Where are the relationships?

Q & A
,
#1

Hi all, I haven’t used Timeline for quite a while and now need to make a timeline for a new project, with lots of events and characters. Just updated to the latest version, but… I can’t seem to find what I need, and that’s the option to link characters as child-parent, spouse, enemy, lover, grandmother, you name it.

This used to be an option in older versions, but where is it now? I desperately need to make sense of all my characters!

#2

Hi @Cath,

In the latest version of the app, templates are simpler than before — they include fewer item types and relationships compared to the older templates.

Here’s a copy of the previous Novel template. You can use it to start a new timeline with all the family relationships already set up:
NovelTemplate.aeon (43.6 KB)

Any file can be set though to include any additional relationships you need, regardless of the template you started with.

If you want to add more character-to-character relationships in any file, you can do this by:

  1. Open Settings by clicking the cog icon at the top right of the window.

  2. Go to the Relationships tab.

  3. At the bottom of the left list, click Add to create a new relationship.

  4. Add a label for the relationship, like Spouse or Grandmother.

    • If the relationship label is the same for both characters (e.g. if Bob is Mary’s sibling, then Mary is Bob’s sibling), then also tick the box for “Relationship is bidirectional” .
    • If the relationship label is different for each character (e.g. If Joe is Tim’s parent, then Tim is Joe’s Child), then also tick the box for “Show inverse in inspector” and add the second label under “Inverse label”.

  5. Tick the boxes for Character under both “Items with a field for this relationship” and “Allowed item types for this relationship”.

Here are images of what the settings would look like for those sibling and parent examples:
Sibling settings
Parent and child settings

1 Like
#3

Hi Rebecca,
Thanks for the quick answer. I must be doing something wrong, because I either can’t get the Character box to show up, like in your example (see screenshot), or the Character box is present, but ticking it doesn’t work, because the newly added Relationship (in this case, Sibling) can’t be found in the Inspector.

But there’s good news, too, the old novel template seems to work! I hope I can somehow import the timeline I made yesterday, otherwise I have to add 86 (!) events again. But at least the characters will have a family :wink:

screenshot
screenshot680×992 66.1 KB

1 Like
#4

Hi @Cath,

Oh no that’s my mistake, I had incorrectly guessed at which template you were using!

It looks like you’ve started with the default General template or something similar (which is totally fine – templates are just a starting point, and all files can be customized regardless of the starting template). In the default template, there’s a “Person” item type instead of a “Character” one, but they act the same except for that labelling. So in this case, you should tick the two Person boxes.

I also missed one step – to have the Sibling relationship show in the inspector, you’ll also need to tick the “Always show in inspector” box. This will make it always show in the inspector when selecting a person – otherwise it will be shown a level deeper inside the More Relationships dropdown.

1 Like
#5

Thank you, that helps. For now, the ‘old’ template fits all my needs, that’s a relief.

1 Like