Madeline 2.0 PDE: a new program for local and web-based pedigree drawing

The Madeline 2.0 Pedigree Drawing Engine (PDE) is a pedigree drawing program for use in linkage and family-based association studies. The program is designed to handle large and complex pedigrees with an emphasis on readability and aesthetics. For complex pedigrees, we use a hybrid algorithm in which consanguinous loops are drawn as cyclic graphs whenever possible, but we resort to acyclic graphs when matings can no longer be connected without line crossings. A similar hybrid approach is used to avoid line crossings for matings between distant descendants of different founding groups. Written in object-oriented C++ and released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), Madeline 2.0 PDE reads input files specified on the command line and generates pedigree drawings without user interaction. Pedigree output in scalable vector graphics (SVG) format can be viewed in browsers with native SVG rendering support or in vector graphics editors. We provide an easy-to-use public web service, which is experimental and still under development. Availability: http://kellogg.umich.edu/madeline.