Re: [Gramps-devel] Date enhancements for GRAMPS 3.1

[Brian M. <br...@gr...>]

Doug,
 
> I've finished the last big goals that I had for the new
> 3.1 release: added
> full support for "slash" dates, and implemented
> the new-year-day other
> than Jan1 changes.

This sounds like a complicated feature. Thanks for taking it on.

> The first was easy: just need to add slash-date support in
> the date editor.
> 
> The second was pretty difficult and involved changes in the
> database (made
> last year), 

Have you updated the XML import/export plugins to support the changes? Have you updated the DTD?

> discussions with experts in genealogy dates,
> and some hairy 
> details on the bug tracker. Basically, it boils down to one
> being able to
> indicate that a date occurred in a year that didn't
> start on Jan 1, but on
> a different starting day. Currently, the system supports
> "Jan1", "Mar1",
> "Mar25", and "Sep1". These can be
> increased, but they are codes/symbols
> rather than numeric offsets.

This doesn't seem very scalable. Why didn't you just use an offset?

> The date formatter, displayer, and GUI editor have all been
> adapted to
> handle dates with a new form. The form allows the
> new-year-day code to be
> included in parens right after a Calendar name (or instead
> of the calendar
> name). For example:
> 
> * Jan 23, 1749 (Julian,Mar25)
> * Feb 15, 1702 (Mar1)
> 
> All of this is documented here:
> 
> http://www.gramps-project.org/wiki/index.php?title=Dates

Nice write up. Very helpful.

> Please let me know if you have any problems, or comments.
> The forms
> "Jan1", "Mar1", "Mar25", and
> "Sep1" are completely arbitrary and could be
> something else. Let me know if you have better ideas.
> 
> -Doug

~Brian