I never really thought it would be, but thanks for confirming. No worries.
They’re two different things.
I actually have no view on the “extras”. I don’t know what I would have said if I’d been asked about them before they were added; I think it is always problematic to remove existing features because some users will depend on them. Which is an argument for being very careful before adding features.
I’m also generally against artificial limits on text box content; where they exist I tend to assume it’s down to a programming requirements.
A family tree is not a timeline, but a defined set of relationships. iirc the only timelines in such programs belong to individuals in the tree. It is too restrictive because of the focus on those individuals. Even basic research looks at individuals who may or may not fit in the tree. The focus quickly loses information. Even a simple marriage certificate will have witnesses, location, celebrant as well as the married couple; all of those offer lines of further investigation. Genealogists use a variety of tools to record their research; one prominent investigator on YT actually uses Word documents.
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Just out of curiosity: For those who want a more powerful text editor for the narrative, is this about metadata, or is the idea behind it to write the actual text?
AT3 was primarily an outliner for me, and for those who don’t use either of the two supported writing applications, there was no suitable export until now. That’s why I published a LibreOffice extension a while ago, which extracts the metadata directly from the file and creates decent synopses as Office documents, including character sheets etc., right up to a novel skeleton.
I don’t know whether this was widely used, but the whole thing is now obsolete because the file format of AT3 has been changed.
I’ve since written my own novel organizer that syncs perfectly with AT2, which is still the best timeline program for me.
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The idea I’ve been discussing, at least, is to write the narrative. I realize that it’s possible to cobble together a perfectly acceptable writing solution using separate apps (I certainly have), especially if you having coding skills as you do. I was just imagining the market that awaits if AT were to move in this direction. Obviously, it’s an idle discussion, as the idea has gained no interest from our Melbourne friends in over two years. (Not a complaint!)
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Yes, it’s true, everything on this subject has already been said, but not by everyone. 
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Quite true. I hope I didn’t inadvertently declare the discussion at an end–not that anyone would listen to me anyway, haha. 
I would like to be able to write actual longer text entries for my various items. We have a small box for Summaries that doesn’t expand well, you can’t format in any way, and it’s stuck off to the corner in the sidebar. For a quick few sentences it’s sufficient, but for anything more it’s kind of a pain. A few of the other views allow you to see more, but again, there’s no changing up the font, or allowing for several paragraphs unless you want it to look disjointed and out of place.
The meta-data is part of why I love Aeon. Things are connected, relationships can be set, you can see entries and anniversaries and important things on the timeline. It has all of my important and technical worldbuilding info, especially now that I’ve added a lot more custom item types and relationships between them. Being able to write a few pages about these items or relationships would really solidify this as the premier tool.
If I have a specific kingdom in Aeon, I want to be able to write a three page overview of it there, so I can see that while also working on the timeline and meta-data and everything I have connected to said kingdom. I think this would be useful for everyone, not just writers, though. Geneologies were mentioned- would not a large space to write bios about each family member be really useful? Or if we’re setting up meetings in a corporate setting, a place to write down the notes and minutes and conclusion?
Scrivener is the writing/novel app (I don’t mention Ulysses only because I’m on PC and have never used it). You can arrange your files in a way that show their story, export it in various formats, compile it, format it for publishing, etc. You can also technically world-build in it, which most don’t do, but it’s there as a secondary function in case you want to make entries for Characters or Items, etc. But I’ve met maybe 2 people who use it for worldbuilding-- most use other programs for that part.
I think Aeon should be the flipside of that. Where it’s all about timeline/world/event building, with the possibility of using parts for long text entries if you desire.
(Exporting to text is something that is coming up. So being able to take those pages about the kingdom/family-member/meeting and get them as a txt or doc file would allow people to have backups, or a format to import into other programs, but also allow the connection in Aeon to be there if it needs to be checked.)
Now, I would also personally then write my chapters/actual story in Aeon under my Chapter items if that were implemented. Others may use that for outlining, drafting, or more detailed summaries, etc. But I don’t think Aeon should be marketed or thought of as a ‘Writing app’ like Scriverner is, just because you now can write in it. I feel like this is where the main hangup seems to be. I don’t think the direction of Aeon should be shifted to a Writing App, but I think it should give the option to those that want it.
