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"How to" Missing and unknown dates
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Lester Gilbert
I find I need to trigger or force the display of a fact in a FH diagram, chart, or report by entering its date, typically for marriages, divorces, and especially deaths.
Problem occurs when there is no information about the date; only the fact is known. Some dates can be guessed, so I enter <c. 2006> as a date and FH handles that nicely by displaying <circa 2006>. But entering <unknown> forces quotation marks and results in <Date "unknown">. Sometimes reading sense in a narrative report requires the date to be entered as <date unknown> resulting in <"date unknown"> in the narrative, but <Date "date unknown"> in an outline. I understand about tailoring the display of diagrams, charts, and reports, but that isn't my question. My question is on the data entry -- how to enter a "blank" date in FH, please? |
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Paul Tanner-Tremaine
Have you tries just one tap of the space bar? I have just tested it with a spacebar in a Baptism date field and kfs as the place : results in 'he was baptised in kfs' in the fact statement.
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There is no way to enter a ‘blank’ date other than to leave the Date field empty, i.e. blank. If you need to mention a missing Date value in Narrative Reports and in Diagrams you may be able to use the function =NotExistsText(%INDI.BIRT.DATE%, "no birth date")
Mike Tate
From: family-historian@groups.io <family-historian@groups.io> On Behalf Of Paul Tanner-Tremaine
Sent: 15 December 2020 10:53 To: family-historian@groups.io Subject: Re: [family-historian] "How to" Missing and unknown dates
Have you tries just one tap of the space bar? I have just tested it with a spacebar in a Baptism date field and kfs as the place : results in 'he was baptised in kfs' in the fact statement. |
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Adrian Bruce
If I understand you correctly, the issue arises when you want to trigger a line about the event in a diagram or something. In general, of course, just leaving the date empty is enough to mean "Unknown". But you still need the Event in the first place. I just tried to use the All tab to add a Death event, but omitted any date or place. On my diagram, this triggered a line containing "d." only. Which seems adequate to me. It even seems to work if I add a Death event on the Facts tab of the Individual's property box. Adding it on the Main tab of the Individual's property box seems more difficult as spaces in the event details don't seem to be recognized as input - reasonably enough. In that case, you might consider putting a question mark in the place name. Naughty, of course, from a pedant's view. In all those cases, the narrative reports say "She died". Adrian |
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If the problem is just with diagrams, you can edit the diagram text scheme to display some text of your own choice if a fact has no data at all. When you edit the line in the text scheme there is a tick box for 'No data' text. If you tick this you can then enter your chosen text in the adjacent field. However this only works if the fact has no data at all. So it won't work if the date is unknown but something else, such as the place, is known.
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Lorna On 15/12/2020 12:34, Adrian Bruce wrote:
If I understand you correctly, the issue arises when you want to trigger a line about the event in a diagram or something. In general, of course, just leaving the date empty is enough to mean "Unknown". But you still need the Event in the first place. |
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Graham Kent
Assuming that you are using FH7 - you have described the reason for the introduction of "Sort Dates" - see the Help File for advice on how to use them.
For versions before FH7, there was unfortunately, no option for a blank date as the program then had no way of knowing where to place the fact. In most of those cases though, a "Date Phrase" could be applied with reasonable results. |
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Lester Gilbert
Perhaps Calico Pie could be asked to allow a date entered as "nd" into a date field, such that the associated event is automatically created and reports etc show "n.d.", as is conventional in other contexts for something which has no date, is not dated, or has no data.
