"To" and "From" Date Types are not filtering as open-ended

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1

How are the “To” and “From” date filters interpreted?

5.2 added 2 new Date Types : “To” and “From” as modifiers in PR 1124. They do not seem to be filtering as described. Rather than being “open-ended” they seem to be limited in scope. More importantly, their scope seem to be using the Limits Preferences.

My intent was to list “Henry Ferree” namesakes and eponyms in a family Tree. I knew from a Deed transfer, that the person of interest was alive in 1805. My first attempt had a mistake, I used the People Filter gramplet to find people of that name born before 1805. It found no one… but I knew there were 3 (of 22 Henry Ferree existing) in my tree that should have matched.

I realized that “bef” was the wrong Date Type. Its scope was defined in the Limits tab of Preferences. (And I had narrowed the scope from 50y default to 10y.)

So I tried “To 1805” without results. It wasn’t until I tried Birth dates “Between 100 and 1805” or “From 100 to 1805” that the 3 matches (born “about 1755”, “1726”, “bet 1760 and 1770”) were found.

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Date Type

  • To: — :high_voltage:new for version 5.2.0 A “to” date is one that is an open-ended span as that occurs prior to a certain day, month, or year. Unlike a “before” Date type, the span is unlimited into the past.

  • From: — :high_voltage:new for version 5.2.0 A “from” date is one that is an open-ended span that following a certain day, month, or year. Unlike an “after” Date type, the span is unlimited into the future.

I’m using Gramps 5.2.3 on Fedora 37

There are several documents that need to be revised:

2

They use the same logic as “before” and “after”. They also share the same calculation limits.

3

I don’t see the benefit of “open-ended” that is limited. That makes them the identical to the Before and After. Why add something with a different name that does the same thing?

4

It depends if you want to record a span or a range.

5

Your reply suggests that there are some differences under the hood, while using the same calculation methods and constraints. However, this technical detail does not clarify how they are intended to differ in user-facing behavior.

In what scenarios would using “To/From” provide an advantage over using “Before/After”?

Or is it merely a way to have the dates format differently in reports?

This is distressing. At the very least, the perfunctory 5.2 additions to the wiki for “To” and “From” are dead wrong.