A person, born in 1936, has a relationship with an other person (birthdate unknown). From memory I only know vague dates. So in the Person category I made an event ‘Relationship’ with the following date entry ‘estimated between 1968 and 1978’. Which is accepted as being valid. When I close the date entry, the age of the person is calculated 'between 19 years and 94 years). What is going on here? Did I do something wrong?
AIO64-5.2.2-r1-f905d14, Win11
Looks like the Age Calculator is contaminating its estimated between calculations with one (or more) of the about, after, or before limits.
Try going into the Preferences for the limits and changing the about, after, and before limits to 2, 5, and 8 respectively. See which value is used to modify the calculated age.
Once the problem is isolated, a bug can be filed.
Yes indeed, it is the ‘date about year range’, the first item in the preferences list. Making the preference set to zero (0) solves this problem, but I think you are right that this is a contamination.
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I have filed a bug report. hope I have done it correctly
13387 : ‘Estimated’ in Age Calculator is contaminated by ‘about’ approximation limits
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It is a minor enhancement on how estimated should be calculated when applied to ranges/spans. Which means filing an enhancement request… and then waiting for a patch to be published in a “minor” release. (Or manually patching the calculator in the meantime.)
We need a discussion of what the “estimated” modifier should mean for a “between”. Open-ended “from” and “to” spans were added in 5.2 release. So a post-action review seems reasonable.
I wouldn’t be able to patch the calculator unless specifically explained howto.
as to what the ‘estimated’ modifier should mean for a ‘between’ range… I could live with either its own preference OR switching automatically to 0. To my feel a ‘between’ does exclude dates outside both established date boundaries. It seems far more precise then ‘about’. Giving it its own preference is the more flexible option.
my 2cts worth
Because of the way Gramps handles “about”, and you are using a range which in itself is an “about”, you should set the about preferences to 5 and then use “about 1972” or “between 1968 and 1978”, but not both.
He is using an “estimated”, not an “about”
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Yes. So we need to consider if we want to treat “estimated 1972” like “about 1972” for example.
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I have never understood the need for the qualifiers “estimated” and “calculated”.
Doesn’t the use of “between 1968 and 1978” already imply that absent better information, the event happened at some point between the two dates. That the span of time for when the event took place is the best estimate?
For me, the two qualifiers, “estimated” and “calculated”, are redundant.
The Gedcom specification describes About, Calculated and Estimated as follows:
| Production | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ABT x | Exact date unknown, but near x. |
| CAL x | x is calculated from other data. |
| EST x | Exact date unknown, but near x; and x is calculated from other data. |
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I try to always use ‘estimated’ when entering a birth date from an age recorded on a census or marriage license. It was acceptable expected for a women to claim a younger age and males to claim older. (Unless they were the wrong age to be legal, of course.)
And since Gramps doesn’t support an Age (specific age nor something like “30s”) entry, then a calculated is a very informative Date… you can assume the birth date was calculated from age data.
I don’t agree. ‘About’ tends to be a broader limit than estimated.
The ±50 year default is probably too high for my ‘about’ use. I like about ±25 years. I think of ‘Estimated’ in ±1 to ±5 years. ‘Before’ and ‘After’ are within an average lifespan.
Since you filed a report, if a developer works on tweaking the calculator, then they will add a link to the Pull Request (you will be notified by eMail of changes to your reports)… that Pull Request will have the file(s) that need to be changed and the exact code changes. From that, you can decide if the simple updates to the plain text Python file(s) is within your abilities.
When a PR is committed to a branch, the changelog will tell which version (but it cannot predict a release date)
Most people decide whether to; 1) patch, or 2) wait when a PR is posted. See What patches are 'vital' to your use of Gramps 5.1.x and 5.2.x?
I understand that they are GEDCOM driven qualifiers and that the qualifiers have some meaning about how the user came by the date range.
As I enter information, using “between 1968 and 1978” already tells me this is the best estimated, calculated information. I do not need to then tell myself or another person that it is an estimated or calculated date entry. Even when the death certificate says a person died 75years, 3months, 12days, the calculated age is still a best estimate calculated date. Until I attach a source/citation stating affirmatively “this is the date!” all entries are the best guess estimate.
And yes, sometimes that is all the information that can be gathered.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I think we have had this conversation on discourse before. For example if I have a Baptism date I will enter a Birth date with before (Baptism date) and likewise for Death date is before (burial data). Much shorter time frame than within their lifetime although you are technically correct. My preferences have all be reduced to what I expect is reasonable for my data entry purposes. I do use “between” a lot as it is a specific time frame.
I would like to see these “smarter”. If only a year is used then it is the year ±X, if the year and month then it is year/month ±x months and same for YYYY/MM/DD ± X days.
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The following thread has a more extensive discussion:
I don’t think that Gedcom allows the use of ABT, CAL or EST in conjunction with date ranges or spans. I’m not sure why we allow this in Gramps.
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This seems like a good idea. We could also have different values for About, Estimated and Calculated.
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Hi
I agree with Dave,
The only Date Formats I use are
1960, > 1960, < 1960, 1960 >< 1961, ~ 1960
or
01 May 1960, > 01 May 1960, < 01 May 1960, 01 May 1960 >< 01 May 1961,
~ 01 May 1960
Because my main use of Dates is to see them in GraphView
The biggest improvement for me personally would be an option to turn off
all calculations regarding dates, treat them as text other than
something that meets an ISO standard for a date.
But that is a personal choice and I suspect this issue is fraught with
hundreds of personal choices.
Phil