User talk:Erik Zachte/EasyTimeline

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[edit] Graphic not showing

I have succesfully installed EasyTimeline (no errors) but can't see the graph in my wiki. I can't find any support information or any means to diagnose my problem. Do you have any suggestion? User:Mcasatti

[edit] ET

Jeluf's ET implementation is looking good already. He suggested checking in the code into CVS. Would it be possible for you to also maintain the code over our CVS server? That would make collaboration a lot easier. There are several graphical CVS clients for Windows such as WinCVS. Of course you don't have write access to the CVS server yet, for that I would need your SourceForge username.--Eloquence* 20:25, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Pacific War

Hi Erik, the only real contribution of Nazi Germany in the Pacific Theatre was naval; U-Boats and raiders/auxiliary cruisers, e.g. the Kormoran, which sank & was sunk by HMAS Sydney off Western Australia in November 1941 were operating in the Indian Ocean from an early stage of WW2 and some Nazi naval forces later used ports in Malaya, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies (e.g. U-862[1]). I intend to include a little on this in the Pacific War article at some time soon. Regards,Grant65 (Talk) 04:32, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline documentation

I was rather expecting some nice documentation to be prepared which would be resident within Wikipedia, probably on Meta-Wiki within the Manual of Style. I just don't feel comfortable with the documentation for a Wikipedia feature residing on an external site: it doesn't feel consistent. Call me obsessive or anal-retentive if you like (nothing new, I can assure you :-) but in this kind of situation I like to have all my eggs in the same basket. I have no idea of the status of your website, but if it should move or even (fates forfend) disappear we would be left bereft. Your idea about a LotR timeline is a good one, and I have some other possible ideas (some alas involving non-standard calenders such as I mentioned the other day, so they'll have to wait): I'll have to see if I can squeeze enough contiguous time out of RL Work to put something together. Ciao. --Phil | Talk 08:32, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

I was thinking of having a go at using something like html2wikipedia, or maybe being bloody-minded and just hacking it together myself. Basically I wanted your OK to use your original text, since you went to all that trouble putting it together. --Phil | Talk 11:44, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline version identifier

It might be a good idea to support a syntax like

<timeline version="1.2">code</timeline>

By default, the latest version would be assumed. This would make it possible to support multiple versions of the program simultaneously, so that old timelines would not have to be rewritten. What do you think?--Eloquence* 05:06, Jun 2, 2004 (UTC)

I am not quite sure a version id would work well: no-one will add the id until needed; once they notice someone has fallen over with the new version, they would have to establish which version worked well, which may be three versions back. Using the id rightaway makes sure no bugs will be fixed automatically with any edit/save. I think I have to do my utmost to keep the syntax downward compatible. When behaviour is modified I will have to add a functional tag that request this new behaviour. Erik Zachte 20:12, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline

Yeah, I was just playing about. I found it quite easy, I suppose, but then I'm probably not a typical Wikipedian in terms of technical ability, and certianly not lowest-common-denominator level. Other than the initial looking at things and fiddling, it seemed fine, though using variables makes for more easily tunable pictures, it also makes for less readable syntax, IMO. Also, sometimes previewing the timeline would result in no picture, and I'd have to preview it again, sometimes needing to change something (a bug in the rendering code resulting in a non-standard image file?). But no, it was quite do-able.
Thanks for the hard work you've put in to give me the opportunity to play with timelines!
James F. (talk) 13:47, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

There seems to now be a bug in the EasyTimeline code - if I edit my timeline test (say, change the wording), the preview shows a rather broken layout (but the text does indeed change); see, for example this test...
James F. (talk) 01:10, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline colon bug

Check out Template:Timeline CGI in movies. The bug is self-explanatory - colons in links confuse the timeline script that thinks they are defining some parametres. Paranoid 23:09, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Fixed. Erik Zachte 23:07, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Can't get bars in the right order

