I really like how flexible the Aeon Timeline calendar is…until you start adding events.
While I understand that it sounds good to lock down the calendar settings – number, order, and length of eras, for example – it’s simultaneously infuriating.
In my fantasy series I have 5 eras. I’ve already added them all in to Aeon Timeline with the proper names, order, and lengths. However, given the size of the series I’m writing I’m almost certain that minor changes will be required down the road. Maybe I’ll do away with an era to merge it with a previous era. Or maybe I’ll insert a new era where one didn’t previously exist. More likely I’ll just want to adjust the number of years a specific era lasts.
The problem is that as soon as I start adding anything to the timeline I lose this ability completely. And by the time I may have to make a change I will have hundreds of entries in place.
Since the calendar is mostly locked down after timeline events are added this puts me in a difficult position. I don’t want to have to remove hundreds of entries only to re-add them after altering an era, but I don’t want to work with an established timeline that the story’s development has rendered outdated.
Of course I realize that adjusting the timeline after adding items may be tricky…but then, that’s the whole point of this application, isn’t it? You can adjust individual entries, date spans, blocked by/blocking values, etc…, so why create such an obvious limitation in terms of adjusting the calendar properties themselves?
Just my thoughts.
-Bob
PS: The only way I can reliably get around the problem as-is is to create just a single era in which to put my entire story, and then add custom events named ‘Eras’ (or ages or whatever) to the timeline, under which all my individual events take place. That’s my goal, but it feels like I’m working around the app rather than working with it when I do this. So yes, easy to deal with, but I think it makes the whole process somewhat cumbersome.