WeRelate:Suggestions/Search for dates before 1000 (current functionality is incomplete)

Currently, if you search for a date before 1000 with the "+/- x yrs" option, you will not get any pages returned, even if there are some within the range. If you remove the "+/- x yrs" option, you will get pages with the exact year you searched for, but only if the year is entered with a leading zero on the page (it does not matter whether or not there is a leading zero in the search criteria).

This needs to be fixed so that WeRelate properly recognizes years before 1000:

1. whether or not the year is entered with a leading zero (since, at the moment, presence or absence of a leading zero is only a convention, not an enforced rule)
2. so that the search returns results when the search includes a range of years

Regarding #1 above - I tested a couple of scenarios and did not see the same results where leading zeros were concerned.

Ex. searching b = 978 +/- 0 returns hits where b = 0978 ; bef 0978 ; 980 ; bet 0978 and 0980 ; 0979 ; abt 0978, etc. Results were the same regardless of which match criteria was specified.

I did the same for several other b = x, where x <= 1000, and each time results were returned within some year range. It didn't seem to matter if a leading zeros were present either in Search or in existing values.

Regarding #2 - I also found that specifying a range returned no results. However, specifying the default range (+/- 0) did return a range of results. I was unable to recognize a pattern for how the returned range was being determined, nor do I know if all existing values within that range were being returned.

Ex. searching b = 1000 +/- 0 returned hits where b ranged from "abt 978" to "1030".

For all of these concerns about dates, I think we need to have a clearer understanding about how the program interprets whatever value is entered in the Date field and then how that value is being used later, perhaps in combination with other field entries, for operations such as Search. We should probably examine the Github code to see if it contains some answers that can help us to better understand how this is currently working and how it could be improved.

--cos1776 16:34, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Neutral

• cos1776