I bet most historical researchers or genealogists or people using Aeon for other projects than novel writing or longform writing isn’t member of that FB group…
One of the reason is because novelists and longform writers is very loud when it comes to critize everone that use software they use for anything but novel writing!
it’s like the ideas from anyone that doesn’t write novels is less important!
Personlally, I have never even heard of it until now…
I use Obsidian precisely because of this limitation…
By thinking a little “outside the box,” I can set up Obsidian to be a combination of a document-focused and event-based research tool, rather than a lineage-linked research tool like most genealogy software.
I conduct both genealogy and historical research because many of my ancestors were sailors or inventors, some with multiple international patents. Therefore, it becomes important to implement visual timelines and network graphs that can visualize both the “family history” and the timeline of the entire Norwegian Merchant fleet over several decades or the full timeline of multiple patents and where different people stayed at that time, it can help finding where a relative lived at the time or if they was in relationships/companionships with others etc…
This helps to find those lost connections when there are multiple people with the same name, born just a few years apart in different places.
There is so many ways to utilize a powerfull timeline tools as Aeon, and by be able to combine it with the power of a network graph or other type of research tools… it can help so many researchers finding lost connections… without starting to use huge systems like the Archers project, Omeka or Heurist
To find and connect all this information, it is impossible to use a table view, as there can be thousands of events for a single ship where sailors often changed ships on a “port-to-port” basis. Aeon is a really powerful tool for showing all those voyages for different ships and simultaneously displaying the lifelines of multiple sailors/seamen in the same timeline/graph. However, to link all of this, it is also important to view it as a network graph of links and relationships to find the right person.
The same goes for patents. To find the right people and figure out the relationships between all the names on a 150-year-old patent, an advanced timeline is as important as a network graph to find those relationships and links. For example, why is the signature of a known Norwegian merchant on a patent application from a locksmith? Or why was it the English vice consul who translated a patent application from an unknown mechanician?
So, for me, if Aeon just could have had a simple text editor with support for YAML headers and wiki-links, and those notes was stored as simple md files in a folder structure of my choice, I could implement a simple, but powerfull interoperable feature between a markdown editor and Aeon.
To be able to easily view and do small editorial changes on these md files inside Aeon when I find something, e.g. a possible link based on a time period, would have saved me some work.
Just the simple feature that a text editor window shows the linked file instead of have to go to the linked file feature, then click on it to open it in an external editor…
I don’t need any type of longform writing featur in Aeon, I can do that in Obsidian, Foam for VSC or in Zettlr, but to be able to do small edits in the text based md files when you open an item/object/subject in Aeon, that would be so helpfull…
Of course the dream would be a full import/export customized sync functon where you could define different notes to be e.g. a place, an item, a person or an event, based on YAML header information, and that those notes could be linked to other notes as notes/text/description/research notes/citations for those objects…
everyone has the right to dream, right?
Jaran, since I am one of the advocates for adding a long-form writing component to Aeon Timeline, let me apologize to you and anyone else who got the impression that those who are not novelists are not just as important to the community of users. I was only trying to make an argument, which I am now starting to regret, that the developers would increase their user base within the vast novelist community by adding such a feature. I had not thought then, nor do I now, that this would be a feature that wouldn’t also benefit non-novelists or would in some way be detrimental to them.
This is an intriguing idea. This is the first time I can glimpse how AT could work very well with, say, Obsidian. Now, if each .md file could be tied to an event in the Narrative or Outline views, we’d have a powerful tool for novelists and other writers, wouldn’t we?
You are not one of them, you have always been open for input and thoughs from others, same has Peter_T, it was not ment as any personal critics to you or any other in this post.
It is just a sad fact when it comes to writing tools and/or timeline tools (in general)… but it is a lot of the same when it come to other niche software, like e.g. Gramps communities when it comes to genealogy research…
Yes, it is what I tried to explain in my “longform text”, but English is not my native language.
As Aeon already have the “link to file…” feature.
If it instead of just being a link that you have to open in an external editor, could be a simple editor view, where you could have the basic tools for Markdown and RTF or similar formatting (a simple setting in the settings of what format to use, maybe),
Then Aoen would be a powerful tool for everyone that needs to create some kind of text, regardless of the project, AND you would be able to open the files or link them to other software without breaking formats or create massive workarounds…
You could define a md note to represent an Event, a person, an item or object or a place, just by a simple YAML key in the header of the note… e.g. “type: event”, “type: person”, “type: research note” etc.
Any wiki-links pointing to an existing notes would open that note or “Aeon Item”, the functionality would be near unlimitted, just by a simple text string… and some coding of course…
I already do this in Obsidian and/or Foam for VSC, and can also open those notes in Zettlr, another really great Markdown editor and notebook for academics and other longform writing.
I can easily also link my md files as links in e.g. Gephi or Cytoscape, as media files to a Gramps Object or to any other software that can link to a file.
