It would be useful if AT could export to markdown, as suggested, and optionally append YAML metadata at the top of the .md file, where the metadata would be equal to the metadata that’s currently synced with Scrivener and Ulysses.
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The end of March has definitely arrived now! but we’re still at least 2-3 weeks away from being ready to launch the 3.5 beta.
We don’t have any extra info to share just yet, but we’ll post an update in the beta forum when we’re getting closer to being ready.
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Nooooo!
Though, with that, let me assure you that my impatience stems from truly loving Aeon Timeline. This might be the first time I’ve been hyped about an update to a program so I’m excited. It’ll be out when it’s ready, thank you for keeping us informed.
Looking forward to it!
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Just please let it remain AI free and local first. Yeah, I’m a stick-in-the-mud, I know.
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It Depends, I think a configurable option to turn it off or hide it maybe better for those who do not want it or additional privacyy. There are some use cases esp. for research where AI comes in handy. Just helps to not copy-paste and go to another external program to use it
Looking forward to the release… I understand there are multiple features and it would be a big drop and so the release schedule is longer. There is an opportunity though, I guess for more frequent releases going forwards with lesser features. This would also give you a chance to release often and get early user feedback
I created an account here just so I can say I strongly agree with this.
I’m currently trialing AT (it’s fantastic!) and one of the first things I checked was this forum to see how active and transparent the devs are because I don’t want to buy a product that’s at risk of becoming abandonware.
Seeing this post of the devs communicating their plans for this year is a very positive sign, though I do wish AT had a more robust system where the devs track feature request, show what’s in the works, and communicate with the community.
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Any new updates or ETAs?
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Hi @Faustyna and all,
Thank you for your continued patience and support — it really means a lot to us.
Version 3.5 is still very much in active development. While we don’t have a confirmed beta date just yet, we’re getting close.
This is a substantial update with some major changes under the hood, which has taken longer than we originally hoped. Some personal challenges within the team have also caused delays. We’re a small team, so those things can have a big impact — but we’re making steady progress.
That said, we’re truly excited about the new features, and we’re really looking forward to seeing it out in the world and hearing what you think.
I can share one small extra preview: while improving the timeline drag preview, we extended those changes to other views as well. In 3.5, when you change an item’s date, you’ll see a preview of any other events that will also move due to nesting or dependencies. It’s a small detail, but one that we hope makes it much easier to see exactly what’s being affected as you make changes.
Thanks again for bearing with us. We’re doing everything we can to get 3.5 into your hands as soon as possible.
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Thanks for the update and looking forward to the update!
when you change an item’s date, you’ll see a preview of any other events that will also move due to nesting or dependencies.
I can see this being extremely useful for those who use Aeon Timeline for planning out project timelines. Great stuff!
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Any updates or new ETAs? Teasers?
Or just what’s happening in general- I am curious if something isn’t working the way it should, or some code got deleted, or if you guys got a new idea that you want to add in, so it’s taking more time. Or we will now get 43 new themes with custom fonts and cursors, like those from old angelfire websites back in the day… (hey, I can dream!)
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I’m starting to question whether it is a good or a bad thing for detailed development plans and timeframes to be shared on the forum, such as in this thread.
From the perspective of the users, if and when these plans are delayed, people are disappointed. For the developers it puts additional pressure on them to perform to often difficult to achieve timelines (no pun intended). Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing the direction they are planning on taking the software, but the licensing model should be self-regulating. If there are no updates you feel are worthy of an extension to your existing license, then you don’t extend. If there are, then you do. In fact, in a lot of ways, these updates can have a negative impact on that relationship between devs and excited users who want to bag a beta slot and test the new features. With users (me included) extending their license in anticipation and then not seeing an update for a considerable amount of time. I’m not suggesting for one moment that this is purposeful. But it is a possible consequence of providing regular updates to users which don’t go according to plan.