Hello, I'm es:User:Comae, from the Spanish Wikipedia. I've been translating meta's EasyTimeline guide, and attempting to do some timelines for our Wikipedia. But I can't get it right with es:Template:Línea de tiempos de reinos de España. Bar titles are in the right order, but bars are inverted. Could you please take a peek at my code? Thank you very much. --es:User:Comae 23:41, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Fixed. Erik Zachte 23:07, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, Erik!! --es:User:Comae 00:10, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Soviet bug

I had to revert to a pre-easy timeline version of List of leaders of the Soviet Union since the version with easy timeline obliterated the table that was supposed to appear on the right side of the page. If you are able to fix it could you also modify the timeline to include Malenkov? Thanks. AndyL 11:36, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I'm using IE Explorer 5.1 for the Macintosh. What happens is that the table that's supposed to appear to the right of the graph appears no where on the page at all while the footnotes appear after a lot of white space. The graph appears on the left side of the page. AndyL 17:23, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Just in case you're looking at my reverted version of the page try this link AndyL 17:25, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] A suggestion

I'm Comae again. At the Spanish Wikipedia we have been talking about genealogical trees. It would be very useful for Mithology, kings, Tolkien, and others. The trouble is that we can´t find an usable way to do it, getting links in the tree. I've used HTML lists, but they don't make the cut. Tables are difficult to edit and correct. I was trying to do it with timelines, which may come in handy, but it's not as intuitive for non-tech people to edit later. Now, I see you are already busy with all the trouble with timelines, but I thought you may use a suggestion for future versions, or find an alternative. Thank you for the patience. (I hope you can understand this strange babbling I call "my English") --es:User:Comae 01:03, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Don't worry, I feared it. We are Wikipedists, not Superman. Thank you anyway. Also, I'm glad you have your priorities right ;D --es:User:Comae

[edit] Tour de France vs Soviet leaders

Tour de France works for me. AndyL 07:08, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Parenthesis "(, )" don't work in links

Can´t get working links in timelines with parenthesis. For example, I can't link es:Plutón (planeta) in a timeline. Could you fix it? Thank you very much. --es:User:Comae 18:32, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Comae, yes it is a bug and I will fix it, but it will take some weeks before a new version is online. In the meantime you can code it as follows (click edit page for code)

[edit] Timeline on fr:

Bonjour, I hope it's the right place to submit such observation : copied Template:Timeline_Tour_de_France_Winners into wikipédia in french but the result is a blank page. Someone told me it's utf-8 related problem. Thank you for all the features you did ! Greudin

Greuding, there are two issues here. Yes EasyTimeline does not handle UTF-8 code yet. I can't tell you when it will, as this is a significant adaptation, it involves custom font support for one thing. I will surely do this, I'm only very busy on another project right now. However you should still see something, an image with some garbled text, or when you input contains errors, an error box. Both do not happen on several Wikipedias, only old images are still shown, so someone made a change which disabled EasyTimeline, I tried wikitech yesterday but got no response, I'll try again. Cheers, Erik

[edit] Template:Timeline Tour de France Winners

No one seems to be able to update this so that it works. Any idea what we are doing wrong? Rmhermen 20:01, Jul 25, 2004 (UTC)

Somehow somebody messed up, so EasyTimeline is not invoked on any Wikipedia since a few days. I tried to reach a developer with server access through wikitech two times, but too much is going on there apparantly, will try now on IRC. Erik Zachte 22:37, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Update: EasyTimeline disappeared form the server some days ago. I has been reinstalled but is not yet active. Further research needed. Erik Zachte 03:32, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Any news on when EasyTimeline will be back? I wanted to update the geologic timeline with corrected information (as seen on Geologic TimelineGeologic timescale), but I see that EasyTimeline is still not working (at least not for me :) Gwimpey 03:56, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
I haven't forgotten it. Several people looked at it. Script was missing from the server. Also access rights were wrong, script could not run. Then Apaches were out of sync on this module. So three steps forward but there is still a missing piece. Now that I have server access I can do some more digging, but I'll have to be slow and careful as I don't know Wikimedia internals well enough yet. Erik Zachte 04:05, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline fixed

