* 3 Digit Years AD/BC (Continued)

[AdrianBruce]

Continuing Ron's thread "3 Digit Year Dates" from the Rootsweb FHU Mailing List, which reports that 3 digit years get shown in diagrams etc with a leading zero https://lists.rootsweb.com/hyperkitty/l ... /28486156/

FH's ability to cope with dates before 1000 (AD) is a bit ropey according to my experiments - yes, I got interested. Firstly the YEAR, according to GEDCOM 5.5 can be 3 digits:

YEAR:= {Size=3:4}
A numeric representation of the calendar year in which an event occurred.

And the Gregorian version of the year reads:

YEAR_GREG:= {Size=3:7}
[ <NUMBER> | <NUMBER>/<DIGIT><DIGIT> ]
The slash "/" <DIGIT><DIGIT> a year modifier which shows the possible date alternatives for pre-1752 date brought about by a changing the beginning of the year from MAR to JAN in the English calendar change of 1752, for example, 15 APR 1699/00. A (B.C.) appended to the <YEAR> indicates a date before the birth of Christ.

So - 3 digits and it allows B.C. But not AD. Quite how you are supposed to get from 100 to 100 B.C. without going through 2 digit years, I've no idea. Maybe the idea was to avoid any confusion about which element of 26 Oct 30 was the year and which the day of the month?

What's on the file? Strange to relate given FH's outputs - 3 digit years!

1 NAME Alfred //
1 SEX M
1 BIRT
2 DATE 849
2 PLAC Wantage (Berkshire)
1 DEAT
2 DATE 26 OCT 899
2 PLAC Winchester

Alfred's data was added through FH. So, really, the leading zero should not be added to dates in diagrams, queries and reports. It's actually added by FH, not failing to be suppressed, if you see what I mean.

I didn't have much joy entering BC into FH directly, but if I editted it into the GEDCOM file, thus:

1 NAME Gauis Julius /Caesar/
1 SEX M
1 DEAT
2 DATE 15 MAR 44 B.C.
2 PLAC Rome, Italy
1 BIRT
2 DATE 12 JUL 100B.C.
2 PLAC Rome, Italy

Then it gets read quite happily, thus:

Capture.JPG (26.71 KiB) Viewed 5284 times

Note, however, the years are 4 digit with leading zeroes. How much latitude there is with recognising BC/B.C. whatever, I don't know except that the 2nd date has no space between 100 and "B.C."

Unfortunately - but unsurprisingly - the same trick with editing "A.D." into the GEDCOM file doesn't work - it just gets represented as a date phrase with those annoying quotes around.

So, at the very least, I reckon FH should be modified to suppress / not generate any leading zeroes in the year component of dates.

Does it matter much? Well, if you have a gateway ancestor taking you into the English Royal Family, you can get back to Alfred the Great and thereabouts, I believe...

[tatewise]

That is really interesting.
I did not know about GEDCOM and FH supporting 3-digit years.
So it is even stranger that FH enforces leading zeros in all dialogues.
Perhaps that anomaly should be reported to Calico Pie as another example of where FH does NOT support GEDCOM 100%.

I had no problem entering B.C. dates by typing either BC or b.c. or any other reasonable combination after the year digits, with or without a space separator, and also by using the B.C. tick box in the Date Entry Assistant dialogue.

One way of including A.D. and retaining the rest of the Date is to use the Date Phrase with interpreted Date option, which appears in FH as 0943 ("A.D.") or in GEDCOM as 2 DATE INT 943 (A.D.).
You have requested Date Phrases to be shown without the surrounding ("...") which would work well here.
See Wish List Ref 28 Option to "hide" quotation marks around Date Phrases on Reports.
I believe FH should add nothing to the Date Phrase text wherever it is shown.
If the user wants brackets or quotes, or anything else, then include them in the text.

