Although this is an incomplete list, some of the constraints and properties we would want it to meet include: The ideal timeline: some notes and constraintsĪn ideal timeline would capture the maximum amount of data in the minimum space required (computer people call this entropy). Feedback at this design stage is crucial, as it will become increasingly difficult to make large changes as we move towards implementation. Continue reading (click on the more link), if you want to see my current thoughts and sketches, and provide feedback and further ideas/suggestions. In the remainder of this post, I discuss the difficult task of displaying this additional information. Provide an intuitive and interactive means to manipulate the additional information made available by this new view.Express the temporal and causal links between events. Divide events into separate story-arcs/timelines that split and merge throughout the timeline as groups of people are separated and reunited.Combined with filtering by Entity, this will make it much easier to check that someone isn’t in two places at once, for instance. Events will be displayed at their exact location on the timeline, rather than pushed around to create sufficient space between each event.Create a view that does not have the Entity lines – this allows a lot more space and freedom.If you fit this category, the bullet points below list what we are trying to achieve. I say this as a warning for people who just want to check out the application, and the general direction it is taking. This is a rather long post (there are some pictures, at least). A simple filter system enables you to see all the events affecting a specific entity, or with a specific tag, arc or label. Events may be dragged along the timeline either singly or in groups. Either way brings up a dialogue box for you to enter and adjust details. To create a new event, you either click on the button to create your arc, entity or event, or double click in the right place on the timeline. The reminder of day of the week and time of year is also useful – having given a season for one event, you can clearly see what point in the year other events happen. It’s very easy to combine simple view, arc view and entity view in any combination, to see different parts of your project in detail and check the timeline is feasible. You can also create birth and death events for people, and once you have created a birth event, each event that you link with an entity will keep you informed as to their age – a very useful feature that also helps you avoid linking them to events outside their lifespan.Įach entity may be linked as an observer or a participant, enabling you to keep track of whose point of view the section is to be written in. Again, colour coding plays a large part in planning out your timeline. This enables you to create entities – people or places for example – and link them with the events on the timeline. The windows update for this feature is currently in development, and will be made available as a free update when released.Īnother useful feature is entity view. You can also provide a link to an external file – in fact the mac versions of Scrivener and Aeon Timeline will link with each other, so you can generate a scrivener file from your timeline and keep the two synced. Colour coding can be used for different events, and they can be events for a single moment in time or longer events, recorded to within the degree of accuracy you need, whether this is to within the year, the month or even the second.Ĭlicking on any event on the timeline gives access to the details of that event – here you can record which story arc it belongs to, the time and duration of the event and any other details you need. The timeline across the top shows the date, the events are listed in order on the timeline and at the bottom a bar shows how the current view relates to the overall timeline. Aeon Timeline is very simple to use, while providing many tools that are useful for organising your planning.
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