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

Official Announcements
#63

@AeonRob - I’ve just wrapped up the video and was hoping to discuss text export with you. My recommendation would be to put them into markdown files (.md). Given how much time has passed, I was curious to see how these Q1 goals turned out - do we get them into the latest build?

Do you have a similar video for Q3??

I believe I bought this app several years ago, way before v3 3 and it’s wonderful to see the small team is still at it.

I have lots of thoughts, especially when it comes to how data is currently stored within the app, users’ ability to get that data, or export it. Have there been any discussions about loading this data into a GCP or AWS project & rapidly expanding functionality by integrating AI/ML models or even Knowledgebase Chat Apps? Even just a simple MCP server for Aeon Timeline could get very, very exciting for users, but also what then becomes possible for the application itself.

Considering spending some more time with AT3, and would love to know if you had 15-20 minutes to jump on a call & discuss the progress made thus far, that feature roadmap & if Aeon Timeline has any interest in an MLops Engineer integrating the latest and greatest in LLMs. Simply giving voice commands or talking with your timeline to make edits, for instance…

1 Like
#64

Hi everyone,

Sorry we’ve been a bit quiet lately, but we’re excited to now have an alpha build in the quality control stage as we prep for a beta release in the coming weeks.

We intended to reach this stage a bit sooner, but some things have taken longer than we’d hoped, and we’ve had a couple of issues outside of work to juggle along the way.

@ahansonauthor 3.5 will have a text export to both Word and Markdown :raised_hands: We’ll be really interested in gathering everyone’s feedback on the way this works and how the files are formatted once we’re in beta.

@jcachat Thanks for your thoughts on AI integration. We are very interested in the future potential of that, but it’s not on the immediate roadmap.

4 Likes
#65

If you go through and read all the discussions in this forum about export to Markdown, you will find many thoughts on format etc. but you should actually let people decide for themself, what’s going to YAML keys, what the want as headers, and if they want the export to go to a flat file system or a folder hierarchy, and let the users define what that hierachy should be based on… e.g. Event’s, People, items/entities, or more like chapters…
Because, remember that there are many people using Aeon for a lot more than just a writers tool…

My setup in Markdown have a folder hierachy based om objects like people, ships, addresses and houses, companies, ports and journeys, BUT I also have a complete folder hierachy built around how sources connect to repositories etc.

So an export tailored for writers will not do me any good at all.

Just as an example…

3 Likes
#66

I, too, like the idea of having YAML metadata definable, particularly if it can be mapped optionally to the various item types, relationships, etc. of AT.

I’m not entirely sure about how a folder hierarchy would work, given that an MD file is just a text file–maybe a hierarchical numbering system appended to the exported .md file names would work.

We writers would also love to leverage such export flexibility. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#67

A folder hierarchy could e.g. be made based on types, selected by the user…
Say you want a Hierarchal structure of your Location or place database, e.g. Country/State/County/Municipally/City/Street/Street Number (House) /Apartment number
and a folder structure for all your people
another folder for all your Items
and yet another for all your Events and Sub-Events

The best way to sort and order this will actually be to use a folder hierarchy, else your notes would be extremely long if you have a few thousand items… or if you use a flat file structure it would be really messy really fast, imagene 200K small files in one folder… (just an example)…

You can still link it all together with wiki links, but you will have a way to use the notes with other applications to, e.g. linking them from within a network graph software, a genealogy software or any other research tool…

You will also still be able to combine those notes to a longform both in Obsidian and Zettlr, as well as Foam for VSC with some of the addons or built-in feature in some software…

I use this type of structure for all my research, and mirror the structure I use in Zotero, the md file “vault” (Obsidian), etc.
Another great thing about this is that you can create a complete mindmap of your folder structure in Freeplane or create a network graph of it in the network graph software Tulip…

I know this is tools not many writers use, but for historical researchers and genealogists those can be powerful tools…

Same if you are a “based on a true story”-writer, you may want to separate the true story evidence from your “fiction” items etc.

Even though it is not a “modern” way to do stuff, a folder hierarchy is a really powerful way to store information when you want a clean and easy way to find “things”.

But of course, not everyone needs it, so it should be configurable, e.g. a checkbox “use as folder hierachy type” or a select list…

  • Folder hierachy (sub folder of “YYYY-MM-DD”)
  • Header 1 through 6
  • YAML key
  • Relation as wiki link

this is just some I picked from my head… could be done multiple ways…

2 Likes
#68

Hi @AeonRob that all sounds very promising. It’s good to know that 3.5 will be bringing text export, and to both Word and Markdown. That feels like Aeon is making huge strides to accommodate users who aren’t writers, as well as writers who may not use Scrivener or Ulysses. I shall look forward to the beta when it releases and to playing around with the text export functionality and seeing how it all fits into my workflows

Thanks for the update.

Andrew

3 Likes
#69

This is the bane of every development project ever! II’ve worked as a project manager for the last 15 years in product development, and I’ve only seen two or three projects deliver on the original timeframe. There is no solution to this, if there were a solution, some company would’ve already found and implemented it. IMHO, the best solution for a project like this is to have regular updates, and the update should come even it if its “no news”.

My subscription/payment expired early this summer, and I am waiting just as you mentioned for the new version before I buy/renew it. :smirk:

#70

I think that could make thing very complicated, and still not fulfil everyones expectations. I think a better solution would be to supply documentation of the file format or allow for an automated export (e.g. AppleScript command, command line parameter etc.) in a well defined format, YAML, CSV or whatever. Then there could a plugin cottage industry popping up…

1 Like
#71

They already have something similar for the CSV export… or at least had it…

And no, it’s not complicated, it takes some work, but it is not complicated… you can actually ask MS Copilot to do it for you with Python and QT or GTK…

#72

Are you thinking about the CSV import dialog? There you need to tie each column to an Aeon data field.

I would believe that the dialog of such an export could become quite complicated, there would be quite a few options, and there would always be someone asking for a new option or if an option could be changed, and then the code to handle all combinations… Since everyone’s workflow is so different I think it would be more efficient use of the team’s efforts to have them do as I proposed, and then everyone can apply the brain of their choice to get the resulting file into whatever workflow they use.

#73

Thanks, Rob! I’m really looking forward to the release, and will help as much as I can as a beta-tester!

I understand stuff happens, and I hope everyone is doing well.

#74

Try to focus on the solution, not the problems — and stop arguing just for the sake of it!

There is nothing complicated with a manual configuration that can be saved to a JSON mapping file and reused both for import and export = sync.

A fixed configuration isn’t going to work for everyone, because people use Aeon in very different ways. If an entity in Aeon gets exported as “X”, there will be plenty of users who actually need it as “Y” or “B” — and converting it manually becomes an enormous task.

For example, I have over 30,000 objects in one of my research Project in Aeon and Obsidian. If all of them get exported as “Y”, “B”, “Z”, but I need them as “Z”, “Y”, “B”, the export becomes completely useless. Reconfiguring that volume would take an unreasonable amount of time — and in cases where it’s meant to be a sync, it won’t work at all if you change a YAML key into a header or keyword.