TMG-L Archives

Archiver > TMG > 2003-01 > 1041534446


From: "Gordon Banks" <>
Subject: RE: [TMG] General tags or VERY specific tags?
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 11:07:32 -0800
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20030102131838.05b74d20@mail.whollygenes.com>


The place where the sorting seems to cause illogic is when you know the
death date, and where the person was buried, but don't know the exact day of
the burial. If you just enter a year or month, it sorts to BEFORE the death
date. You have to put after the death date. I guess it would require
putting more logic into the program (slowing it down) to do otherwise.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Velke [mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 11:04 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [TMG] General tags or VERY specific tags?


Richard said:

>If modifiers are interpreted as inclusive of the specified time, then
>these statements about a 1975 event are ALL correct.
>
>The Independance Day picnic was held before 4 July 1975.
>The Independance Day picnic was held on 4 July 1975.
>The Independance Day picnic was held after 4 July 1975.

That distorts the issue. TMG isn't comparing an event to a date. It is
comparing one date to another and it does not think that "before 4 July
1975" includes the 4th.

Where x is a date, the issue isn't whether "before x" comes before x. It
always does.
The issue isn't whether "after x" comes after x. It always does.

The issue is how to compare "before x" and "y" where x and y are
_different_ kinds of dates (i.e., different levels of specificity).

We debated this ad nauseum and people almost universally said that if they
write "before 1975" they typically mean "before some event that happened in
1975" (e.g., child died in 1975 therefore mother died "before 1975") which
includes the possibility that she died sometime in 1975. That is, most
people seemed to interpret in their own writing and that of others that
"before 1975" potentially means "in or before 1975" (i.e.,
inclusive). After all, if it really means "before 1 Jan 1975" then "before
1975" would be an extremely uncommon term - and, of course, it isn't. And
in the unlikely event that you DO mean "before 1 Jan 1975", then you can
enter that in the Sort Date and get exactly what you want.

So TMG sorts the dates by year, month and day...and only afterwards does it
consider qualfiiers. Any date in 1975 where the month is unknown therefore
comes before a date in 1975 where the month is known. Rules used by other
software (e.g., "1975" sorted between events of June 30th and July 2nd) are
purely arbitrary and aren't based on any genealogical reasoning. In TMG,
you have complete control over what you mean by "before 1975" and where it
sorts.

Yes, after the v5 CD is released then I'm open to well-thought-out
proposals for how it might work differently. I'm not going to debate it
now, however, and it doesn't enhance learning or understanding to
exaggerate the scope of the issue.

-Bob


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