivation currently only walks biological parent edges, so the other children of an adoptive parent never show up. Your proposed scope (surface them under extended / all modes) is exactly right.
2. Properties-vs-dynamic-block siblings diverging -> filed as #418. This one's the most architecturally interesting: the two surfaces use different source-of-truth paths, and the direction of disagreement flips per character. Needs a decision on which path wins (or both reconciled) before implementation.
3. Symmetric custom relationships not auto-reciprocating -> filed as #419. Confirmed bug, built-in symmetric types (spouse <-> spouse) mirror correctly, but the custom-relationship path doesn't check the type's symmetric flag.
4. Notes about custom relationships - still need to look at the wiki vs. code for this one to decide whether it's a doc bug, a feature gap, or both. I'll follow up specifically on this once I've checked.

Appreciate the careful testing across all four, this is the kind of detail-level feedback that shapes whole release batches.

[DigitalDreamn]

Happy to help @banisterious 😊 I hadn't expected to find a bug in purposefully unlinking, but it is a good one to find, especially since we world-builders can be known for changing relationships as we go 😂 Or at least I do.

On the subject of changes being made and the information not changing in the properties, I have noticed that if I change a person's "universe" that it doesn't actually clear the field if I set it back to "none". I think I've encountered that in a few other fields, but can't remember which ones at the moment. I know the universe one isn't doing that because I was going through this evening changing that and setting characters/persons to the appropriate collection and then noticing that the universe field wasn't clearing; and checking to determine if changing something had disconnected children or spouses from the #403 bug.

When I was first exploring the plugin, I had for some reason thought that it was a good idea to use "universe" as a way of marking my OCs; having learned more about the plugin, I think collections or groups would be better for that so I've been working to correct my earlier odd choice.

[banisterious]

I have noticed that if I change a person's "universe" that it doesn't actually clear the field if I set it back to "none".

Filed as #406!