In TL2, a character’s age is displayed in the timeline when grouping by character – as shown in the attached.
How is this achieved in TL3?
Hi Marc,
They are not included in the “group by” option in version 3.
But you can show them using the alternative approach of filtering and split views described here:
Matt
This makes no sense to me.
Split the view: check
Filter the top view for, say, a character: check
Repeat: ???
All that achieves is a filtered view in the top window.
For entities with start or end dates (e.g. people with birth/death dates), a mini timeline will show at the top of the view showing the time since the entity’s start date (e.g. a person’s age).
Heavens! It took me over an hour to work out what this meant. Oh dear. Firstly, no “mini timeline” is shown unless the character has a death-date. Obviously, not all characters die in a story – and nor do employees, if you were using TL3 for a project management tool.
Also, the the gaps between ages is way too large. I have a character here that shows, 36 year and 56 years only, when the character lives to be 76.
In any case, the need here – which works so well in TL2 – is to show comparative ages, so this is, frankly, not fit for purpose.
I’m genuinely confused why this behaviour has been removed. I can simply look – not examine – a TL2 timeline grouped by character and see the lifetimes and ages of every character. This is a very basic need when composing a multi-character backstory.
TL3 has basically made it impossible – not just difficult – to see the comparative ages of, say, two characters associated with a shared event, without clicking the event and reading the ages in the inspector. But the whole point of visual software is to provide the information visually. That seems to have been at best forgotten, if not wholey rejected in TL3. I’m genuinely at a loss to understand the thinking behind this. It’s so gloriously simply and well-executed in TL2 and yet it’s been thrown away. Why?
Yes, I will update the text to clarify moving the focus to the next view before filtering for the next item.
It needs to either have an end date, or the Ongoing box ticked to indicate the person is still alive.
Without this, items are treated as instantaneous rather than ongoing… as they are born and die in an instant.
Perhaps this is another case where we should offer the ability to change the word in the interface for different types, so “Ongoing” becomes “Still Alive”, or similar. And perhaps we should have it default to true for person types.
It hasn’t been removed, it has simply been shifted in location. It is still possible to see those comparisons by setting things up in different splits. You get to pick and choose what to see far easier too.
This does come at the expense of having quite as many on the window at once, but you would have to scroll to see those, which can make it harder to make visual comparisons.
There are pros and cons in both the old and new approach, but we felt overall that the new approach was a better system overall.
It may help to understand that version 3 is a complete rewrite, there was no shared code with version 2, and so we were never making the decision to “remove” something, as such.
We had hundreds of design choices and priorities to decide between, and everything had to be a conscious decision to include or not, and came with both a time cost and a design cost.
If we tried to put everything in, we wouldn’t have been releasing for another year.
I fully understand you may not agree with every design choice we have made - nobody ever will - but I hope that helps you understand the context behind it.
Matt
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Off topic I know, but it certainly feels like a complete rewrite. Clearly the same program in terms of what it does and, largely, in how it does it, but it feels quite different to use - to me at least. And I appreciate the changes; it feels smoother to use.
I appreciate the response.
It needs to either have an end date, or the Ongoing box ticked to indicate the person is still alive.
Checking the ongoing box didn’t work for me – an imported TL2 project – I had to “kill” the character to get the age line. But no matter, it’s no use to me as it is.
It hasn’t been removed, it has simply been shifted in location. It is still possible to see those comparisons by setting things up in different splits. You get to pick and choose what to see far easier too.
I disagree. I cannot see all characters’ ages simultaneously in the timeline. This is pretty much a showstopper for me when creating backstories – ymmv, etc. I also cannot see which characters are alive/dead visually as in TL2. Clearly me banging on about this means it’s important to me.
It isn’t easier to use because the data is not there visually.
Here’s the bit I cannot fathom: TL3 is timeline software. Age is a fundamental attribute of characters – as are births and deaths. How can they not be easily displayed in the timeline?
And I appreciate the changes; it feels smoother to use.
Oh, I agree that, overall, the interface is far better than TL2. I also think the data model, and its flexibility, is very impressive. The problem seems to be that the ability to display all that data, and its relationships, has been sacrificed – not given sufficient weight, succumbed to designer-itis, or whatever (I don’t know because I wasn’t there). And at the end of the day, it’s how I, and other users, can use the data that really matters, and not the smoothness or sexiness of the UI. Form seems to have defeated function in the UI.
Would it maybe be possible for you to create small “addon- views”, a little pop-up window that show metrics that is common data to look for?
some examples (all recursive):
- Age for all people linked to an Event, so if it is a parent event, it show the information for all child items too, and if it is a group of people that is linked, it shows age of all people in those groups
- All Linked items of a specific type for an event, i.e. all groups of people, all groups of vessels etc.
- All constraints for events
This should only be a information panel, no editing… Users might even be able to configure it the same way that the timeline view can be configured or with custom filters?
i.e. “Show Age” “all people” “Highlighted Item” or “Show Age” “John, Eva” “Highlighted Item”
And maybe even for selected Items:
“Show Age” “John, Eva, Kai, Ivanka” “Selected Item(s)”
I don’t know if it is a lot of work creating something like that, but it would be a clean feature that wouldn’t clutter down the timeline.
And if possible, maybe just open new ones for e.i. up to 5 pop-up windows at any given time for 5 different item selections on the timeline… This should only be plain text, maybe bold for the item names, so to have them open shouldn’t demand to much hardware resources?
Let me provide an example using the attached from TL2.
Let’s presume something turned up in my story that needs some weight behind it: say, when Charlie is at university. The interaction also involves David, who is Alice’s father, and the event needs to be before Alice was born. All the current constraints of where that event should be places can be seen at a glance in the attached.
Another example: was David alive when “another event” occurred?
Can you get the same info in TL3? Of course, but it requires a bunch of fiddling about.
These are very, very simple example, of course. In a multi-arc narrative, it’s something you do all the time.
There’s another thing: simply by looking through the timeline with this information present, it’s surprising how often ideas for the plot pop up.
All of this can be rationalised away in a bout of Blakeian single vision, but surely TL should inspire and not simply be a repository of events, entities and their relationships.
Also, if I want to remove the clutter it’s only two click to collapse Bob and Eva.
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I agree with you on this, I suddenly saw a new usage of this in my historical research, that I can’t find in what I wrote as an suggestion in my comment above…
Thanks for that 
I still have version 2 installed in parallell with version 3, so I think I will try to test out that (just have to import a few thousand lines of CSV)…
A common question I have when researching both history and genealogy is “can this Name and this Name actually be the same person?”
Or "is it actually possible that this vessel was at that point at that point of time, or do I have documentation that says that it was to far away to have had any possibilities to be there…
I suddenly saw that it actually is worth importing massive amount of data for analyzes that I haven’t done before…
Thanks again for reminding me about this feature
I agree with Ortgard. Seeing how old characters are at any given event is one of the main reasons I want to utilise timeline software.
I’m still trying to work out how to do this in Aeon Timeline 3. Is there a video somewhere?
This document here explains how to do it in version 3: How To Track Characters in a Novel - Aeon Timeline 3 Knowledge Base
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Sadly, Jess, I think the designers have misunderstood the way folk use characters’ ages in timelines. The way it was done in TL2 is the template.
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