Sneak Peak: What we're working on in Q1 2025

Official Announcements
#14

I’ve been advocating for as long as I’ve been using AT3 (approx 5 years now, including very early alpha versions) that the summary field needs to be shown inline on the outline (that’s an awkward confusing sentence), not in a separate column. This alone makes speedy outlining awkward. The way the Narrative Outline displays on mobile versions would be my ideal. And although it is possible to add a summary inline on the Narrative view that is time consuming, as you need to consider the narrative folders and add items via user interface clicks and not only keyboard shortcuts or key presses.

Also, why can’t I bring up totals of scene word counts as a property in the narrative outline and narrative view and have them add through the entire outline? Another feature request which I’d like to see added

The way OmniOutliner handles outlining is the gold standard. But I still prefer AT3 because of its other benefits (visual representations of structure and relationships etc). It would be great though if AT3 streamlined its outlining…

I do want to be clear though, that despite the above, I’m still loving AT3 and it’s invaluable to my workflow.

Andrew

1 Like
#15

You could put a link to this forum on the Timeline help menu. That’s what DEVONthink does, and it means that user support and discussion is so much easier to access. It becomes part of the experience of using the app.

2 Likes
#16

I like all of these forthcoming changes, particularly the spreadsheet view and grouping additions.

The way I use Timeline means I don’t have much need for text export. I sync to Scrivener, and that’s where a project gets finished. For some things, I’ve found that an export to CSV has allowed me to do any manipulation required.

#17

A few hours passed, and I discovered I do have a use case for text export. I added various Properties associated with a Person so that I could use them to build character profiles. I would love to be able to print out or export to text those Person profiles.

#18

Export to JSON probably includes the information you want. For about $75 you can get a copy of Easy Data Transform which will read JSON, filter out what you need, and write it to a spreadsheet.

I am not connected to Easy Data Transform other than it has been pivotal in my life. For instance, there were hidden hijinks in our local property tax appraisal office. EDT helped me uncover the details and blow the lid off a scandal.

Edited to add: If you have any tool that will read JSON, you can probably do the same thing. Or maybe a comma delimited export to Excel will get you what you need.

Edited again: Export to CSV will get you a file you can read with a spreadsheet. The rows with “Character” in the type column will be your characters. Other columns will have the properties you see in Aeon.

#19

Thanks for the preview. This looks very promising, I think I will make use of most of these features. Especially the spreadsheet with non-event items is highly welcome. This will make everything much more flexible.

#20

Getting a JSON file from AT3 is not a big deal. There’s still my Python script available that extracts the JSON part from AT2 and AT3 files. However, due to the complex AT data structure, the result is not easy to figure out, I’m afraid. It is a network of references that cannot be represented easily by a two-dimensional table, as the limited csv export shows.
See this thread: What is the data format of an *.aeon file?
If they aked me, I’d love to have a versioned, xml-based data format that is open for third-party software. However, I have good reason to believe that this concerns an insignificant niche and will not be put on the agenda.

2 Likes
#21

Hi @Amontillado,
I am with @Peter_T on this (hi again Peter). Obviously, since I started the original referenced thread, duh… :upside_down_face:
From my side, any open, non-propietary data format (XML, JSON, etc.) would do just fine; or even relational like SQLite. As long as it is possible to round-trip data cleanly and efficiently between TL and something else.

3 Likes
#22

Hi, @MINE, as may have been noted elsewhere, the AT3 file format looked like a process image dump to me at the time of beta testing. Lots of redundancy, and quite dangerous to tinker with.

From the AT developers’ point of view, however, it can be an advantage to discourage the publishers of third-party software: It is clear to me that problems with ill-coded utilities or open source applications will eventually affect the reputation and support of Aeon Timeline. Therefore, focusing on cooperation with a few mainstream applications seems quite sensible to me.

And as I have noticed after all these years here in the forum, almost nobody is willing to even start a Python script, let alone program or improve one. Mind you, I’m not complaining because I can help myself in every way.

But one thing would interest me: Assuming you had the roundtrip capability, how would you take advantage of it?

#23

Python is fun.

I haven’t done anything with automating Aeon Timeline. A long time ago, I wrote a sync utility in Python to keep Scrivener in lockstep with a Word-like word processor on my Android. It was primitive, but it worked.

Mellel is my far and away favorite word processor, but it doesn’t have a mail merge function. I wrote my own in Python, and I also wrote a Mellel style set analyzer which creates a report of what styles are dependent on which other styles.

Both those products, Mellel and Scrivener, have file formats that are completely transparent.

My use of Aeon has been more for documenting projects and correspondence than story generation. I’d like to change that.

1 Like
#24

Great! Maybe you can update my aeon3obsidian script, there is definitely interest for that here.
It shouldn’t be too hard, it looks like some nodes have been moved or renamed in the JSON part.

#25

If I can get the time, that sounds like fun. I would like to learn Aeon file internals.

#26

But one thing would interest me: Assuming you had the roundtrip capability, how would you take advantage of it?

Essentially by using AT as a visualisation and editing tool for date/time data that is stored in other systems. For example, looking at, comparing and commenting different customers’ purchases and related events over time. Or, building a project time line/schedule in AT that integrates with the project’s admin data base. Another is to help root-cause analysis during major Incidents by reading the tickets and logs from the Service Management CMDB and enhance them with additional event details in AT, which are then stored back in the CMDB (preferably in real-time).

For me, a visually appealing timeline is just a different (and nice) front end for dry, time stamped event data in core operations systems - hence the round trip… You may have already guessed that I don’t use AT for its original purpose, i.e. to create story boards / time lines for novels :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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#27

Well, in essence, your use cases are not that different from mine. If it’s just about visualising the course of time, and relationships don’t play a role, you could manage it with the open source “Timeline” program. It has an XML format, if somewhat hackishly implemented.

#28

… “Timeline” program. It has an XML format, if somewhat hackishly implemented.

Quite so. See post in the original thread…
About Timeline

#29

Yes, everything has already been said … I’m starting to get a guilty conscience, it’s all off-topic in this thread.

#30

I didn’t want to interrupt y’alls conversion, but as is seems to be done now - do we have a vague ETA on the update? Q1, I assume, means it’ll be out by April, which is nice. Will that be a full release, or beta?

1 Like
#32

Looks like a fantastic update is in the pipeline. I’ll be looking forward to many of the features but especially tabbed views and the ability to have those tabs focusing on the same view types with a different focus and settings. I really like the avatars too. Can’t wait for the release. When is is due?

#33

Hi Keith and @Faustyna, at this stage we’re aiming to be in beta sometime around the end of March.

2 Likes
#34

Yes! Thanks Rob! :slight_smile: Can’t wait!