* Format of Sort Dates in GEDCOM to GedSite

[E Wilcock]

This comes into fh with the dated field for will above Education

undated events.JPG (17.49 KiB) Viewed 11890 times

[tatewise]

I think I may have the answer, and it is all to do with the actual 'unsorted' Fact order in the record shown in the All tab.

The important thing to remember is that the Facts tab does NOT accurately show the Fact order in the record.
It is an amalgam of Facts from several records and if the Date column is clicked they are sorted into Date order, and undated Facts are typically placed after dated Facts depending on Normal Time Frame.

Sorry, but I have said several times to check the All tab, and that advice seems to have been ignored :-
"Check the All tab. Are they correctly sorted there?"
"try these experiments for cases where an undated Life Fact is after Death Event when viewed on the All tab."

I believe that if you check the All tab it will reveal the problem.
Each undated Life Fact will follow a Dated Life Fact that is after the Dated Death Event.
e.g.
Undated Residence follows Jun 20, 2003 Story a Life Fact that follows Jun 18, 2003 Death Event.

For my theory to work I bet your Obituary fact is a Life Fact when it should be Post-Death.

Normally when Facts are added and dated outside their Normal Time Frame then FH raises a warning message.
i.e. When a Story fact is added dated post Death.

However, the Facts tab sorts the Facts into Date order and keeps undated Facts in their original position.
In your 'faulty' examples those undated Facts follow a Life Fact and are thus considered correctly positioned.
FH appears not to check if earlier Dated Facts, such as the Death Event, invalidate the undated Fact position.
i.e. The Dated Life Fact hides the Date Death Fact so the undated Life Fact appears correctly positioned.
Even using the FH sort commands does not help as they seem to use the same rules.

You could report that oversight to Calico Pie.

FYI: The Show Project Statistics Plugin will report among other things any such Dated Facts that violate their Normal Time Frame and thus may have subsequent undated Facts in the wrong position.

[E Wilcock]

I dont understand the reference to the All tab Mike - True Ihavent looked there before.
The All tab for my example shows the same order as the Facts tab and the dated Will comes above undated Education.

Are you telling us that for the undated fh events to export correctly to Gedsite using your plug in we need to move the events up and down into our chosen order using the All Tab and not the Facts Tab of the record?

[tatewise]

Sorry Evelyn, my reply was to Linda, but in general does apply to your scenario.

Evelyn, the short answer is YES, use the All tab as explained in plugins:help:export_gedcom_file:sort_date_details|> Export Gedcom File ~ Sort Date Details.
The Facts tab does NOT accurately show the Fact order in the record, which is what the Plugin uses to assign Sort Dates and that record order is only reliably shown on the All tab.

[E Wilcock]

I have returned to cleaning up my own family trees. In my grandmother's tree, looking at the All tab, as instructed, I have found a record where the order on the Facts tab does not replicate that in the All tab.

This has to do with custom fields. I have a custom Event, Event Misc. which I use for almost anything that doesnt fit a GDCOM event.
The Facts Tab places all these undated Event Misc entries above death - It is a life time only Event. And since I put in the Obituary as an Event Misc it shows that before death too.

On the All tab, every Event Misc Event follows the death.

I dont know if this is useful nor what to do about it.

[E Wilcock]

cross posted Mike - sorry.
One reason this problem of post death events isnt too noticeable may be that in Gedsite as I have it, the main info about a person comes first with birth and death and his spouse and children.
Detailed biographical information follows - so on my trial run with Gedsite the details of a man's career and his obituary and my research notes for him make perfect sense appearing on the page below the death .

[tatewise]

Evelyn, a perfect example of Facts tab showing them in what it believes is the 'best' order, with Life Facts before Death.
BUT what matters for automatic Sort Dates is their order in the All tab and the Facts tab ignored.

As another example, click on each tab in Facts tab (Date, Fact, Age, More) and the Facts are listed in various orders, none of which necessarily match the All tab record order.

[E Wilcock]

Mike _ I really appreciate the tme and trouble you are taking over this.

I have now gone back to my husband's tree which I thought was "cleaned up". But looking at the All Tag, I cant make sense of the data. Why is his dated Census Event for 1851 after his death?

