Setting up a timeline

Having issues with the timeline view. I have figured out using the start date and end date. However, I often need a timeline that covers a single day, where at what hour, and sometimes what minute, an event occurred matters. Any ideas how to create a timeline with multiple events covering a single day? Do I need to create a separate note for each event?

The range of any Timeline view, i.e. the earliest/latest time-dates plotted on the view, as opposed to being listed as ‘out of range’, are controlled by $TimelineStart and $TimelineEnd (see more). By default, all descendant events are plotted, i.e. there are no start/stop dates.

For a single day timeline for 28 Dec 2016, you’d set $TimelineStart to “28 Dec 2016 00:00” and $TimelineEnd to “28 Dec 2016 23:35”. Any child/descendant note of that container with a $StartDate on 28 Dec 2016 will plot in the container’s timeline view.

Any in-range event, i.e. note with a $StartDate is plotted on the timeline. Those with an optional $EndDate are plotted with a duration (see more). Events can overlap, in which case they are stacked vertically on the timeline.

Ergo, use $TimelineStart/$TimelineEnd to control maximum range of plotted events. Then define a note for each discrete event in the timeline. The built-in prototype ‘Event’ can make this easier as relevant date attributes are already set up as key attributes. At minimum, for each event you need to set a $StartDate (and which is within the timeline’s start/stop date-times).

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Thank you for the thoughtful and detailed answers! This helps a lot.

I am trying to create a historical timeline, going back from 1500 BC to let’s say the 19th century. I only need to have a year date. Ex: 106 BC Cicero enters military service; 1789 French Revolution and so on. How would I code that?

At first, I thought I might just do a separate timeline on a separate TBX document. But I had the problem figuring out how to code $TimelineStart, $TimelineFinish, $StartDate, etc to just show the year. So I did this:

34Screenshot 2018-06-08 16.11.34

But that leaves me with another problem: The BC dates are descending and the AD dates are ascending.

It would be really powerful to have a timeline embedded within my one large research notebook.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

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