BC dates

[Mike Talbot 0]

How do users handle BC dates in TMG? There is also difficulty in entering 2 digit AD dates.

 

Is there an elegant way of entering BC dates and pre-100 AD dates available? planned?

 

Thanks,

Mike

[John Moran 0]

How do users handle BC dates in TMG?  There is also difficulty in entering 2 digit AD dates.

 

Is there an elegant way of entering BC dates and pre-100 AD dates available? planned?

 

Thanks,

Mike

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Elegant? Not even close, but here's something that occured to me after reading the thread on this subject on TMG-L recently. This assumes that year One (1) is the beginning (or 100 years before) of the Jewish calendar or some other baseline of that era.

 

TMG Date constrictions to years 100-3000 might be worked around for biblical dates as follows:

 

Divide biblical dates by two and enter this date in sort column. This will give sorting capability up to 6000 years, give or take a few odd_year divide problems.

 

This should make TMG sort correctly.

 

Enter biblical date years 100- 3000 correctly in "non-sort" Data field.

 

Enter years 3000-6000 incorrectly with a minus 3000 year offset and a "circa", "before", or "after" modifier that will print in RTF reports. That is, the year 4751 would be entered as 1751.

 

Then edit the report in a Text Editor (Word) to find all instances of "circa", "before", or "after" dates and manually add 3000 years.

 

Might work. Haven't tried it. Assumes a separate project, perhaps. <g>

[Rob Roy 0]

My solution for BC dates is to record the date as “345 BCE”, then put a number between 200 and 250 in the sort field. I use 200 for birth, and 250 for death dates. 220 is for marriages. Thus events sort in order, but dates appear in the text as BC.

[Mike Talbot 0]

It sure would be a lot easier (though not elegant either, since there was no year zero), if TMG would allow negative and 2 digit years. The detail line is already there for showing BC.

 

Elegant? Not even close, but here's something that occured to me after reading the thread on this subject on TMG-L recently. This assumes that year One (1) is the beginning (or 100 years before) of the Jewish calendar or some other baseline of that era.

 

TMG Date constrictions to years 100-3000 might be worked around for biblical dates as follows:

 

Divide biblical dates by two and enter this date in sort column. This will give sorting capability up to 6000 years, give or take a few odd_year divide problems.

 

This should make TMG sort correctly.

 

Enter biblical date years 100- 3000 correctly in "non-sort" Data field.

 

Enter years 3000-6000  incorrectly with a minus 3000 year offset and a "circa", "before", or "after" modifier that will print in RTF reports. That is, the year 4751 would be entered as 1751.

 

Then edit the report in a Text Editor (Word) to find all instances of "circa", "before", or "after" dates and manually add 3000 years.

 

Might work. Haven't tried it. Assumes a separate project, perhaps. <g>

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[Mike Talbot 0]

It sure would be a lot easier (though not elegant either, since there was no year zero), if TMG would allow negative and 2 digit years.  The detail line is already there for showing BC.

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This is just a plea for more comments. I do like my Romans, ancient Greeks and pharoahs.

 

Thanks,

Mike

[jreusser 0]

It sure would be a lot easier (though not elegant either, since there was no year zero), if TMG would allow negative and 2 digit years.  The detail line is already there for showing BC.

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What about 1 digit years?

 

I also like my romans, greeks, etc

[Mike Talbot 0]

What about 1 digit years?

 

I also like my romans, greeks, etc

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Yes...

 

I also didn't mention Babylon, Persia, Pontus, Phoenicia, Carthage, Selucid, Israel, Macedonia and many other places important to me.

 

A professor in Ancient Greek History (my friend and in-law) was ready to buy TMG but decided against it when he discovered that it didn't handle BC dates. Except for 5 generations of his ancestors, the many and only dates that he had to record were BC.

 

Several yeaes ago, I settled for spending weeks hand-fixing my GEDCOMed TMG ancient folks to TMG "non-standard dates." My old share-ware genealogy program the "Family History System" handled negative dates and calculations, just fine and was adequate. The only rubs were that FHS was limited to 32767 people and had no organized method for keeping references.

 

Best wishes,

 

Mike Talbot