So my “vault” of markdown files becomes a hub that links multiple software/tools together… some with more “internal support” than others…
PS. I have also tried to advocate for this regarding the Notes system in Gramps… it is just as difficult to get a hearing for these types of ideas there as it is among longform writers…
@Jaran: I find your project with the ships and the sailors fascinating. And it doesn’t push AT to the limits of its capabilities? Amazing.
Where does all the data come from? Is it already available on the Internet, or are you rummaging around in old archives?
When it comes to connecting AT items with external text files, wouldn’t this be a suitable case for the “Narrative” objects, which could then be provided with the necessary properties by default, so that they can represent a text file? This would have the advantage of multiple assignment between events and such items, including the graphical overview.
As far as Gramps is concerned, the case is different in that it is an open source project. Basically, anybody can implement the features they need themselves. This is the origin of the FOSS idea, but as I see again and again, it doesn’t really want to work with application programs that are not aimed at a technical audience, as there are usually many suggestions but few contributions. In any case, this applies to writing software.
ooh, It really push AT to the limits and then so… lots of limitations, thats why I use Obsidian and Foam for my active research now and use Aeon and Gramps only as “companion” software.
Most of the information about the ships voyages are found in old Norwegian and American newspapers, as huge weekly lists with 2-3-4000 posts, badly OCR’ed… = lots of editing.
I am trying to create a Python script that will create MD tables for me for this…
Other information comes from Lloyds, the American Immigration and ships manifests etc. most of it is just image files digitilized from microfiche and microfilm with next to no indexes…
Yes, most of what I use is actually accessible on internet, either in governments digital archives or National Libraries…
IT might be that some kind of templates for a narrative view could help, but I don’t know much about that stuff…
I have some templates for my MD files, it contains a pre-defined YAML header where I just add the keywords, some sections with different type of headers and sometimes different types of text etc.
How this will be defined/called in the English speaking writers world, I have no clue… sorry…
All I know is that most of my “objects” must be possible to add to the timeline, and that the subway view from time to time is really helpfull…
If I could just define types of notes in the YAML header, and with a start/stop date and other important timeline metadata, it would help a lot…
It is not a problem in a plain text file as MD to be forced to use a more softwarebiased key… e.g. “at_timeline: historical research”
“at_type: event”
“at_type: person”
and so on.
any other software would just jump the information they don’t use or you can configure it, as in Obsidian and its addons, to use the keys you want it to use.
Side note/digression
Regarding Gramps, it was a long discussion ones about the note system being way to limited, that was when I wrote a suggestion about using a file based system based on plain text…
As I am not a developer, I can only suggest features that might be of some help for both me and others that I see could benefit from something I have already found a solution or workaround for that could have been integrated as a replacement for something that doesn’t work…
a lot of people doing genealogy and using Gramps is actually asking for things that they don’t know actually just is another way to do research, e.g. they ask for feature for event-based or document-based research instead of lineage-linked research etc.
That is why I also have suggested multiple time a rework of the source and citation system in Gramps to support CSL, and why I have advocated for Main-/Sub Events… and “Events for Places”.
That is also the reas for why I at some time asked if it would be possible that Aeon 3 could support multiple parents for an event or other Aeon items, without have to create duplicates of those items.
E.g. a ship should be both a sub-item of a timeline item and the sub-item of a sidebar “company entity”, I don’t want the company on the timeline, but I would like to sort the ship under it’s owner or line at any given time in history… (this can actually be done in Gramps by using the Place hierarchy).
I will try to not go of track again in this post, I just felt it was neccessary to explain a little why I think and why I suggest what I do…
Edit: I just want to add, that I of course try to create this “data store” so that others can utilize it some time in the future, eg. as a huge set of wiki articles for the Norwegian historical wiki site.
that means I need to create it in a way so that I can easily filter out personal information (like the genealogy stuff that doesn’t have any real historical value).
Why has it to be a parent-child relationship?
If I’m not mistaken, you can create a network structure using self-defined relationships, can’t you?
By the way, I once took a look at the Gramps code which is Python and uses GTK. It looks quite well commented. The program architecture is like a plugin framework, so there’s a chance that a developer who wants the same thing as you will implement it some day.
Wow. I can see this in my mind.
