In the Relationships tab in the Inspector, when you choose to add a relationship, it gives a list of categories. When you choose the correct category, you expect for it to only show you the choices in that category, but it gives you the entire list, no matter what category you choose.
Shouldn’t it only give you the list of items that is in the category you chose? Otherwise, what is the purpose for listing the categories?
Just to clarify, are you talking about where you click “More Relationships” on the inspector and choose a category, then a relationship within a category?
Some relationships can have multiple types, for example, the “Relates to” relationship applies to every type. Therefore an event can “Relate To” another event, or a character, or a location etc.
If you have chosen a relationship like this, then this will be why you see items from different categories in the list - the relationship itself is not divided into the different item types once it is on the inspector. The reason it is divided when you are adding it is just to help people find the relationships they are looking for more quickly.
If you are seeing the entire list of items for categories that should only have one item type (eg. on the Fiction template, if you are seeing Story Arcs or Locations listed when you look to add a Participant to an event), let us know, as this shouldn’t happen.
That is exactly what it is doing. When I choose “+ more Relationships” it gives me the categories (like I said in my post) which is what it is supposed to do, but when I choose the type, instead of only giving me the type I’ve chosen, it gives me the entire list, no matter what type I choose.
Are you able to send through your timeline file to support@timeline.app , and also mention what category and relationship type you are trying to add that shows all of the items when it shouldn’t?
Yes, I’ll send it. It is EVERY SINGLE CATEGORY, not any specific ones.
I have the same problem, selecting a “category” and ALL the relations I have created for ALL “categories” is displayed, with no filtered list.
Jess’s explanation makes sense to me. A relationship of Relates To can Relate To anything. Behaviour of the +More Relationships works for me if I choose a specific category; if I select, say Story Arc or Location, then only Story Arcs or Locations are populated in the drop down list. As per the screenshot below:
If I choose Relates To or See Also, then a full list of every type appears, and that makes sense to me. Because that relationship could Relate To anything – an event, a character, a location etc.
Where I think confusion is creeping in here is in the presentation/ design of the Category Selection.
If the user chooses Location as the category here, then when Relates To is selected, users expect to see only Locations in the drop down selection box. But of course all items are shown because this is an open ended relationship type – anything can relate to anything. This is down to the design choice of this interface. There is no separate Relates To choice when +More Relationships is chosen. It is only ever an option when selecting Item Types.
I’m not sure how this can work better. Relates To used to be an option in the Inspector, but that was when the adding Relationships was handled differently. The change in design was to make the Inspector more compact. And I think in most cases this approach works very well.
Perhaps inclusion of Relates To and See Also etc should have their own sections with the Item Type categories selectable from that drop down? So if a user chooses Relates To> Location then only a list of Locations comes up?
But this may not be possible technically of course.
Nope, that is not the case for me, I get the wrong type in my custom “categories” for some objects… I Never use the “Relate to” or any other built-in relation.
And it only happens in in the “+ more relations” dialog.
Another thing that is a problem is that in the “+ more relationships” the relationships that’s not enabled for the item type you work on is greyed out, when you have a lot of custom relations the list of greyed out relations can be really long, the list should only show the relations that is actually possible to use, and hide, not grey out, the rest.
This seems strange. I have many custom item types set up and don’t seem to be experiencing the same issues at all. All of my item types show up within the categories exactly as they should when using the +More Relationships option.
Have you checked all of your settings? If all seems fine then this may be a bug which isn’t showing on my system for some reason.
If you see this occur for your custom types, even when they only have relationships to some items, then if you could send us your timeline file to support@timeline.app, with an example of what relationships you are trying to add when it shows all the items, then we can look at see if there is a specific bug related to your template.
It’s more important that you actually fix the export errors, both that it takes a long time to render, but most important of all that you actually change the library you use to something that support PDF versions newer than 1.3-1.5… or if that is not possible because of the developer of that library, that you actually support plain SVG as an export format, without any artificial dimension limits.
To have that artificial dimension limit in a software that support large timelines is just pointless!
Normal practice for new software is to use upgraded versions of libraries, not old ones that only support file formats and versions with known security risks and artificial limitations.
