Extension talk:EasyTimeline/archive

General comments
Great works! Yann 10:29, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Looks good. I'm going to tell about this to other Japanese Wikipedians now. :-) Tomos 00:11, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea! But, would it be possible to create a user-friendly interface, so that those who are less adept with code can use it? 154.5.51.173 01:12, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, no programming skills are required, it is not really procedural code (no conditions, no loops), rather a strict set of rules on how to express oneself. A point and click, drag and drop interface would be nice, but I'll leave that to someone else, or maybe in a years time when I can't think of something else to do. Erik Zachte

The key feature missing from this are of course imagemaps to make the links clickable. I realize this is nontrivial, but if the script could generate the necessary maps, I could try to hack MediaWiki to support them (possibly even directly interface with a script, so that the user doesn't need to run it).

One other thing I noticed is that the smaller fonts are quite ugly. Anti-aliasing would help a lot here. SVG would, too.&mdash;Eloquence 01:22, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Ploticus can create imagemaps, so EasyTimeline could get syntax for that, would be nice indeed.


 * Also creating SVG is just a change of parameter (they look better but are not viewable on every platform so should be offered as second option, like with international stats, they are also much larger in download size and take time to render on the client side, a fast PC may be needed).


 * PNG images can be included as well, I will add syntax for that in the foreseeable future.


 * Ploticus can support other fonts via freetype lib but this requires a rebuild with GCC, at least for Windows, (I haven't tried Linux version, but features should be cross-platform) see . I'm not familiar with GCC so haven't tried that. Erik Zachte


 * SVG support added. See example Erik Zachte

A wikier way of doing this would be to have the timelines updateable within the article (i.e. make the charts creatable online). So lets say there is a timeline, and someone wishes to add an element, they would update the PlotData area, and the software code would autogenerate the timeline. Just a thought DavidLevinson


 * Of course. Would be nice. Eloquence might be willing to pull that off. See above. Erik Zachte

Great job! Just a question. How to do with text only browser? Do you think a pure HTML version is feasible? (I mean only using . Bawolff 01:52, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Issues

 * PHP parser converts < > into &amp;lt; &amp;gt; before ET is invoked
 * fixed


 * The current version does not yet support unicode. More on this at
 * Why not use -misc-fixed-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-iso10646-1 ? It has loads of unicode characters: Greek, Cyrillic, Thai, Runes ;-) See http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs-fonts.html -- en:User:Stw, 4pm 2004/05/31
 * I will add a 'Fonts = png:somefontname svg:someotherfontname' command. Any freetype compatible font (truetype etc) that is available on the server can then be used for png. For svg (not yet displayable in Wikipedia) rendering takes place on the client machine so anything goes there. Erik Zachte 23:27, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Should dates be rendered newer above older, as they are now? On the one hand, latest events are arguably the most pertinent.  On the other, reading the chart chronologically is more natural if older dates are above newer dates.  Pgan002 05:48, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Personally I liked the current style best, or maybe I just got used to it :). I will add an option to reverse the order in a future release. Erik Zachte 02:11, Jun 20, 2004 (UTC)
 * TimeAxis option 'order:reverse' added. Works only with DateFormat=yyyy not with dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy Erik Zachte 23:14, Jun 26, 2004 (UTC)


 * I demand that EasyTimeline be renamed to DifficultTimeline!!! Great work though... -- Stw 15:56, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Well on de: they managed some 40 timelines in a few weeks. It is more difficult if you start from scratch. Most people start with an existing timeline and change it in steps till it suits their needs. What problems do you have specifically? I'm willing to help out. 21:17, Jul 10, 2004 (UTC)
 * It's not that bad, I was just a bit frustrated after fiddling around with the shift: option. The new version is indeed simpler. Sorry for being a bit rude. -- Stw 15:09, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Bugs
For an example see (I did already "fix" the first bug, see the source.) -- en:User:Stw, 4pm, 31. May 2004
 * There is a bug in Timeline.php: For Windows line 35 have to be  if ( ! ( file_exists( $fname.".png" ) || file_exists( $fname.".gif") || file_exists( $fname.".err" ) ) ) , otherwise ploticus will try to create the images again and the apache-process will hang. 18 Jul 2006
 * A label text that contains [dot] [space] [capital letter] will be converted to [dot] [space] [small letter]. Why?
 * [colon] [space] ... is converted to [colon] ...
 * Fixed, Erik Zachte 23:14, Jun 26, 2004 (UTC)


