* Format of Sort Dates in GEDCOM to GedSite

[tatewise]

Evelyn, also your last two postings below are extremely similar.

To find your postings use the Quick links drop-list top right and choose Your posts.

[tatewise]

In the light of these discussions, I am reconsidering how the Export Gedcom File Plugin might handle Sort Dates in the next version (in addition to the bug fixes dealt with earlier).

Below, an actual Date means an explicit fact Date or a Sort Date: labelled Note.

Currently, it assigns Sort Dates based on actual Dates, but guarantees the All tab order of Individual facts is enforced by the Sort Dates when exported to say GedSite. This works particularly well when the facts are in actual Date order, but can result in Sort Dates significantly different from actual Dates, especially when not in actual Date order.

Would it be better if Sort Dates usually equalled actual Dates even when NOT in actual Date order?
Then there would only be a few exceptions :-

1. Successive identical actual Dates would get Sort Dates that increase by 1 day for each fact.
2. Undated facts would get Sort Dates that increase by 1 day from the preceding Sort Date.
   ( The initial Sort Date would be 1 Jan 1000. )

If the facts are sorted, then this would be no different than currently.
If not sorted, then the Sort Dates would usually match the Facts tab Date order.

One anomally that exists is undated Family facts, that are often not sorted by FH according to Normal Time Frame and are typically listed last in the Individual Facts tab. Maybe they must use a Sort Date: labelled Note?

Would it help if there were two variants of the Plugin that you could compare?

[jbtapscott]

Unless / until FH offers a Sort Date on Facts, and related processing, I personally think the Sort Date should always equal the actual date on a fact if it exists even where those Facts are not in date order. Although I run the FH "Sort" option fairly regularly, I am sure I still have some distant / non-related individuals who probably do not have there facts sorted in chronological order (primarily, because I don't view / check them very often).

On the basis of the above, I would agree with your point 1 (Identical Dates incremented by 1) and your point 2.

[E Wilcock]

Mike - I dont really understand your question.
The Gedsite site I generated looked all right using the present plug in. Is there anything I should look for that could have gone wrong?

Or is this proposed improvement to improve import? I think there are two different problems here - the import from TMG and any subsequent export to Gedsite.
My view is that the first of these needs to be sorted by Calico Pie.

[tatewise]

Evelyn, your last posting said you sorted all your Facts and then only made a few minor manual changes.
In that case, it is unlikely my proposed changes will affect you at all.
The changes only affect unsorted Facts.

My Plugin can do nothing about import from TMG and you are correct that only Calico Pie can improve that.

[BarbaraL]

Mike, I'd like to summarize to make sure I understand the priority that your plugin currently assigns to the information available to it. Please correct me if I misunderstand something.

Based on my testing, the information (pertaining to Individuals) in FH on which _SDATE relies is:

• If present, use [[Sort Date: dd Mmm yyyy]] in Fact Note.
  Otherwise, use Sort Order in All tab.

If this is correct, then an existing Date and the Time Frame are not used by your plugin in practice, since a relative Sort Order in the All tab is always available.

Am I correct that these are the best practices?

• We should use the arrows on the All tab (not the Facts tab) to set the Sort Order and we should use the All tab to view the sort order.
  If we want to make sure that all dated Facts are in Date order on the All tab, we should use Re-order out-of-sequence data (but then we would have to reorder undated Facts using the arrows and/or use the labeled Note).

If I correctly understand so far, then your plugin does what a TMG-er (like me) would expect a TMG Sort Date to do, i.e. it looks at the labeled Sort Date and the Sort Order, both of which serve as overrides for an existing date or for an empty date.

If the plugin relied on the labelled Sort Date but not the Sort Order, then the Sort Order would be serving as an override only in the FH display and not for purposes of output for use in GedSite. As a TMG-er hoping to be able to migrate to FH (if Calico Pie begins to support _SDATE), I would want the sort order in the All tab to be retained in GedSite.

The ideal would be to have _SDATE, though.

Barbara

[tatewise]

Barbara, see the plugins:help:export_gedcom_file:sort_date_details|> Export Gedcom File ~ Sort Date Details.

Your analysis is almost correct but not quite.
The Plugin does give any Fact Note labelled Sort Date: value precedence, but otherwise will use any actual Fact Date value, and will set the Sort Date to that value, except as defined below.

The overriding proirity is the All tab Fact order regardless of those Date values.
So, for each successive Fact with the same Date or no Date or a Date earlier than the current Sort Date, then the Sort Date is incremented by one day, such that the Sort Date (_SDATE) order reflects the order of the facts and may be greater than the Date value.

Thus, if any labelled Sort Date: or actual Fact Date is NOT in date order, then the All tab order will prevail.

That is where the change I have proposed comes into play. In such cases as above, the labelled Sort Date: or actual Fact Date will take precedence over the All tab order, and set the Sort Date back to an earlier value. However, that will only become evident when the exported Gedcom is imported to another product such as GedSite.

[BarbaraL]

Thanks for the clear explanation, Mike, and for the time that you spend in helping us! You were very generous to say that my "analysis is almost correct but not quite", since I don't think I understood at all . (I will strike out the part of my previous message that was wrong to avoid spreading misinformation.)

If I now understand (?), what is critical is keeping the Facts on the All tab in the desired order, since [[Sort Date: ...]] will not override it. Let me think some more about your proposed change.

Barbara

[tatewise]

Export Gedcom File Plugin Version 3.4 Date 26 Oct 2017 is now in the Plugin Store and incorporates the changes discussed here, so most of the prototype versions in this thread have been deleted.