Different Calendars

[Keith Wilson]

Originally posted by gavroche

I am using v.2443 on a Tiger OS.

I realize this might be difficult, but I'd like to be able to get an On This Day report for a non-Gregorian calendar.

It would also be nice to be able to turn on/off a preference that displayed the dates in the different calendar - either in addition to the Gregorian dates or instead of.

My calendar of interest is the Hebrew calendar, though there may be other religious/secular calendars other users would find useful.

This has occurred to me because I have a great grandmother for whom I don't know what her Gregorian birth date was, since she could have been born in one of either two years. All she knew was that she was born on the first day of Tishrei (New Years Day). One reason I like the On This Date feature is because it shows me where vital dates coincide, but it occurred to me I would also be interested in knowing when they coincide on the Hebrew calendar.

[Keith Wilson]

Originally posted by gavroche

I realized I haven't experimented with ICal, and since ICal can handle multiple calendars, exporting the dates to ICal might solve most of my needs on this score.

[Keith Wilson]

I realized I haven&#39t experimented with ICal, and since ICal can handle multiple calendars, exporting the dates to ICal might solve most of my needs on this score.

I am taking a few days off in the hills to tell the lyrebirds about my little joust with The MacGenealogist. The birds will sing and dance and scratch around (and maybe fall about) just like they normally do when I tell them my problems. I will have a look at doing something within iFamily about Hebrew calendars when I return from the hills.

Keith

[Keith Wilson]

I am using v.2443 on a Tiger OS.

I realize this might be difficult, but I'd like to be able to get an On This Day report for a non-Gregorian calendar.

It would also be nice to be able to turn on/off a preference that displayed the dates in the different calendar - either in addition to the Gregorian dates or instead of.

My calendar of interest is the Hebrew calendar, though there may be other religious/secular calendars other users would find useful.

This has occurred to me because I have a great grandmother for whom I don't know what her Gregorian birth date was, since she could have been born in one of either two years. All she knew was that she was born on the first day of Tishrei (New Years Day). One reason I like the On This Date feature is because it shows me where vital dates coincide, but it occurred to me I would also be interested in knowing when they coincide on the Hebrew calendar.

iFamily stores dates with Gregorian values for day, month and year. To generate " On This Day" it does a fetch from the database for events that occurred on a specific day in a specific month.

Although I have some (18th century) Jewish ancestors, they did not pass down to me any knowledge of the Hebrew calendar, so some of what follows may look ignorant.

The Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar. From wikipedia I get: Because of the roughly eleven-day difference between twelve lunar months and one solar year, the year lengths of the Hebrew calendar vary in a repeating 19-year Metonic cycle of 235 lunar months, with an intercalary lunar month added every two or three years, for a total of 7 times per 19 years.

So if I leave the existing database fetch (that looks for Gregorian day/month) but display the dates as Hebrew days and months then you will find that the days and the names of the months in " On This Day" will be all over the place.

Did I understand this correctly?

Keith

[Keith Wilson]

Originally posted by gavroche

You're right. What I was looking for was the ability to enter the Hebrew date in the search field, and retrieve the events on the Hebrew date. (Or for that month) In which case the Gregorian dates would be scattered. Two people born on Oct 7th, 2008 and Sept 18, 1999 actually share the Hebrew birthday of 8 Tishrei

There are several online calendar generators that can print out a month/year of the Gregorian calendar and have the Hebrew dates indicated as well. But I would like to know what family history events fall on the same date of the Hebrew calendar.

There are online Hebrew/Gregorian converters using perpetual calendar algorithms:
http://www.hebcal.com/converter/ for example uses this software: http://sourceforge.net/projects/hebcal/

I could plug manually every date I have into that web-conversion and create an excel sheet, but that would take awhile. I was hoping for a software solution, though I was unable to find one online.

[Keith Wilson]

Originally posted by gavroche

Additional notes:
1) Hebrew days are measured sunset to sunset, however, since time of day is often not known for events, I would expect the conversion to assume an event took place before sunset, and anyone utilizing this function would accept that if an event occurred after sunset and before midnight on the Gregorian calendar, either the Gregorian or the Hebrew date will be off by one. A checkbox to indicate post-sunset for events would be wonderful, but not really necessary. I'm willing to accept whatever I can get.

2) I dif find a PC program that probably does this (Dorotree.com) but there isn't a Mac version.

[Keith Wilson]

Additional notes:
1) Hebrew days are measured sunset to sunset, however, since time of day is often not known for events, I would expect the conversion to assume an event took place before sunset, and anyone utilizing this function would accept that if an event occurred after sunset and before midnight on the Gregorian calendar, either the Gregorian or the Hebrew date will be off by one. A checkbox to indicate post-sunset for events would be wonderful, but not really necessary. I'm willing to accept whatever I can get.

2) I did find a PC program that probably does this (Dorotree.com) but there isn't a Mac version.

In V2.464 I have added an option to search and display Hebrew dates as follows:

• The input fields for day and month are Gregorian - no change. When the dialog opens the day and month are initially set to today's day and month (Gregorian).
• There is a new button to display the results using the Hebrew calendar.
• When the Hebrew option is selected it calculates the Hebrew day and month for for the current year.
• It then searches the database, converting every date into a Hebrew date string and decides if that is the same Hebrew day/month as the one asked for and lists them accordingly.

For instance, if today is 09 October 2008 then the Hebrew equivalent is 10 Tishri 5769 so it searches the database for all events that occurred on 10 Tishri.

You cannot enter a zero for the day when the Hebrew calendar is selected.

It does not consider anything to do with the sunset.

Keith

[Keith Wilson]

Originally posted by gavroche

This sounds excellent! I will try it when I get home. Thanks

[relationx]

Would also like to see other calendars, both the Islamic lunar one, and the Islamic solar. And... I also work with documents dated in the Julian calendar.
Would be really nice features and very useful for me.