I realize I’ve been really involved in this thread and writing really long replies about an app- but I really love Aeon. It’s invaluable to me as a writer. I want to see it grow and get better and continue to be updated for years. I’m in the beta and often give suggestions and post when I find a bug. It’s important to me and my stories. I’m arguing this because I feel it’s important and would really benefit everyone who uses the program in some way.
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I agree with this wholeheartedly. There was, some time ago now, a request for a pop up window for text editing, which, if my memory serves me well, garnered a lot of interest and feature request up votes from users. The devs may argue that the pencil windows which open separate from the inspector complete this feature request. But I would still like to see such an extended writing space.
Of course it wouldn’t be a full writing app function such as that advocated for by yourself or @SCN but in theory you could copy text from it into other applications, should you wish.
In terms of styling or formatting text within such a window I would imagine titles or headings would come direct from the expanded text box titles, automatically, when editing properties, say. For example, I track Story Grid elements and use Three Act Structure alongside John Truby’s expansion of the Three Act Structure (22 Steps of Story). So expanding the text box for Inciting Incident would have the title Inciting Incident in the UI at the top of the window. Then, if the user wished to include this in a text export, the title would be exported along with the text itself. Other formatting could be beneficial (numbered lists, perhaps quotes etc so the user could structure their thoughts) but personally, I’d only need such a text edit function to be relatively limited, as I would be doing my ‘writing’ elsewhere.
In terms of text export formats, some may prefer markdown (Obsidian and Ulysses users for example) or Word or RTF (Scrivener and Ulysses do a great job of importing and in Ulysses’ case, converting these formats) would work. And perhaps the devs could offer a number of different formats for a future text export.
If I misunderstood your original post then I apologise. Perhaps you were never advocating for a full writing app function in the first place?
Andrew.
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So you use AT for extensive world building. This idea is particularly obvious in AT3 with its many degrees of freedom. I hope you won’t be bored if I explain why I don’t do that.
I’m a systems engineer, and designing a system implies describing the structure and behavior of the system to be developed. Traditionally, this meant writing textual descriptions supported by diagrams. In the last few decades, this was to be replaced by modelling. This means that a so-called metamodel is defined, consisting of, among other things, the types of model items and all possible relationships between them. You also define which of these items can be connected to the other items via which relationships. Based on this, the actual model is then constructed, both statically as a structure of items and relationships, and dynamically in terms of time-related behavior.
This process can be cumbersome, but the benefit lies in a quasi-guaranteed consistency and completeness. Furthermore, no more long descriptive texts should be written, as these could reintroduce ambiguity and contradictions.
Sounds familiar? Sure, Aeon Timeline is a modelling tool. But even before I knew AT, I tried to design my story world, including all the character relationships, with the help of a technical modeller.
I soon realised that a story world is not a technical system and that the advantages of modelling are limited to minor aspects of the entire creative process. One of these aspects is the flow of narrative time, and Aeon Timeline (version 2 at the time) was a real revelation. Another aspect could be family relationships between the characters, which is a very specific use case of modelling, and for which, if you want to do it right, it is best to use specialised genealogy software.
And as most writers realize, world-building is truly fun when you write extensive descriptive texts and provide them with illustrations without being formally restricted. Having said that, I don’t think a modeler like Aeon Timeline is the right tool for organizing the entire worldbuilding process.
This is all my personal opinion, you can of course see it differently, and Aeon Timeline also tempts you to do so through its structuring options. But as I see here in the forum, the users always come up against limits, be it through complex hierarchical structure, be it through the claim to be able to write extensive and structured text. There may always someone be disappointed.
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Plaintext systems like markdown are specifically described to record formatting in editors that don’t have it.