It’s just my way of seing thing, I am trying to figure out a way to use the relationships in Aeon, but it is not as easy to visualize…
But the most imprtant is the search and find and visualize the time periods…
If you only use the relationship, you can not define a time period for that relation so you can’t visualize a ship in the timeline and the time period a person was a sailor on that ship…
If each relationship had a start and stop date, it would be possible to use it for my use…
As an example:
a ship is a sub-item for it’s voyage event, for each event, there can be multiple documents related to the ship AND the voyage, e.g. a ship manifest, but those documents are only relevant for the ship for that single event, if you use the relationship function in Aeon, you can not filter out the relations that is relevant to only one voyage, and at the same time of you only use relations when linking your ship to a voyage, you will net be able to link the ship to a manifest or a crew list for that voyage… when you try to filter data in a search, you will end up with everything that is related to the ship, regardless of the time period…
I need to be able to filter and visualize only on data that is for a given time period or even a single voyage…
At least I have not managed to find a solution or workaround for this problem…
If I use realtions I will not see the connection between a voyage the ship, the different documents and the people on that ship for that spesific voyage… e.g. if I try to search for people on the ship for a given time, and try to find who was no longer on board, I can not do that using relations…
PS. I do not know if I’m able to explain it in an understandable way, I have just stumbled over it as an limitation I needed to find a workaround for…
And the self defined relationships is not time-based, so it is “all or nothing” and the relationships are not visualized on the timeline…
Here is a quick structure:
Comapy 1
Voyage 1
voyage 2
If I tried to link the Crew manifests to the voyage, I would not have a link between the ship and the manifest, and when it is multiple ports, I would not have any visualized “collection” of the whole voyage etc.
the way I do it know is a cumbersome way, but the only way I have ound where I can visualize this, but then I can not visualize that the ship is in a fleet of maybe a few hundred ships as I can when I also can add it as a child to a parent item like a company…
It is all about be able to visualize it because it is so much data…
Peter, would you be willing to write this idea up and post it as a feature request? I’d do it but I’m not a developer. I suspect that you could put this idea into language that might appeal to our friends in Melbourne.
Yes, I remember that we had this topic quite a time ago.
I’m not a computer scientist, but to me this sounds like a classic use case for a relational database.
Instead of modelling the complex relationships in a visualization tool, couldn’t it be much easier to create the whole thing in the form of database tables and only visualize the reports in some form?
I’m sorry, but I don’t want to make feature requests here. I wouldn’t feel comfortable putting pressure on the developers without needing the feature myself.
The idea is simply to represent an external file with an Aeon item. This can probably even be achieved to a large extent with the existing means, because the implementation of links in Aeon is quite cleverly done (if I’m not mistaken, both relative and absolute addresses are stored, which protects the whole thing a bit against file moves).
It is quite possible that it essentially boils down to the feature request in this thread.
A realtional database works but a document based like mongodb or a network graph database like neo4j will work even better, the best would be a multi-funcional database similar to orangeDB. but then, I would need a developer or “programmer” to create the timelines and other reports… and I am a single person, I have no funds, no help, and my head, even though I can easily see the structure in code, cannot for some reason wrap around the field of code writing…
Therefore I need to find solutions that I can use, try to advocate for why the logic of my workflow and asking for features, can be of benefit of others that needs to do something a little outside the box, without making to much changes to the main usage of a software.
I can easily see why someone would want some writers feature in Aeon, but I would like that a feature like that was implemented so that it was somewhat interoperable with other software…
therefore a simple file-based note system instead of storing the notes in the Aeon file, that is not very easy to navigate as you know…
I really like this idea.
I can imagine that you can format a database report so that it can be imported into Aeon as a csv file.
Yes, that is not a problem, but then again… I would need to use multiple software and create different “interfaces”, e.g. reports for each of them and the data will be “locked” to that database without a easy way to use it in other systems or even giving it away in an understandable way…
It is way easier to create some wiki-links in structured or unstructured text files, than start to import the same files to a database, set up the links, connections, relations etc. and then try to create reports that visualize those findings, many of those realtions, I don’t even know about yet, and I find them in Aeon or in a network graph like the one in Obsidian, just by “coincidence”…
Did I also mention that I use Zotero as a document/ source system…
You know, if you can’t cite your facts, it is just fiction…
I kinda love that this thread has ‘devolved’ into working out ways to have it work with Obsidian. I had another whole post about how I wish Aeon could export information into YAML, or sync with Obsidian through YAML. It should be possible given how Aeon syncs terms and Scrivener.
But as I hadn’t heard anything from the developers about it becoming a thing, or being possible, after a few months I make this post as a compromise thinking at least I could add text to Obsidian and it may be easier to implement. And now we’ve gone full circle.
I’ve been following your idea of syncing Aeon Timeline with Obsidian with great interest. Until this discussion, though, I had not glimpsed how that could work, exactly. Now that I see the “how,” I join you in your desire to see this happen.
I have a Keyboard Maestro macro that is helping a little. If the Inspector is open and if it is scrolled all the way to the top, my macro copies the event title, switches to Devonthink, creates a new note with the same title as the AT event, and leaves the Devonthink URL in the clipboard so I can manually paste it in as a link in Aeon.
That’s far from a satisfying solution, but at least some friction is eliminated from the task of attaching a Devonthink note to an Aeon event.
The way I copied the title from the Aeon event was to assume the inspector was open and scrolled all the way to the top. KM then moves the mouse into the region of Aeon’s window where the event title ought to be in the Inspector, clicks, selects all (command-A on a Mac), and copies. Then it switches to Devonthink and uses the menu option to create a new note. I should probably switch to DT’s inbox before creating the note.
I think I’ll use my macro. The first goal was to experiment. It seems to help some, though.