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MonaghanAll.JPG (71.77 KiB) Viewed 11882 times

[E Wilcock]

This is not a one off. His daughter also has the 1881 census record coming after her death in the All Tab.
This could be connected to my previous use of UK dated census tags in TMG. But whether they were removed from this project before import (which loses Witnesses) or using your plug in, I cant remember.

The GEDCOM (ALL) view in fh was something that muddled me so much in the early days that I used TMG instead. And I am now way out of my depth. My Facts Tabs look fine.

[ColeValleyGirl]

I have no evidence for this, but FH uses the order of events in the GEDcom file to produce the order of events in the All tab. So it may be that the order of events you're seeing in the All tab reflects what was exported from TMG (which presumably didn't care about the order in the underlying file as it used the Sort Date to control the order in which facts are displayed.)

[tatewise]

It is there simply because it is. There is no GEDCOM requirement that Facts be in Date order.
The All tab most definitely reflects exactly what is in the GEDCOM file.
Maybe that is where it was when imported from TMG or maybe the conversion Plugin put it there.

Since it is dated, it does not matter much in FH because it will appear correctly sorted in the Facts tab, and in most Reports.

It only become a problem when the Plugin assigns Sort Dates and will give it a post 1911 Sort Date.
The safest solution is to use the All tab up/down arrow buttons to move it up to its correct position.

Sometimes the cog Menu > Sort Family & Events in Date Order may be quicker, but may disrupt the order of undated Facts.

[E Wilcock]

I agree Mike that the All Tab order is significant only for undated events that will be allocated a sort date by your plug in.

However, where undated Tags are concerned. In the record e.g. for Miss J. Bach I observe that undated Occupation and Residence Tags are positioned on the All Tab within the life time. But My Event Misc (custom Tag) is not and follows the death.
This is even tho Event Misc is set in the Work With Events menu as a life time event.

The entry for Miss J Bach in the full Gedsite site is fine as this event misc entry comes at the end of her life time events.

If I exported using our plug in to add sort dates, it would be a problem if that were to come after her death.

[tatewise]

The All tab order is significant for ALL Facts, including dated Facts when the Plugin assigns Sort Dates.
I only said it does not matter much that dated Facts are out of order within FH but Sort Dates are a different matter.
As explained in plugins:help:export_gedcom_file:sort_date_details|> Export Gedcom File ~ Sort Date Details (did you read it?) the Sort Date is assigned such that the All tab order is enforced in GedSite.
So if the Event Misc comes after Death in the All tab in FH, then it will come after Death in GedSite if sorted by Sort Date.

[LornaCraig]

But looking at the All Tag, I cant make sense of the data. Why is his dated Census Event for 1851 after his death?

To quote from the FH Help files:

If you enter dates for events, birth dates for children and marriage dates for spouses, Family Historian will automatically keep them all in date order - at least as long you use the Property Box to enter all these details. However, it can happen for various reasons (e.g. if the data was created elsewhere and merged in) that spouses, children or events are held in the wrong date order.

In the example you gave, the most likely explanation is that the facts were in that order in the TMG Gedcom.
But there is another another possible explanation for the census event being listed after the death in the All tab. If you use the Ancestral Sources program to create the census event the automatic FH ordering will not apply. Did you perhaps create the 1851 census entry using AS, after you had imported the Gedcom to FH? Any such event created by AS will be positioned at the end of the list of individual events in the ALL tab. I frequently have to use Tools> Re-order Out-of-Sequence Data to correct this.

[Linda Reinfeld]

Mike -

Aha, you found the problem! Thank you very much. You're correct, the Obit fact was a Life Event, not a Post-Death Event. I don't quite agree with the reasoning of putting an undated life fact after a dated life fact, that the death date doesn't override all, but it's great to know why! In my quest to find some answers I found the query 'Fact Date Warnings' which seems to have highlighted some of the problems. That's a good query to run. I was looking for a way to look at all the facts to check on their time frame without going one-by-one. I couldn't find a report or list....

I have spent some time thinking about the implications. I have many tags, scattered throughout TMG, that are used both pre and post death. Never had to worry about that because of sort dates. I have used tags a lot in TMG to segregate output - if I wanted a lot of output or minimum - not to control placement in a narrative.