Many online editors, forums etc, automatically accept markdown instructions when they are typed
Yes. Exactly. I use Markdown extensively as a Ulysses user, one time Obsidian user and Drafts 5 user. Also as a blogger on Medium. It surprises me how many people dislike it. But it is so much more easy to use than a styles based system such as the one in Scrivener. Having said that, I suspect a range of export formats for text export would suit AT3 better, as it would appeal to more users. In terms of text editing I would be more than happy with Markdown. Other users would be out off by it, perhaps.
As always, horses for courses…
I prefer rich text tbh . I’ve used colours for reviewing/editing all my life and need underlining. But I don’t write for the web, and can read and write markdown in plaintext. Easiest way of adding formatting in programs that don’t support it - which is common in textboxes to save computing overhead.
You didn’t misunderstand! I think a full writing app like Scrivener might be impossible in Aeon unless the team gets ten times bigger. If we’re being realistic, then a relatively simple text editor would be just as helpful, and I would be satisfied with that as an extended writing space.
Is this not something to be looked into and worked on in a living program like Aeon, though? SInce it moved to a subscription model, I assume it’s going to be worked on and fixed and changed over the years. We haven’t had as many updates as we want, but the idea is to be evolving and changing, and adding things onto the program.
What a wonderful thread for procrastinating!
On the subject of Markdown: When I look at the “showcase” thread, I notice that it’s not even a year ago that I offered a free Python script that generates all kinds of Markdown-formatted documents from the AT3 narrative. So it would even make sense to use markdown formatting with AT3. However, there has not been a single response, which leads me to conclude that there is no real need for this.
But it is also quite possible that the publication of the utility overlapped with the file format change of AT3, so that the topic is now obsolete anyway.
I love to visit the developer pages of other open source writing programs, including novelWriter. This began as a multi-file markdown novel organizing and writing application that quickly became quite popular for Linux users. Of course they wanted “smart quotes”, and so did the maintainer herself, so the feature was provided. Then someone came up like “it would be so cool to have the direct speech highlighted”, so this feature was implemented. Then someone chimed in: “In my language, we use dashes at the beginning of paragraphs instead of quotation marks. Couldn’t you …?”
In addition, of course, words had to be counted. No big deal, you might think. It didn’t work in China, however, where words and sentences are formed completely differently. And, as I then learned, in Korea too. Not to mention Japan with its three different alphabets. However, the developer was always open and endeavored to find acceptable solutions.
At some point, the possibilities of Markdown were no longer sufficient, so a proprietary “Tinycode” markup was added. Currently, someone would like to have the option of marking text passages as alternatives for export.
This shows very nicely where it can lead if you simply start with Markdown because it is so easy. And you know what? I would never write my manuscript with markdown, if only because it can’t flag foreign language text for spell check.
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Understandably, each of us tends to view the features of AT from the perspective of our own ideal workflow. Much of this discussion is just that.
Let me pose a hypothetical: Suppose AT has the inclination and resources to develop a fully integrated manuscript-writing component. By that, I mean that moving chapters and scenes around in, say, the Outline view changes the manuscript accordingly, and vice versa. In other words, it would function something like how AT/Scrivener or AT/Ulysses work together now, but within AT.
Here are my question: Would Aeon Timeline become considerably more interesting to novelists? Would the app gain a larger share of the market and draw in more resources for development?
I doubt it. I think the focus would simply shift to all the features of writing programs that it doesn’t (yet) have.
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Good point. I don’t think it’s easy to make money with software development, and the subscription thing seems to me to be born out of desperation, but what do I know?
I may not be representative here, but after extensive evaluation I did not upgrade from AT2 to AT3 because AT2 is already the top of the line for me and an unrivaled application in its domain. It is mature and stable and the file format is now unchangeable, which is the deciding factor for me.
As a Windows user, I groan every time a new update comes along that will “significantly improve the user experience”.
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Just to satisfy my curiosity, I’ve started a simple, unscientific poll in the Facebook Group.
I realize the developers have given us a hard “no.” Still, I’m curious. Also, I seem to be resisting working on my manuscript this morning. 
Huh, I read the reply as a “maybe” for a light editor. Hope I’m right, lol.
True, but that is a different feature than the one that interests me, at least.
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