J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: > Basically, this is all good discussion: I started it because the thread > with GENI in the title made we think that someone was possibly about to > start on the hobby, and I thought they (and anyone else in a similar > position) would benefit from thinking hard, before they started, about > what form they were going to store at least dates and placenames in, > because some thought before starting is likely to save much time later. > I hoped it would provoke debate as well, which it has, good; it's > branched into discussion of what good g. software should offer in these > respects, which is also good, as long as the original point isn't > obscured too much. (I appeal to people to consider changing the thread > title where appropriate.) The underlying problem with thinking it through first lies in the lack of knowledge on the part of the average beginner. The beginner on the West Coast of the Atlantic generally doesn't know that he will eventually need to know exactly when each country changed calendar formats (in fact, a good chunk of them don't know countries DID change calendar formats); more large cohorts of genie searchers don't use computers in their day-job and don't realize that April 25 will sort before January 25 (and non-IT types might not even recognize "sort" as being important). By the time you've the experience to know it matters, it's too late. Worse, no matter how long one spends building the "perfect" data model, some ya-hoo will come along and bollix it up for you. I've found Quaker documents where the fifteenth day of the fourth month was counted from the day the meeting was organized, which made this MM minutes out-of-sync with the neighboring MMs who both used the then-current calendar's "first" month. Non-standard, atypical, but all there is for that MM and one or two others I've seen. Cheryl