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


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

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)