I am sorry not to have followed your instructions about the All tab. My Facts tab is exactly like the All tab without the extra stuff. I didn't know you could sort the columns! All I have done so far is to convert my data and run a couple of narrative reports (to see how things look) and try to export to GedSite for my online system.

I really like so much of the things FH has. The sort date problem is really quite difficult for TMG users. A friend just wrote to Calico Pie, who replied that they are looking into that problem. The conundrum for FH is that other systems do support a sort date, so it becomes quite convenient to migrate to other systems.

One final question - I'm not quite sure, but life events seem to be placed shortly after birth. I like my life events - at least some of them - to be placed at the end of one's life, or pre-death. How come there is no category for that?

Thanks for all the work you have done.

Linda Reinfeld

[E Wilcock]

In the example you gave, the most likely explanation is that the facts were in that order in the TMG Gedcom.
But there is another another possible explanation for the census event being listed after the death in the All tab. If you use the Ancestral Sources program to create the census event the automatic FH ordering will not apply. . . . . . I frequently have to use Tools> Re-order Out-of-Sequence Data to correct this.

Lorna - Thank you. I had avoided doing any overall reordering (or anything else that results in blanket changes).
But in view of your advice, I have run that tool on the 3 three family Projects I have (prematurely) imported from TMG.
All dated Events have now assumed their proper place on the All Tab and I dont think anything has happened to upset my undated (sort date) Events.

In view of this advice, one presumably needs to run the same Reordering of data regularly on all Projects created in fh.
Just as maintenance.
I dont think I can get my head round the implications of this thread, in particular that the plug in which allots sort dates could make things a whole lot worse by allotting some wrong sort dates to correctly dated events.
But I will leave the Gedsite problem until I am actually affected it.
I need to go back to work on data entry tomorrow.

[tatewise]

Evelyn, if Tools> Re-order Out-of-Sequence Data sorts Facts to your satisfaction, then the Plugin assigned Sort Dates will NOT disturb anything, and ensures the same order is preserved in GedSite. The fundamental rule is that the Plugin assigned Sort Dates mimic the All tab order. What has been confusing this discussion is that the Facts tab has its own rules for displaying Facts that do NOT always reflect the All tab order.

Linda, if only FH would import the _SDATE Sort Date from TMG, etc, then many of the problems would be solved at a stroke. Firstly, the exported GEDCOM would simply pass on the _SDATE Sort Date to GedSite and RootsWeb without Plugin adjustment. Secondly, if necessary a Plugin could be written to sort Facts into Sort Date order. The only problem that would need resolving is how to assign Sort Dates to new added Facts.

I cannot answer why there is no Pre-Death setting for Normal Time Frame ~ you would need to ask Calico Pie.
However, if on the All tab you move such undated Life Facts to just before Death then they should stay there.
Alternatively, if you redefine their Normal Time Frame as Death they should be repositioned just before Death or Burial.

1) Remember that the labelled Note option allows a specific Sort Date to be assigned to each Fact.
2) Remember that if the exported GEDCOM for use in GedSite or RootsWeb does not handle Sort Dates satisfactorily, then I can probably adjust the Plugin, which is the beauty of Plugins that do not require FH to be re-issued.

[LornaCraig]

The fundamental rule is that the Plugin assigned Sort Dates mimic the All tab order.

While dated facts entered in FH via the Property Box (other than by low-level editing in the ALL tab) are by default kept in chronological order, it is perhaps unfortunate that facts created by AS are not. It is easy enough to re-order out of sequence data, but if users forget or don't realise the need to do so before using the plugin, there will often be complications as discussed above.

[tatewise]

Yes, I was pondering that, and wondered if the Plugin needs to make an exception for uniquely dated Facts or some other solution.

I don't think it is feasible to expect AS to insert its new Facts into Date order, partly because it won't work reliably unless the Facts are already sorted, and also how it should handle undated Facts without knowing their Normal Time Frame.

It seems that, when imported into GedSite or RootsWeb, that dated Facts without a Sort Date are automatically assigned a Sort Date equal to the actual Fact Date.