Now, there are ways the devs could handle this interchange of information. They could go down the Scrivener or Ulysses route and refuse to provide any indication what they are working on and when it will be released. Or, they could go halfway house and be like the Omni Group, who provide yearly general roadmaps about the direction of travel and some of the goals they want to achieve in the following year, development-wise.
I don’t know which is best and it isn’t up to me. It isn’t my software and I have zero skin in the game, other than the money I have paid for an existing license. Which means I’m just sharing random thoughts on this forum. And, just to be clear, we cannot blame the devs for their current approach. We as users requested they give regular updates, and they responded. But this feels off. They are clearly struggling to release updates in line with their revised timeframes (I am sure there are multiple reasons why) and it can’t be easy for them knowing people (again, me included) are checking up on their progress on a regular basis. I feel like they need a different approach somehow.
In the meantime, I’m outlining my next book directly inside Ulysses. Because I can’t wait any longer for a text in, text out feature set to hit Aeon Timeline. And using Ulysses is just as powerful for my needs, if not as convenient.
Andrew
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Andrew, well said.
Out of curiosity, what is the “text in, text out” feature of which you speak? (The feature I’m waiting for is being able to model the narrative/outline views via the subway view.)
Hi Steve, yes, I too am waiting for the narrative order subway view. The text in text out feature I’m referring to is simply a text export feature. I’ve spent a large amount of time putting various textual elements into various property boxes but, apart from syncing to Scrivener or Ulysses, or via CSV, there is no way to output a full textual outline for me to review. I am really old school when it comes to outlining. I like to outline like Ken Follett does. Long hand and scene by scene. We are, after all, writers. Aeon supports the writing process with its relational database qualities, but I want an outline to be generated so I can review it and export it into Scrivener or Ulysses. Much like Plottr does.
One big disappointment was the lack of feedback after I filled in the survey about text exporting. I suspect this wouldn’t be coming straight away with the new release. But I’m hoping it could be part of the reason for the delay.
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Ah, okay–makes sense.
Well, maybe not. I outlined my novel entirely in AT3, and when “done” (it’s an iterative process, so it’s never really done, to be honest, since things get moved, added, and deleted in the drafting stage), I synced with Scrivener. Voila, the novels of the series and their respective chapters, scenes, and passages were now in Scrivener, where I could begin drafting. I found it light years ahead of Pltter.
I wonder why my experience using AT3 to outline differs from yours?
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Oh, absolutely. Aeon Timeline is far superior to Plottr. But what Plottr does do well is it allows writers to breathe and think in wide open textual spaces. I’ve become a little claustrophobic with small, unformatted text boxes in AT3. They work okay and you can make them receive whatever snippet of information you want, which is really powerful. But I just want more room. I think better that way.
And syncing only yields fragmented snippets of scene specific story information. Which is amazing when you sit down to write. But outlining is a prewriting workflow. And I want to produce detailed, multi page long outlines, stitched together from AT3’s small (or hopefully bigger in the future) boxes, that almost read like a book. And then iterate them as the ideas flow. And then, when the dust settles, sync the ‘final’ working version to my writing app of choice (the story will inevitably change as I write, it always does).
Aeon Timeline can do both types of workflow. The detailed scene specific, synced workflow and the longer form, single document outline workflow. But only if a text export is implemented. In some ways I want Plottr and AT3 to get together and have an illegitimate love child.
Or maybe Scrivener/ Ulysses is still the best solution? Both apps have powerful workflows which go quite some way to how I use AT3.
Interestingly, I am planning a series of articles on outlining on my Medium blog. The above issues will feature somewhere along the line, I’m sure. I just need to outline the articles first 
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Okay, this is helpful. What I call an “outline” is much more brief than what you describe. Perhaps I should have called my “outline” the “initial outline,” a concise iteration of scenes. I do invent many of the characters in this stage, as well as locations, etc. But it’s terse–no need for expansive writing at this initial stage.
In my current novel series, I moved over to Obsidian to develop the outline and flesh out the story. I enjoyed the expansive writing space of Obsidian for that, which, I agree, AT3 doesn’t offer. I’ve now returned to AT3 synced to Scrivener for the drafting stage.
