Please forgive me if I’ve overlooked a feature, as I’ve only used the program for a few days, but I’ve felt some strict boundaries as a fantasy writer trying to adapt my document timeline into something more user-friendly. I was going to submit this directly to Feature Requests, but I’d rather make sure I’m not overlooking something first.
Firstly, entries appear to have a very strict beginning and end date. This becomes a problem when an Artefact may exist for hundreds of years, but only be accessible or relevant for short periods (eg. created in year 1-5, lost, then discovered in year 300 and used for 1 year until returned to its shrine). As far as I can tell, the program allows the Artefact to be shown existing from year 1-301 as a solid, unbroken “event”; or I would have to create two separate artefact entries for the two occurrences, losing the tracked age of the item, unless both occurrences were parented to another entry just to track its age… But then it all becomes a bit of a mess. Yes, I could have Created and Disappeared events in the timeline, but I’d end up with 6+ entries for one relatively insignificant item among many, and make my busy timeline even more unreadable.
This becomes increasingly problematic when time-warping shenanigans occur, like in my story. To simplify this, a character lives normally until she is 8, at which point time is sped up for her, and she experiences 10 years in the span of one real-time day. Biologically she has lived and experienced 18 years, but chronologically only 8 years have passed in the world. This is further complicated when she is petrified in stone and 30 years pass around her–now biologically 18, but chronologically 38. There is no way I can see to both track the existential age of a character with their “active and inactive” periods.
In practice, this would be a “+” icon under the Born entry, allowing you to manually input years that can be defined with modifiers, and much like the “uncertain” dates, add a desaturated section on the timeline bar. Active and Inactive would be the general terms for items and characters, with a Relative option allowing you to set a character’s age at a specific date, allowing for the speed-up or slow-down of ageing (adding tracking for both Chronological and Relative age). This would also be useful for fantasy races (or dogs, etc.) that age at different rates than humans (which could be given a custom name, such as “Dog Years”).
Secondly, I know this has been brought up before, but the option to include a “Year 0” is important for my already plotted timeline. For me, Year 0 represents the date the capital was constructed, with the “BC/AD” equivalents specific to that event. As things stand, I would have to input the capital’s construction at -1BE, suggesting it was a year before it was made, or 1AE, when it should already be established. I’ve noted this in the entry’s summary, but it’s still visually confusing on the timeline.
Thirdly, character titles and name changes. Another instance of the input fields being extremely rigid, character entries can only have one name their entire life, and no way to display their title/rank/nickname without it being part of their name. Here’s an generalised example: John Doe joins the army at 20, becomes a Commander, abandons the title/rank at 30, and then changes their name to Jane Doe at 40. Without having multiple entries for a single character (ruining ages as above), it is impossible to visually display this character’s name at different points in their life without lengthy and obscure notes. If their name is changed half way through the story, the wrong name is displayed for half the timeline. If they are only addressed in the first half as “Commander Doe”, having the name as “John Doe” is confusing, especially if they are shown rising through the ranks at different points.
Much like ages at certain times, there needs to be a dynamic display for names and titles on the timeline bar. Similar to how two separate periods are on a singular line, we need to be able to set a date when the character’s “life bar” shows a new section with a new name/title/etc (complimenting the active/inactive periods above), while maintaining the singular character profile. This would be a “+” by the Name input for “Displays As” modified by date. The profile would still only have one name, but you can pick the most relevant, with control over what comes first and last visually on the timeline.
An “AKA” input might also be nice under Name, allowing for a character only known by their nickname to have their legal name visually prominent. I know this can be done with manual inputs, but those are forced to the bottom of the profile–manual rearrangement of the entire Inspector panel might help a number of these obscurity issues. It could also be useful to have a “Known as/by” functionality in Relationships, where you can list who knows this character by what name with an input, without needing to add a new function for every nickname. For example, John’s profile would say “Known as: ‘Bob’ by ‘Mary’” or “‘Dad’ by ‘Susan’”, with the inverse being “Knows: ‘John’ as ‘Bob’”, both of whom could be John’s daughters, with one a step-daughter, giving more context beyond the “Parent” Relationship. (Though this paragraph was more afterthoughts than pressing needs.)
Fourthly, I just think it would be nice if you could collapse the descriptions of events on the timeline that aren’t parented, perhaps with the option of “expand on mouseover”. I have a timeline of hundreds of years, with an event almost yearly, so the cascade is quite severe with all the descriptions.
I’m sorry this post was so long, but these are what struck me as limitations after a few days of use. If any of these are fixable with existing methods, I would love to hear how; if they aren’t, I will repost the relevant sections to Feature Requests. I’ve been pretty satisfied with this trial period, and there’s a good chance I will purchase a license, but I would really like to know that these features will be actively developed for fantasy writers. (I have more feedback, but I’ve kept this to the core functionality for now.)