[LornaCraig]

Perhaps that Wish List request should be amended to read: Option to "hide" quotation marks around Date Phrases on Reports and Diagrams. (The original question on the mailing list was about dates in diagrams).

This request would (I think) be fairly easy to implement. However, the request has been sitting there since 2006 so don't hold your breath! There has been one improvement since 2006, namely that it's possible to edit particular instances of a narrative sentence so that the quotation marks can be removed from narrative reports. But that doesn't help with other report types or with diagrams.

[tatewise]

I am happy to extend the request to include Diagrams or anywhere a Date Phrase is shown.
Also I'd like the interpreted as brackets to be optionally hidden too.
See revised Wish List entry Ref 28 Option to hide brackets/quotes around Date Phrases in Reports, Diagrams, etc.

[Peter Collier]

A very slight tangent here: Is it possible to default to the more secular Common Era notation (CE / BCE) within FH, rather than AD / BC, or would one need to resort to date phrases?
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era for details.

[tatewise]

Currently, FH Date formats are tied to the GEDCOM specification, which is crucial for exporting to other products.
So the only allowed Date suffix is B.C. and anything else must go in a Date Phrase, e.g. 1234 ("CE").

But that poses a problem for BCE because for GEDCOM to correctly identify such a date it must have the B.C. suffix, otherwise it would be treated as a Gregorian A.D. date in all date related features.
So you would finish up with both B.C. and BCE, e.g. 1234 B.C. ("BCE").

Furthermore, all these discussions only relate to single Dates for which Date Phase interpreted as single Date is feasible.
Date Periods and Date Ranges also allow B.C. suffixes, but there is no Date Phrase equivalent for them, so suffixes such as A.D., CE or BCE are impossible in these cases.

It would need a significant change to FH to recognise A.D., CE & BCE, but that would still only apply within FH.
As soon as the GEDCOM was exported it would revert to just B.C. where necessary.

It would need a dialogue with https://fhiso.org/ to get A.D., CE & BCE incorporated into any new genealogy standards.

[TimTreeby]

With a little bit of Jiggery Pokery with the Text Scheme on Diagrams, can be displayed properly, except seem to end up with a superfluous B.C. hanging around.

BCDiag.PNG (54.26 KiB) Viewed 5100 times

ADDiag.PNG (42.43 KiB) Viewed 5100 times

Text used is as follows

=ExistsText(%INDI.BIRT[1+]%,"Born:") %INDI.BIRT[1+].DATE:DAY% %INDI.BIRT[1+].DATE:MONTH_NAME% %INDI.BIRT[1+].DATE:YEAR% =TextIf(DayNumber(%INDI.BIRT[1+].DATE%) > 0,"A.D","B.C.") in %INDI.BIRT[1+].PLAC:TIDY%


And obviously change Birth for Death for Death details.

But not sure why extra B.C. floating round or how to remove it.

[tatewise]

That is a nice try Tim, but unfortunately is not a generally workable solution.

=TextIf(DayNumber(%INDI.BIRT[1+].DATE%) > 0,"A.D.","B.C.")
produces B.C. when DayNumber(...) is not greater than 0 which is true when no Date at all.

That could be fixed various ways, but the overwhelming problem is your Template only works for simple single Dates.
It does NOT work for Approx, Calculated, Estimated, Period, Range, or Quarter Dates.

I have found by bitter experience that it is NOT possible to create a general purpose Date formatting expression using functions.

FYI:
The following is better but has superfluous leading spaces when no Day or Month or Date and still only works for simple Dates:
=ExistsText(%INDI.BIRT[1+]%,"Born:") %INDI.BIRT[1+].DATE:DAY% %INDI.BIRT[1+].DATE:MONTH_NAME% =CombineText(,%INDI.BIRT[1+].DATE:YEAR%,TextIf(DayNumber(%INDI.BIRT[1+].DATE%) > 0," A.D."," B.C."),) in %INDI.BIRT[1+].PLAC:TIDY%