I wonder if I could use AT3 synced to Scrivener next time around for everything, including the story bible. That would give me the expansive writing space of Scrivener needed to flesh out my story (a more in-depth outline) and write the narrative, while keeping everything synced with AT3 for tracking and analysis of elements like story beats, locations, objects, and so on.
Thoughts?
A detailed, fully fleshed out outline has become an essential part of my writing process. I don’t necessarily need to know absolutely everything about the story, or even have it all nailed down so it can never change (it always does). But I want my characters to walk around the world I am asking them to inhabit, get to hear their motivations, their goals, their desires. How they start out in the story and how they change as the story unfolds, and how their change affects them and the other characters? Have I got some characters who are mere placeholders? Characters who need more work? A premise which works? Or one which leads down a dead end? All of which I want to ask and answer before I sit down and invest months of work on a project which doesn’t have legs. And writing it all down, and asking those questions as I do, really helps me think more clearly and see potential issues and solutions.
Currently that detailed outline sits in Ulysses. Although I am seriously considering bringing my current project across to Scrivener. Ulysses has been dropping the ball a little too much for my liking recently, and Scrivener has oodles of power when it comes to outlining (as I’m sure you already know, as you use it). Although at this stage I’m not referring to the multicolumn outliner which represents the Draft folder. My detailed outlines have to sit outside of the Draft area. It’s no use to me to be confined to a notes section, or metadata text box in Scrivener. Else I’m returning in some part to the constraints AT3 currently has for me.
Which does raise an interesting workflow question which I have been pondering. Where does AT3 currently fit into this? And, more importantly, how could it fit into it in a future text export version of AT3?
My current thoughts are that as AT3 currently stands, the two sit separately. In the current version of AT3 I can’t write expansively. So I have to flesh out the full outline and its multiple iterations inside, say Scrivener, and then when I am happy with that, split the narrative elements out and move them to the Draft folder and sync them and each of the character and location and any other item documents back to AT3.
In my dream of a future text export version of AT3, with hopefully a bigger, more expansive writing area, I would hope that I could write every part of the outline in AT3. Then export a detailed outline document in Word format into Scrivener and review it there. Then iterate changes in AT3 and export it again as version 2. And so forth, until I am happy with it. Once I am, I can sync the structural scene by scene narrative elements and characters and locations etc straight into folders in Scrivener and then use them to track the various story elements. Same AT3 file, but different outputs for each stage of the writing process.
In terms of Scrivener working as a story bible, some of it I’ve described above. But it obviously needs a full text export in AT3 to yield that detailed outline. Scrivener has flexible and powerful ways of linking documents internally. Just as Obsidian does (minus the graph view of course). It even has backlinks (or incoming links) which pop up in the bookmarks section of a linked document and autocomplete suggestions when creating links. So, absolutely, you could utilise that, regardless of whether AT3 adds textual export or not in the future.
Not sure if any of that helps?
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I’m into my 3rd month with AT3 and Scivener but also use Obsidian for research and initial crafting of scene fragments. The new Bases feature in Obsidian has enabled me to status these fragments and work them to a place where they go into Scrivener for drafting.
I could not be happier about writing using these three tools. The syncing between AT3 and Scrivener works flawlessly.
@ahansonauthor - regarding expansive text, it would be nice to have notes attached to scenes like Plottr does; something north of summary (synopsis). For me, it would be satisfactory to just scrape the text from the rtf “note” for a scrivener scene and the text from the character files - and send them on a one way trip into AT3; keep the gospel in Scrivener.
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Looks like Aeon releases major versions every Q4 of the year
https://www.aeontimeline.com/release-notes
3.4 was released in Nov 2024
3.3 in Nov 2023
3.2 in Aug 2023
3.1.4 in Mar 2022
3.0 in Oct 2021
So somewhere between September to November 2025 we’ll get 3.5