 * Link within brackets (...) is not rendered properly. Erik Zachte 01:03, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * Fixed, Erik Zachte 23:14, Jun 26, 2004 (UTC)


 * HTML Tidy does not like the name property of the map tags created by EasyTimeline, since they begin with a number. In my install, i fixed this by simply prefixing the name attribute with map. --Rudi Lippert, 8 Mar 2006
 * The img tags also used to be opened only (without /> at the end), which I fixed in my install. But it seems, this problem has already been fixed. --Rudi Lippert, 8 Mar 2006

Install
Easytimeline looks great, but i cant succesfully install it on my wiki ... I need some basic install instructions, what are the parameters to add to Localsetting.php and so on ... A simple example should be sufficient --Coffman

Hi Coffman, citation from : "To use, include this file from your LocalSettings.php. To configure, set members of $wgTimelineSettings after the inclusion" I hope this helps, if not please ask at wikitech mailing list or ask e.g. user:Tim Starling who knows a lot of MediaWiki internals Erik Zachte 10:16, Sep 27, 2004 (UTC)

form for EasyTimeline
Maybe someone how knows how it works can describe this tool: http://newped2.auckland.ac.nz/exe/exe/timeline/form.html --Kurt Jansson 11:55, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It's GPL. You can download here http://newped2.auckland.ac.nz/timeline.tgz, but the overlib was not included, you may save these overlib js from the above url or download from overlib web site. The form action is point to my box, but the script is also included in the package called timeline.pyg. It is very simple. You may change it to php or whatever. Any bugs or suggestions please mailto:w.hol@auckland.ac.nz.

--- Hi, It's really not been thoroughly tested( cross platform, browser, etc.). Currently, I only know it works fine on my computer.

Basically, I develop this tool to help pelple generate the easytimeline script.

All the icons, bottons on the form are to help user input. Any dynamic field change is the client side javascript rules implemented based on my understanding of the eztimeline syntax.

If you understand the syntax well, you can directly put in the information then press the "get the easytimeline" button to get the script and copy into wikimedia. If you don't understand that much, you may try by loading an example( now only 11 examples, too lazy to input new ) that is close to your need. Then change color( click the color plate icon ) for bar, text, canvas, etc, you can have an visual view of the color you choose for each field.

The "add xxx date" botton, while clicked, will add all the related input fields to the form. You can then focus on the data input without too much reading from the syntax rules or typing in the related attributes.

the up/down/delete icon on the right of each added data, allow you to move up/down or delete the data.

Click on the ? icon will show some tip that is copied from the syntax page.

All in all this tool will not be a junk if it is useful for the wikipedia project or other cloud. It's gnu licence. You can take the form, javascripts and put onto your server, only few clicks away. Except the preview button will need server side scripting. However, I have no problem if the form action is still pointing to my server.

Funther comment or suggestion to improve this tool are denefinitely welcome. Currently, I really have little idea about the usability issues, so it's really just a beta.

1800 date limit bug
There seems to be a bug in EasyTimeline that only allows timelines going as far back as 1800, and looking at the perl script this seems to be hard coded. Could any of you kind developers out there fix this? A snag has recently been encountered in doing List of the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom on the English Wikipedia in that the timeline goes further back than 1800. If anyone knows a way of overriding this, I would be most grateful if you could help. --NicholasTurnbull 18:47, 11 July 2005 (UTC), en.wikipedia.org


 * It is a documented limitation. From syntax page:

Valid dateformats are: dd/mm/yyyy Dates are interpreted as day/month/year Note: this format is only allowed for dates starting from 01/01/1800

This is a design limit caused by the rendering package Ploticus, that EasyTimeline uses. Ploticus was designed in the first place for scientific plots and not for timelines. So the Ploticus author made a simple design decision, to store dates in a default internal format. Almost every computer language has an internal date/time format that converts a date/time with seconds precision to a floating point value, and arbitrary defines the initial date/time represented as value 0.0 In Ploticus this is 1/1/1800.

