Is there a way to change the date that Gramps operates from? Currently, the ages I have for the people in my family tree update as the days in the real world. (For example, if I go to the relationships tab, the age displayed there is 20 years. A year later, it would show as 21 years). Is there a way to change what is considered “today” by the Gramps system? For example, if I change it to 2010, the age of the person would be 10 years. All the other people in the family tree would change as well to match that date. I know that there is the “Age on Date” gramplet that allows you to calculate how old they would be at that date, but it doesn’t allow you to set the system as if it were that date “today”. I tried looking at the Gramps User Manuel and other resources to try to make this happen, but I was unable to find any solutions. Is this even possible with the current Gramps system?
You could change the system date on your computer. It’s an ugly workaround but should do the specific case you mentioned.
For Windows, that means going into the OS Settings, time and Language, turning the toggle for ‘Set time automatically’ to Off. Then you can set the computer’s internal clock to any post-1970 year. (System time is measured in epoch calendar days… days since 1 Jan 1970.)
Of course, not letting the computer sync to the 'net atomic clock has unfortunate implications for time-date stamps in the file system.
Another workaround is to add a shared Event with a custom type like ‘Age on Date’ with the target date. You can Share it to whoever you like. Then the Person Editor & Timeline in the combined mode of the Relationship view will show their age on that date.
If you delete that record from Events view, all the Shared Events go away automatically.
Could you indicate why you are attempting to do this? It may help us provide a better solution.
In a person’s record, the age at the time of an event is calculated from the date of Birth. The only people that your proposed change would affect would be living relatives having their age calculated when they are the active person in a view like Relationships.
How does making a living person younger than their current age help you work on your genealogy?
One of the reasons to have Gramps calculate an age on a different day across the whole database is:
You have a photo or event where you can estimate the ages. Now you want to determine which “teenage cousin Mary” was identified in that media/Event.
It is another way of narrowing down the selection pool without the hassle running each person individually.
If the Age on Date could be filtered, then it might be a viable alternative. But when your Tree exceeds 1,000 people, this Gramplet become non-functional. It needs a filter to be viable for large trees.