Aeon working and syncing with *Obsidian*

Feature Requests
#1

So I had a previous thread about syncing with Plottr, which would have been nice. There was a lot of talk there. But it then turned into a discussion about markdown, ObsidianMD, and similar programs, which I hadn’t used before and tried due to that discussion.

Now I’ve moved my world-Bible to Obsidian, and can even write in it because of a plugin that allows me to open up webpages (I use the online Reedsy editor to write, the plugin is called ‘Surfing’ by Boninall). And draw.io has a plugin for Obsidian (called ‘Diagrams.net’ by Jens M Gleditsch), so I can work on my family trees too!

The last thing I need is Aeon for timelines. Either official syncing, or a plugin, or even if Aeon can be opened up through a web-browser, any of those would work. Pretty please with sugar on top.

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#2

Can’t you create a file link to your timeline with Obsidian? I don’t use Obsidian, but Zim. There I can simply drag the Aeon file onto the page with the mouse. Aeon then starts when I click on it.

#3

I can just link it, and it will open in Aeon. But ideally I would love for everything to work within Obsidian. That way I can have my work next to my timeline and next to my character sheets. It looks/feels easier when it’s all together.

#4

Can you perhaps show an example of what this should look like? I can’t really imagine it. I have a large screen, so If I want to, can put my wiki, my word processing and Aeon on it at the same time, like so:

screenshot00

#5

I do have a larger screen and could have those two side-by-side (it’s what I do right now), but I like the workflow of things being able to sync up and work together. Like being able to have my narrative in Canvas, or being able to link character info from one source to the other, if that’s possible.

I know with draw.io I can create an updatable image of my charts in Obsidian, and then use another plug-in to link parts of that image to character sheets. I can’t do that linking without it being update-able and workable in Obsidian, and not just in a separate program.

#6

This is a MUST. Just like scrivner can sync with aeon timeline. If the Obsidian notes could connect with the events in aeon it would be so amazing. It seems like connections are ready for both software. We just need a simple connection. I currently have a setup where Obsidian picks up the documents in scrivner and Aeon Timeline is synced with scrivner

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#7

So I was still new to Obsidian when I posted this, and have spent the last week playing around with it a lot. I think I can explain better what I mean now-- and I have noticed your other posts about syncing and exporting around here.

I have an extensive fantasy world, and a half-scattered world-bible throughout Scrivener, OneNote, old word docs, and my head. Obsidian seems like, finally, the best place I can compile everything so that I can keep a wiki, remember things, and worldbuild.

Aeon Timeline is the only other program I need because of how important time is- and I have a fantasy calendar so the dates aren’t standard. I love that I can check how much time has passed, how old someone is, what day is a holiday or a moon phase. It’s also nice that I can add extra things to it now too- relationships, for instance. Being able to set that Character A is in a relationship with Character B, and only needing to put that info in once and it shows up under both characters is super helpful. I have ADHD, and sometimes I’ll put the info about a couple, or a family, or a group, just under one person/place and then forget it in another spot. So I either end up typing it several times, getting the information wrong, or needing to search for it.

Obsidian lets me keep everything linked up, and so does Aeon.

My desire is that they also work together. I suppose it doesn’t have to open in Obsidian, but a plug-in would be great. Sync would be amazing. Because if I change a character’s birthday in Aeon Timeline I might forget to do so in the Obsidian note, so when writing I might pull up Obsidian because it will also have other character info, and I’ll end up using the wrong date.

I could copy/paste from one to the other, but again that implies I remember to do so every time, and on which program the change took place.

Even if it doesn’t end up syncing automatically, I wish I could export everything from Aeon in a way that I can open it in Obsidian, make changes there, and maybe later re-open it in Aeon if need be.

I had tried to use Scrivener as a middle-man, but if you sync Scrivener to an outside folder, the names get weird (numbers are added rather than just the title), and there is no custom meta-data. So no dates from Aeon, the only reason I need and want this to work.

You can compile Scrivener files and get the custom meta-data in the files that way-- but if I edited those in Obsidian, I would have to remember to re-import them to Scrivener (which I really don’t know if that’s possible- somehow exporting and compiling are different things?), and make sure it syncs with Aeon, and if I made any changes I would have to compile it all over again.

TL;DR: I want to be able to see my character sheets in Obsidian, and know the birthdays are right because it syncs with Aeon. Or be able to link a relationship between characters and know that it will show up under both of them because Aeon can make that data bi-directional/inverse.

#8

Yes, it is a challenge, and it probably takes a while to organize your own personal workflow so that everything fits. I have also tried different approaches, with data coming together in a wide variety of formats.
Of course, it’s a great advantage if you can write your own programs for data conversion. That’s why I also make sure that the applications I use and buy have a file format that is accessible to scripts. For example, I use Aeon 2 instead of Aeon 3.

As I’ve seen elsewhere, birthdays are a big issue for you. Do you only do this via markers? If a birthday is entered for a character, it also appears on my Obsidian export page for that character.

I myself would not display birthdays in the timeline, but would create a birthday calendar, just like you usually have in real life (well, in the era before smartphones anyway).
If your characters in Aeon have birth dates entered, you can of course write a script that generates a birthday calendar from them. But this effort is probably not necessary. It might be quicker to create such a calendar once by hand and then maintain it.

You know, many people would like to have the application that can do everything, but if you insist on it, you are constantly frustrated. As I have already mentioned elsewhere, I prefer to use dedicated applications for different problems.