Unfortunately, I don't see a workaround and don't expect it will get priority from Ploticus author either. Your main option is to use DateFormat yyyy and forget about exact dates. Erik Zachte 19:09, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

Multiple links on one line
See: nl:Sjabloon:Tijdbalk Tour Winnaars. (=template, List of Tour de France-winners). The author (not me) remarks: "it is impossible to have two links on one line". This code works (it's live): from:1903 till:1904 text:"1 Maurice Garin" color:Frankrijk

But this fails in the timeline: from:1903 till:1904 text:"1 Maurice Garin" color:Frankrijk

The text only takes one link.

Suggestion: maybe it could be possible to have two texts, e.g.  from:1903 till:1904 text:"1" text:"Maurice Garin" color:Frankrijk

nl:Gebruiker:DePiep -12:56, 21 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, one link per text segment is a design limitation by now. You could specify two separate lines and shift the second text, with a certain number of pixels, to be determined by trial and error. In this case the first link is just one character wide. As each clickable area is slightly larger than the text (an issue beyond my control), specify the smallest link last, so that it will be placed on top of the larger text, otherwise it would be masked by the larger text and be hardly clickable. Erik Zachte 20:49, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

from:1903 till:1904 text:"Maurice Garin" shift:(32) color:Frankrijk from:1903 till:1904 text:"1" color:Frankrijk

More unicode support
I know that it is hard to generate an image for all fonts. But how about the link? text:"caption in latin alphabets only" text:"Rep. of Korea" It will be helpful for some context even if timeline doesn't support non-latin captions in the image. -- ChongDae 07:44, 4 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Progress report: I spent the last week of my vacation to dig into this external font/unicode support issue. I got it working on cygwin. Now I need someone with a Linux machine to help me build the patched Ploticus (so that Ploticus can be queried for font metrics). So if someone can build Ploticus exe on Linux with these instructions, FreeType support enabled, that could speed things up considerably. Please let me know and I will send you the patch after Wikimania. The problem is I don't have Linux myself, only basic knowledge of it, and my attempt to prepare a Mandrake compile PC failed (Mandrake complained about missing libraries for Ploticus build and could not add them automatically) According to RedHat or Debian seem better suited for it. If you can help I'll send you the patched c file after Wikimania.


 * Good news is with proper font (e.g. very impressive shareware font code2000) most languges can be displayed. Bad news is Ploticus (or underlying FreeType libs) do not show Hebrew, Arabic, etc in proper right to left direction.

Here is test output, using font code2000. Korean is not shown, but all major languages in the world are supported by e.g. font code2000.


 * Good. I can read Korean at the sample. But.. the font is not pretty. -- ChongDae 06:41, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Is there a plan that when unicode will be supported? It'll be great that EasyTimeline could be used in CJK. --Wihwang 10:54, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Separate pages for timelines
 A timeline is available here: Timeline of the Roman Empire

Analogous to the "List of.." pages already populating wikipedia I propose "Timeline of.." pages. They would allow for more flexibility concerning the dimensions of the timelines without destroying the layout of the articles they were embedded in. This move will also facilitate inter-timeline linking for the GUT project. I am currently reworking the Timeline of the Roman Empire following Eriks suggestions. This makes it 1600 pixels wide, which is unacceptable for an embedded image. To avoid a harsh drop in visibility for the removed timelines I propose the creation of a template similar to the one shown on the right like en:Template:External_Timeline, which should be placed near the top of the page. After all a timeline gives an introductory overview. The icon is temporary, I'll try to whip up a decent SVG pic. --Dschwen 21:13, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Just uploaded a first draft of a timeline-icon to Image:Timeline_icon.svg and put it into the template. --Dschwen 23:05, 14 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Ok, I made the move on the Roman Empire page. On second thought the timelines might as well stay in Template space, linking to the templates works just as good as if they were real pages, and search should not be an issue for timelines. There should maybe a convention on how to name the templates. I'd stick to the proposal of prefixing them with "Timeline of..". --Dschwen 16:05, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Some feedback came in, now I made a second template which is more compact en:Template:Compactlink Timeline and put it into the Roman Empire infobox. Good exposure, yet discreet. --Dschwen 17:32, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Year zero
How does EaysTimeline handle the Year zero (which is absent in a historians timeline)? I suppose polticus as a mathmatical plotting tool does not know about this convention. --Dschwen 08:34, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Oops, that is a tough one, never thought of that before. I'll have to check Ploticus docs, but I fear this requires a patch, will take time. Erik Zachte 11:16, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * There is no Year Zero (or is *this* the problem?). The year of any moment in time is the year that's currently going on - or - completing itself. markus here-goes-the-at-sign hot and-here-the-dot ee

