When I read the application settings, I am afraid to launch it afterwards . What will it do with my data? I can’t understand the documentation, possibly due to my low level of English. For example, what does the setting “Remove previously added events, notes and source” do?
What will it delete for me? Because I expect the application to calculate those birth and death dates that I don’t have. But the option about deletion confuses me. Sorry, this is not a complaint, I really don’t understand this setting.
I can assume that the addon deletes only what it added itself. For example, if it added a Birth or Death event, it may delete those events. But what about Notes and Sources? What does it add? And if in the first iteration we added all this, then close the addon, then launch it again, will it no longer interpret all previously added events, notes, and sources as those it added? That is, in subsequent sessions, the application will no longer be able to delete them?
The tool generates a placeholder Event with a calculated date and then tags it with an annotated Source. This Source makes very visible that the Event was created by a specific tool.
It makes actual Events so that other reports and features do not have to be modified to do their own estimates.
But… those placeholder Events (sources, notes) are not based on Sources. And they can interfere with tools that look for “missing” Events.
So the Tool makes it possible to clean out the placeholder data.
This clears the database for those other tools… or to re-calculate the placeholder based on data added since the last time the tool was used.
I also would like to suggest some additional conditions that could be used to refine the calculation of dates (I think a significant part of what is listed is already implemented):
Calculation of Birth and Death dates based on Primary and not Primary events.
Calculation of Birth and Death dates based on the age of the parents.
Calculation of Birth and Death dates based on the age of the children.
Calculation of Birth and Death dates based on the age of the spouse.
Calculation of Birth and Death dates of a godparent based on the Baptism event.
Calculation of Birth and Death dates of a witness based on the Marriage event.
Calculation of Birth and Death dates based on relations in the Associations list.
I think these are the main directions for calculations. It is possible to go further, for example, using the age of grandparents or grandchildren. But this will have very low effectiveness.
Here is a small example. When a godmother baptizes a child, I conditionally assume that she is between 13 and 70 years old. It makes possible to calculate the range of her possible Birth and Death years. Each subsequent calculation narrows the date range obtained in the previous step. I think this is how the application works. I doubt I am “reinventing the wheel” here. But perhaps not all the points I proposed have been implemented yet, so I suggest discussing this.
Got it. I made something similar on PHP which worked with gramps XML export. The script calculated and added dates to empty Birth and Death events. And if the dates were not empty it logged proposition for date uptates. And also I added the same note to all modified events with text like this: “this date is calculated automatically …”. All the dates had format “calculated between … and …”.
The tool could probably use a review with a set of “fresh eyes”. That is always worthwhile. (Look at the review OlliL recently did to improve and optimize the Verify Data tool.)
So this tool also leverages the preferences for average Generation age-based calculation and allows overriding within the dialog. So you could even do stepped refinements manually.
That is, you could run the tool with values that were appropriate before effective contraception became easily available and changed everything. Then use a custom filter to find placeholder events after that date and DELETE those Events. Then run the Tool again to generate placeholder Events with post-contraception values.
. What will it do with my data? I can’t understand the documentation, possibly due to my low level of English. For example, what does the setting “Remove previously added events, notes and source” do?