There are work-arounds, certainly. Entering a space into the Birth date field of the Children sub-window in a Main tab nicely creates the birth event without any date. But as far as I can tell a birth event isn't created if a space is entered into the Born field at the Main tab. As with the other Main tab and Add Fact dates, a non-blank date entry must be made in order to have the event created, and then the date field needs to be cleared in the Facts tab, leaving just the event fact. |
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Adrian Bruce
I advised using the Facts tab because using the Main tab doesn't work as the software can't tell whether there has been any intention to create an empty entry, or whether it's just a user tabbing through. Adding the event on the Facts tab and leaving it empty is recognized. As for entering "nd", I'm afraid I must put my standards hat on and say, absolutely not. Dates should contain dates, date ranges or date phrases. Period. Anything else is a hostage to fortune, especially if and when multiple languages get involved. As an example, GEDCOM 5.5 at least, has the ability to put a "Y" somewhere on a Death event to show that, yes, they are dead - in theory, this should not cause an issue as the Y is not in the date or place item. In practice one system interpreted the Y as a place name - and there genuinely is a place in France called Y. Codes, I'm afraid, can easily get misinterpreted, especially across languages. Use the Fact tab or the All tab and you'll get an empty event as you need. At least, it works in **v6** without any need to clear anything. |
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Lester Gilbert
Entirely agree, dates held as such in the database should be, er, dates. Of course. However, the software evaluates the user data entered into the date field and decides what to do. It takes various actions if it sees "c", or "?", or "approx", and so on. If it doesn't like what it sees it pops quotes around it. My suggestion is simply that FH does something new and useful if the user enters "nd" into a date field, in addition to all the other very useful things it does with "c", or "?", or "approx", or "cal", and so on.
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joan Chopping
On the 'Date Entry Assistant' on the Facts tab, and using the 'Date Phrase' tab I have input 'unknown' against a birth or death fact. The date shows as a line in the Facts list against birth/died, and shows as born/died 'unknown' in the All tab. Also it is also accepted in the GEDCOM 5.5 for transferring data. Not sure about 5.5.1 though but assume it will still work.
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Joan Chopping -----Original Message-----
From: family-historian@groups.io <family-historian@groups.io> On Behalf Of Lorna Craig via groups.io Sent: Tuesday, 15 December 2020 12:54 To: family-historian@groups.io Subject: Re: [family-historian] "How to" Missing and unknown dates If the problem is just with diagrams, you can edit the diagram text scheme to display some text of your own choice if a fact has no data at all. When you edit the line in the text scheme there is a tick box for 'No data' text. If you tick this you can then enter your chosen text in the adjacent field. However this only works if the fact has no data at all. So it won't work if the date is unknown but something else, such as the place, is known. Lorna On 15/12/2020 12:34, Adrian Bruce wrote: If I understand you correctly, the issue arises when you want to |
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Adrian Bruce
On Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 19:54 Lester Gilbert <lg11@...> wrote: ... It takes various actions if it sees "c", or "?", or "approx", and so on. If it doesn't like what it sees it pops quotes around it. My suggestion is simply that FH does something new and useful if the user enters "nd" into a date field, in addition to all the other very useful things it does with "c", or "?", or "approx", or "cal", .... The problem there is that what FH generates in those cases matches what's in the GEDCOM specification. And there's nothing in the GEDCOM specification for "no details / date / whatever". Which makes it trickier. As you say, if you stick something in the Date that it doesn't recognize, FH will stick quotes round it - which means that it's a Date Phrase, a standard bit of GEDCOM. The PITA for me on Date Phrases is that FH v6 will show the quotes round the Date Phrase when printed in a report or diagram. I dislike that and my impression was that you didn't care for it either. What I did once ask for was that while Date Phrases should be stored on the GEDCOM with quotes round, as per the specification, a Date Phrase should be displayed (optionally) without the quotes in reports and diagrams. No idea if v7 does this. If that change were implemented, then you could write "No Details" (without quotes) in the relevant dates, and it would be printed as "No Details" (without quotes) in reports and diagrams - which would seem to be what you want???? If that change were implemented.... Adrian |
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As I've said in a previous reply, a diagram text scheme can be customised to display your own chosen text if there is no data for a particular fact. So perhaps what is needed is a similar option for reports, i.e. in Report Options there could be a tick box for 'No Data' text. I would be more complicated in narrative reports, of course. Lorna On 15/12/2020 21:08, Adrian Bruce
wrote:
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With Narrative Reports it is possible in Sentence Templates to have expressions that cope with no data very similar to Diagram Text Schemes.
From: family-historian@groups.io <family-historian@groups.io> On Behalf Of Lorna Craig via groups.io
Sent: 15 December 2020 21:29 To: family-historian@groups.io Subject: Re: [family-historian] "How to" Missing and unknown dates
As I've said in a previous reply, a diagram text scheme can be customised to display your own chosen text if there is no data for a particular fact. So perhaps what is needed is a similar option for reports, i.e. in Report Options there could be a tick box for 'No Data' text. I would be more complicated in narrative reports, of course. Lorna |
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