Dependency lines between (events in) roles missing

Q & A
#1

In TL2, when grouping by entity type (say, arc) – stacked groups in TL3 – dependencies (“Based on”/Follower) between events were displayed in the timeline – as long vertical lines. This is no longer the case, though constraints between events of the same entity type (now item types?) are shown.

For narratives with multiple arcs, this is problematic; because the most important, and often hidden, dependencies are across arcs.

  1. Is it possible to display these on the timeline?
  2. If not, is this information available in another view?
  3. If not, is it planned to bring them back?
#2

Hi Marc,
It is not currently possible to show those lines across groups, no.

The difficulty we face was that each of those items may appear multiple times in different groups, and you are left with a bit of a challenge:

  • Do you display a line from an event to the closest copy of its dependency only?
  • Do you draw a line from an event to every copy of its dependency?
  • If there are copies at both ends, do you draw a line from every copy to every other copy?

Anything short of the last option has the potential to leave some items unconnected despite having a dependency, and the last option would look awful.

So we settled on only drawing dependencies within a group to avoid that particular concern.

Open to revisiting this again at a future point, but that was the thought process that got us there.

#3

Okay, thanks, albeit disappointing.