Aeon Timeline 3 has a concept that at first glance promises to be a central source for data and its structures. But due to its closed nature, it doesn’t really fulfill this promise, and I think you should accept that and consider Aeon as another building block in a tool landscape that does what it does best, but no more.

Update
Same applies to Obsidian. It looks fascinating, but there’s a great danger that you’ll end up just stuffing everything you can into it and playing around with it, completely losing sight of your actual goal.
I always have to remind myself of Brandon Sanderson, who came up with the term “world building disease”.

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#11

"world building disease” seems so infectious that it’s now endemic; more or less the whole point of the fantasy enterprise for many writers (and readers tbf).

I was one of those who was originally very keen on some sort of integration with Obsidian. But you’re right, playing around with the program and plugins seems to have become the main point for many users. And it never developed a comfortable stable writing environment imho. So I stopped using it some time ago. And don’t use markdown much anymore either.

Switched to Lattics (proprietary, closed) which combines a great writing environment with all the PKM notes functionality I had valued in Obsidian. And that has recently added a (relatively simple) timeline function which is sufficient for 90% of my needs, so I’ll only use AT for those occasions when I need something very specialised.

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#13

I don’t think you can do custom calendar. You can ask, but the only effective way of communicating with developers seems to be the in:app email and bandwidth is somewhat limited on that channel. I tend to just accept the limits of their own intentions.

#14

Many tools, including Aeon Timeline, will indulge one’s world-building disease. I don’t think I have the disease – but it’s possible I’m just in denial!

In my case, I find Obsidian matches my creativity as I write. And yes, I write directly in Obsidian.

Here’s a screenshot where I’m using it to plot and write my fantasy novel series. (I use an ultrawide monitor, which enables me to have any information I want about my story before me as I write.)

Obsidian
Obsidian1920×540 118 KB

I can even track start/end dates and times. The only thing it doesn’t do easily or well is place everything on a timeline or, my favorite, provide the Subway view. For that, Aeon Timeline is my go-to, especially now that the Q1 update will include Subway view for Narrative and Outline events. (This will be AMAZING!)

So, as much as I wish I could find a single app to do it all, Obsidian comes remarkably close, but Aeon Timeline does things that nothing else does. That’s why I have continued to support development by keeping up my subscription and helping as a beta reviewer.

#15

“That’s why I have continued to support development by keeping up my subscription”.

I must remember to cancel my subscription this year. One of the disadvantages of subscription models is that I tend to keep them going even when the program is no longer being used. At least with AT I can cancel and still use as-is, should the need arise. Because I’m not using it regularly, I doubt I’ll ever do the familiarisation to use new features.

#16

Came up with a way to make it work- instructions here!

#17

You can use one of the timelines plugins, add a keyword in the YAML and make a timeline or multiple in either in a seperate note or in the note you are writing in, just by using a codeblock, if you need multiple timelines, you can separate them by using multiple keyword…

But it might not fit your needs, there is also one of the timeline plugins that use the Dataview plugin, but I have not testet that one out yet.

Just a tip.

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#18

Thanks for the tip. It’s good to know I’m not alone in my quest!

I had stumbled on this YAML/timeline plugin approach, too, and tried all the plugins I could find. The basic drawbacks were twofold. First, I could not find a way to recreate the subway graphical view of AT3, or even come close–believe me, I spent hours searching for a way to do this. Second, I could not find a way to quickly create views involving the story elements I was interested at any given time; for example, if I want to only see in which scenes a particular sword appears or appears with the main character. AT3 does this brilliantly by giving us the ability to check the elements we want displayed.

I’d love to know if anyone has figured out a way to effectively recreate the Subway view in Obsidian, as well as its easy ability to add or remove elements to be displayed.

#19

When I first came across the topic of “Subway view” in 2017, I couldn’t find any software on the market that did this apart from general vector drawing programs. There were questions about the software used to make the examples shown, but no answer.

It is quite possible that the Subway View is another unique selling point of AT3.

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#20

Indeed. I love how AT3 implements the Subway map view. The only reason I keep hoping for an Obsidian-related version is because of Obsidian’s organic way adding characters, objects, locations, and so on, as I draft my novel. Yet to view my story in AT3’s Subway view, I have to duplicate these things. It’s tedious and destroys my creative flow. I do it, of course, but I yearn for a genuine writing app that combines the wonderful, frictionless creativity possible in Obsidian–specifically, the ability to create, say, a new character or object or location or magic spell on the fly and throw brackets around the name to create a new .md file just for that new story element–with the story structure insight power of AT3. (Sorry, I know I keep beating this drum.)

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#21

P.S. Lately, I’ve moved my drafting to Scrivener/AT3, using Obsidian for the story bible. In my fantasy writing app, AT3 would have a writing view that incorporated something like Obsidian’s ability to create new .md files on the fly, as we write, just by throwing brackets around the new story elements we invent. The writing view wouldn’t have to be something as robust as, say Scrivener; it could just be a simple editor with basic formatting features. Perhaps it would sync to Scrivener (so maybe it would be RTF files) or be exportable in various formats, such as .docx. I dunno, as I said, it’s just a fantasy. :slight_smile:

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#22

I have not found a good replacement for the subway yet, but I will try to remember to update this thread if I do.

Regarding your “items/objects” in timelines, would it be possible to create one timeline for each "act or Scene and create a “timeline keyword” for it, A note in Obsidian can hold multiple timeline keywords, but I don’t know how to create a time period for different keywords…
But it might be that it is possible with the combination of the Chronos plugin and the Dataview plugin, just be aware that the Dataview plugin seems to be replaced by something else at some time.
Here is a github link to the plugin

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