Link layout bug
The blue links seem to be overlayed over the unlinked text in each line, only the alignment is off. This might already be noticed since it breaks the timelines which looked ok with the old font. --Dschwen 09:10, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes this is known. Someone recently wrote a quick unicode hack which was accepted and brought live. See wikitech post. I hope I can upload my patch in the last week of Dec or first of Jan, for others to test. Erik Zachte 12:47, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * in the German Wikipedia the problem still occurs now (29. May 2006) - what can be done? Is there a patch to install?
 * Hello. I noticed that the link problem wasn't fixed in the german wiki. Could you repair it? That would be really great! Thanks. --217.83.62.93 17:20, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Standards and accessibility
Timelines currently make article pages fail XHTML validation (example), because


 * 1) The map element is missing the required id attribute
 * 2) Each area element is missing the required alt attribute

This is also inaccessible, since the bulk of the text is only represented as a graphic and missing from the code. I think all of these problems could be remedied by changing the output template. Please see the discussion at en:Wikipedia talk:Accessibility. —Michael Z..

Link in legend:
Is it possible to have a wikilink (or extlink) in the "legend:" field of "Colors =" section? TIA. Humus sapiens 00:24, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

graphics
Could this make graphics (not only bar, also... pie graphics)...--Nethac DIU 20:48, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Theoretically yes. the plot tool Ploticus that does the actual rendering supports many chart forms. I'm not sure that EasyTimeline is the appropriate extension for this though. Its syntax is optimized for timelines. Other bar charts are not too different, so can be accommodated easily. But in general I think there are better tools for generic data plotting. Lots of graphic extensions for Mediawiki are in some state of development. Erik Zachte 06:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but what graph ext. are there? --Nethac DIU 17:09, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

WYSIWYM
has any thought been given to adding a WYSIWYM (what you see is what you mean) interface to edit timelines instead of using text?

I like this timeline approach and think that we would use it on our site if it was easy to use.

The biggest problem for us is that the managers etc who set timelines would want a graphical way to do it.

202.27.240.6 21:14, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

EasyTree?
I was wondering whether something similar in a tree format has been considered -- something to generate things like Image:Genealogy cuban music.png -- TimNelson 03:24, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

New hexadecimal color support in pl240
Ploticus 2.4 was released only a few days ago, and it now has support for hexadecimal RGB like you'd use in HTML (doc page). I've upgraded my installation to 2.4, but there's something still not working correctly when I try to use a hex code for color. Is there possibly something in the EasyTimeline script that is returning this error since it's something new that it doesn't recognize as a valid color value (it was written 4 years ago afterall)? --Korby 11:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Units
Any reason not to support Ka, Ma and Ga units for geological/cosmological time? --wp:User:LeadSongDog

Are there any plans to introduce "minutes" units in the nearest future?

Problem with accents
Hi,

We have installed easytimeline on our wiki You can see a time line example here Everything goes all right but we have problems with accents. We have installed FreeSans.ttf like these instructions and we have also modify the TimeLine.php file without success.

Could you help me?

Thanks

Aliegeoi 15:24, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Garbage collection?
Does the extension perform any garbage collection, i.e., delete unused images? Or at least offer a way to determine which images and imagemaps are still referenced from the wiki in order to delete everything else? --Juliano 23:38, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

possible bug
I'm working on a bot to update w:Template:Trivia progress, and I have a couple of problems (not related to the bot).

Firstly, after updating the page, it seems to take a very long time to display - several hours sometimes. Is there a bug of some sort, or is that just the amount of lag I should expect from whichever server generates the .png images?

Secondly, when it does appear, sometimes it's missing all the text. this revision works fine, but this one doesn't. The only difference between the two is a single number that's been changed.