So it is only undated Facts and groups of Facts with the same Date that actually need a Sort Date to be assigned by the Plugin. The difficulty is what Sort Date value to use for the undated Facts. Should it simply follow on from the previous Fact actual Date regardless of the order of such Facts, or should it use some other algorithm, but I am not sure what.

Another strategy might involve the Plugin reporting when Dated Facts are not in Date order, and suggest they are rectified, otherwise Sort Dates will NOT necessarily be correctly assigned.

[E Wilcock]

Mike - It isnt that the order from "reordering all data" produces a result that suits me. It is that I cant have dated census Tags appearing after death.
(As you and Lorna have discussed above)

Unfortunately I have just been asked for a full research report from a Project of 362 people already imported into fh
In the past I would have done this via a complete "Site". The equivalent now would be Gedsite. An alternative found by one fh user is a book. The recipient does not have genealogy software. But I could use a report.

87 people have been edited signficantly with dates of birth provided for the first time by the 1939 Register. As I use AS, reordering of data appeared essential.

I have a couple of questions.

What happens to undated Events if one carries out this reordering of data? Will undated events previously sorted to the correct position in the Facts Tab (or the All tab) return to the bottom of the list?

I moved two undated Military Service Tags to the correct position in the All Tab. At what point is that new order reflected in the Facts Tab? It is correct now but was not when I first looked.

That military service is undated as I havent yet looked for his records. But it might be dealt with by your labelled note.

I have not yet grappled with Notes in fh. So I dont know how to create this labelled note.
Or is it that I just paste [[ Sort Date: August 1915 ]] into the start of the ordinary Note field on the Facts Tab for that undated event? Followed by any other data in that Note field?

My event for Military Service is (I assume) a custom event - In TMG there was only one Notes field for each event. But the data entry screen in fh has a field immediately following the Label. And another larger Note field below into which my TMG data has gone.

However is the labelled note only operative with the plug in export to Gedsite? I need to have some sort of order which will apply to fh publishing too.

I apologise that I havent yet decided how to share my research - am pressed for time just now and it isnt necessarily the best moment to tackle my first full Gedsite. I may use the simple Journal style report you kindly wrote for me in my early days of fh.

[E Wilcock]

I should add that I am not bringing any more TMG Projects into fh until Calico Pie offer sort dates import.
I am able to revert to the TMG version of one research project.
That leaves me with three smallish imported family Projects affected. But I have used AS on all of them.

[tatewise]

Evelyn, for the time being, the foolproof option is to manually move Facts on the All tab after using AS, or use the Property Box cog Menu > Sort Family & Events in Date Order which only affects one record and review the effect with manual adjustment if necessary.

Any Reports, or Books, or FH Family Tree CD published by FH will always show the Facts in Date order (as they appear on the Facts tab) even if they are not correctly sorted in the All tab.

If you use either of the auto-sort commands then undated Facts will be sorted according to their Normal Time Frame as defined in Tools > Fact Types. So they won't necessarily "return to the bottom of the list" but will be positioned Pre-Birth, Shortly After Birth, Life, Post-Marriage, Death, Post-Death as appropriate. However, the exact position they were in before is not guaranteed, especially if they were positioned outside their Normal Time Frame.

Yes, just paste [[ Sort Date: August 1915 ]] into the ordinary Note field on the Facts tab. This is currently only operative for the Plugin export to GedSite.

[E Wilcock]

Unfortunately I have already sorted the data on all three projects.
But I do need to compartmentalise - and treat GEDSITE as a separate issue.

I hadnt realised that if my data looked OK on the facts Tab, it would be fine in fh reports. Thank you.

[E Wilcock]

Just to report back that I managed to do as I wanted and pass on my research much as I used to in TMG.
The Project had had its data automatically sorted in fh, and I did one or two adjustments of undated Events in the All tab and using a labelled note but on the whole it looked all right.
I used Mike's plug in to export a Gedcom for Gedsite and viewed it in Notepad - sort dates had been allocated to undated Events.
I then generated a full narrative site using Gedsite - defaults straight out of the box. Complete export of my whole Project and good for a new researcher to work from.
So that is sorted - Thank you for the plug in Mike. And for your guidance.

[ColeValleyGirl]

You're not losing posts -- you posted at viewtopic.php?f=32&p=80210#p80210.