Some dates not working (randomly)

Open Knowledge Labs TimeMapper
1

Thanks for the fantastic tool! Some students and I are trying to trace a problem we’re having with some dates in several of our TimeMaps.

Please take a look at this example: Byron 1814-1816 - TimeMapper - Make Timelines and TimeMaps fast! - from the Open Knowledge Foundation Labs.

Checking the Source Data will show dates highlighted in yellow that are appearing incorrectly in the TimeMap. We might have expected problems with dates that occur around the beginnings and endings of months/years, but that does not appear to be the issue.

We have noticed that inverting the months and days does often fix the issue. So, if a non-working date is changed from “10/17/1814” to “17/10/1814”, the date will fall correctly in the TimeMap (see line 8 in the source spreadsheet for an example of this). This is the case despite the fact that we’ve selected the US Style button under ambiguous date handling.

Any suggestions or indications of whether this is a problem on our side or yours would be greatly appreciated.

2

Hi there! We are not sure it’s a bug or not until we can reproduce it. I will give it a try - meanwhile, try double checking the date format in the column of your spreadsheet and matching it with the setting.