Can anyone help me figure out what's going on? Hughcharlesparker 16:04, 26 October 2008 (UTC)


 * I just realised - I didn't make it clear that the template uses the timeline extension. I'm not a helpdesk questioner who's found his way to a really obscure wrong place to ask the question.  Hughcharlesparker 19:29, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Same problem on nl:Oosterweel and nl:Lier (België). The text belonging to the diagram doesn't appear anymore. Even the diagrams themselves don't appear at some pixel anymore. With try and error the correct px should be chosen before the diagram appears. Can anybody figure this out? The problem is going on for several month bur since October 25, it is not possible anymore to work with Easy Timelines. Sonuwe 14:36, 29 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Update: it turns out this has been reported as a bug: 16085. Hughcharlesparker 13:49, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Bug looks fixed now, I'll update the note I left at w:en:Help:EasyTimeline syntax. 84user 17:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Unicode
Is Unicode supported now? NSK Nikolaos S. Karastathis 02:55, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

"Current Date" Parameter?
Is there a way to go from a set year in the past to whatever the current year (or date in general) is? This would especially be useful for things that are currently ongoing, such as Membership timelines (one example) for sport's conferences and whatnot. 75.76.206.214 12:41, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * By the way, I should say that I have attempted to use 2024,, etc., and they just cause errors. If nothing else, they should probably be allowed to be used in the template. 74.247.11.248 13:21, 11 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Any progress on this? It would be nice to have. 117Avenue 22:53, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * This is now possible (and has been for some time). You have to use a weird syntax though:  Bawolff 01:52, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

A little problem
Hello,

I would ask if there's a way to fix this timeline http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camouflage#Tutti_i_componenti in the way to put the person (Oliver Kreyssig in this graphic) in the same line. --87.3.210.139 00:11, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
 * No one can help? --82.51.160.111 19:56, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I’ve done some. Is it good now ? Cdlt, VIGNERON 08:32, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Perfect :) Thank you a lot! MattSid --87.3.210.86 21:48, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Needs a name parameter
The file name of the image this extension creates is a mess. For the sake of linking (and its principles), the extension should include a name parameter, and it shouldn't be optional. Your thoughts? --79.182.126.53 19:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Hyperlinks don't work with align:right
Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? When I use, the links in the timeline are suppressed. I don't get this problem using.

Example with :

Example with :

Looking at the HTML source for the second example, it seems the image map coordinates are invalid (i.e., negative): —Psychonaut 17:07, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Before 1800
Is it possible to allow mm/dd/yyyy and dd/mm/yyyy date before 1800 ? I will be very useful (for exemple fr:Chronologie d'Anne de Bretagne). Copy sent to Erik. Thanx, VIGNERON * discut. 09:49, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

https
Is it a known issue that timeline links do not work when connected to secure.wikimedia.org? See, for example,

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Template:Coral_fossil_record_timeline

Easy fix, at all? Outriggr 01:28, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * This seems to have been fixed. Bawolff 01:52, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

moving data out of a header
trying to create a timeline (shamelessly copied from thunderbird page), i can't make first data row start properly below header, instead half into it. increasing timeline height notably sort of fixes that, but as a result also makes it look quite bad and take up lots more space. timeline in question -. is it possible to manually shift entries below, or maybe fix the automatic layout ? --Richlv 17:02, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Not rendering Malayalam Languge
No Malayalam Languge rendering. please check ml:ഫലകം:ഉബുണ്ടു പഞ്ചാംഗം.--Praveenp 02:31, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
 * This is now fixed (As you probably know since you're following the bug, but for others might not). If any other languages have issues with the font not rendering at all (rtl being backwards is different issue), please file a bug at bugzilla asking for the default font to be changed. Bawolff 01:52, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

We have a lot of problems in hebrew
Main point of the problems are resultant from the UTF-8 encoding support that is not full. the text turn over in the display. we write inverted in order that the text will show normal. Please please correct this matter. --Effib 12:37, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * no progress has been made on this so far, but just for reference - 4030 Bawolff 01:52, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion
I have done a timeline for the GDP growth of a country. It looks really good. It is rather complex, because it is a combination of LineData and PlotData. What I would like to have is that I could add to the Bars and Lines something like the title-tag at css do. For example, if I hover over a Line or a bar, I got shown the GDP growth of a certain year. Ploticus calls this "mouseover labels" --Goldzahn 10:22, 4 September 2010 (UTC)