Linked Art in C#

Profile advisor

Paste a column of dates from a collection and the advisor says which conventions the data uses, before anything is parsed. Each string is still parsed on its own; the advisor only recommends the profile to parse it under, and writes that profile out for you to review and save. Nothing you paste is stored.

Up to 20,000 lines; strings over 500 characters are skipped.

Or try a corpus sample: yearrange (museum catalogues) timetwister (US archives) Getty ULAN (artist dates) EDTF specification examples PMC (Paul Mellon Centre) outputs

yearrange (museum catalogues) 1,650 analysed · via the service

Recommendations

Suggested profile

Nothing in the data called for a change from the default profile.

{
  "inherits": "default",
  "name": "suggested",
  "description": "Suggested by the profile advisor from 1650 strings: nothing differed from the default. Review before use."
}

Vocabulary

KindWord or notationStringsFor example
Band wordsearly226 Early 20th century. c. 1884 (this item: First/Early edition) early 1790s
Band wordslate99 Edo period, Late, 1789-1868 Late 20th century. Late 20th C.
Band wordsmid92 Edo period, Middle, 1704-1789 Mid 20th century. Ca. mid 20th century.
Band wordslater36 [1765, printed later] [between 1790 and 1840, printed later] 1938 (later printing)
Band wordsquarter13 Third quarter 15th century. First quarter 13th century. Fourth quarter 13th century.
Band wordshalf12 first half of the 16th century Second half of the 1850s. ca. first half 19th century
Band wordsbeginning/end of8 Japanese, Meiji era, beginning of 20th century End of 16th century. Beginning of 16th century.
Band wordsearlier6 [between 1900 and 1940, from an earlier print] Earlier than 1932. Originally in 1811 or earlier, this is a re-carved edition probably in early 20th C.
Hedgesprobably217 probably 1773 Originally in Edo era. This re-carved edition was made probably in the early 20th century. Originally in Edo, this one is re-carved probably in 1930s.
Hedgesca210 Ca. 1870s. Ca. 1930. Ca. 1900-1910.
Hedgesc170 c.1875 c.1890-1900 江戸時代_18c
Hedgescirca23 1821 (circa) 1628-1644 (circa) circa 1876-1881
Hedgesaround16 Originally in 1858, this was a re-carved edition published in around 1900. Originally carved in Edo era. This re-carved edition was made in around 1950s. This edition was printed probably around 1890s.
Hedgesabout6 1823-1829 (about) 1840 (about) 1821 (ninth month, about)
Hedgesv1 [1862 (seal date: Boar V)]
Century notationsword269 Late 20th century. 20th century. Early 20th century.
Century notations19th c.103 19thC Late 20th C. Originally in Edo era, this one is re-carved edition in late 20th C.
Century notationsroman11 Originally in 1855, this re-carved edition was made before W.W.II. Originally published in 1833/1834. This edition published probably before world war II in 20th century. 1930 ... Printing before W.W.II.
Century notations1800s10 Ca. mid 1700s. Originally published in Edo era. Re-carved edition made on ca. 1900s. Originally in Edo era, this is a re-carved edition made in ca. 1900s.
Other languagesfr1 [1862 (seal date: Boar V)]

Shapes

ShapeStringsFor exampleWhy it matters
Numeric dates3 1904 (1/7/1904) 1904 (23/3/1904) 02.04.1979. Day, month and year as numbers.
Day-first evidence1 1904 (23/3/1904) A first number over 12, so it can only be a day.
Month-first evidence0A second number over 12, so the first is the month.
Two-digit years0Need a window to become four-digit years.
Bracketed84 [between 1870 and 1890] [1904 or 1905] [187-] Inferred dates in MARC style.
Seasons24 1847 (spring) spring 1864 summer 1922 Need a hemisphere and a winter policy.
Undated88 Originally in Edo era, this re-carved edition was made in unknown date. 1859, 2nd month Originally in Edo era, this one is a re-carved edition made in unknown date. The text says there is no date.
Open ends97 [187-] Originally in Edo era, this re-carved edition was made in unknown date. [18--] Before, after, present, a trailing dash.
Decades207 Ca. 1870s. 1870s. Ca. 1900-1910s. 1950s and the like; band words apply to them too.
Period words319 Japanese, Edo period Edo period, Late, 1789-1868 Edo period, 1615-1868 Dynasties, reigns and named periods need period tables.

The same advice from code

The advisor is a library call and an endpoint on the dates API; the response carries these counts, the examples, the recommendations, the suggested profile and a Markdown rendering.

POST https://dates.linkedart.net/v1/advise
Content-Type: text/plain

early 19th century
ca. 1850
7/4/1776
var report = ProfileAdvisor.Analyse(File.ReadLines("dates.txt"));
Console.WriteLine(report.ToMarkdown());
File.WriteAllText("profiles/mine.json", report.SuggestedProfileJson("mine").ToJsonString(ParseProfile.JsonOptions));

Or from the repository: dotnet run --project tools/Corpus -- advise dates.txt.