Congratulations! It looks great now. It's a pity our beloved 'eñe' it's still unsupported :( Maybe the spanish characters test table in es:Wikipedia:Líneas_de_tiempo#Fuentes de letra could be helpful... Anyway, we can go back to work again! Cheers!--es:User:Comae

[edit] ATaleOfTwoCases

Thanks for the EasyTimeline-generated timelines! I became aware of them via Tour de France. But I have a gripe as well, possibly not directed at you but having to do with Category:Graphical Timelines: too bad this and the other similar timeline categories aren't titled like Graphical timeline etc (lowercase t in "timeline")... Since categories can't be Moved like articles (at least not by mortal wikipedians -- don't know about sysops or wikipedia developers) I guess there'd be quite a lot of work fixing this. The cat titles where "timeline" is the first word is OK, of course, likewise the templates. --Wernher 21:20, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I plead guilty. I did come up with that category name. By the way I just realize this page starts with "Editing User talk:... Are there clear rules about this? I know the rules for normal sentences, with subject, verb, etc, but I'm not sure in other situations. For instance it is quite customary to capitalize all major words in a book title. Erik Zachte 02:50, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] UTF-8 support in Easytimeline

Thanks for your fine work on the Easytimeline module. There's a minor glitch however - UTF-8. I urge you to add UTF-8 support to Easytimeline now that more and more Wikipedias have been converted to it. Hope to see an UTF-8 enabled EasyTimeline soon. Regards, Kpjas 18:22, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

EasyTimeline has been made UTF-8 aware recently. 2 caveats: only extended ascii range accented characters are recognized so far, and a few of those, e.g. è ñ are missing from the internal font used by Ploticus (which does the rendering). Complete unicode support will come once external fonts support has been added. This will take some time (months), as I am pretty busy with other Wikipedia work right now. Cheers, Erik Zachte 22:41, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Bothering you some more, first easytimeline is great thanks alot for making it and in turn giving us all a great tool. I know you're currently working on full unicode support, but in the meantime would it be possible to do some kind of replacement to support the following characters: A Á B (C) D Ð E É F G H I Í J K L M N O Ó P (Q) R S T U Ú V (W) X Y Ý (Z) Þ Æ Ö (The Icelandic alphabet) so that timelines like these: is:Snið:Tímalína íslenskra forsætisráðherra will work? (the ð character doesnt and the links are incorrect.) thanks. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 14:43, 2004 Aug 16 (UTC)
I'm sorry, till external font support has been added there is not much I can do. Here is a list of extended ascii characters (special symbols omitted, and out of ascii order). As you can see some characters have no counterpart in the Ploticus font and are replaced by unaccented characters (or shown with wrong accent).
ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆàáâãäåæ
Çç
ÈÉÊËèéêë
ÌÍÎÏìíîï
ÐÑñ
ÒÓÔÕÖØòóôõöø
ÙÚÛÜùúûü
Ýýÿ
Þßðþ

Adding external font support for the whole unicode range is second on my todo list, but I'm currently very busy with another Wikipedia project, it will take quite some time (months) before this issue has been resolved. Also it is not a trivial affair, I will have to patch Ploticus (open source c program) in the process, to make it suitable for EasyTimeline requirements (unicode fonts have variable character widths, this has some implications on how Ploticus shows inline links) So please be patient and either delay working on timelines or add some comment in the script that explains why characters are not yet rendered properly (or else other people will try to correct it with no succes). Thanks, Erik Zachte 17:21, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Just like our French and Icelandic colleagues we are very enthusiastic about creating various timelines in the Russian Wikipedia, but this is not possible unless we use latin names for events and persons which is not favorable in this case.

Is there any way a third party could contribute to development of Unicode-enabled version of EasyTimeline? -ACrush

As I have heard recently, current Ploticus does already support UTF-8 (Chinese as well as all the others), so it might be not so big a problem to tackle in upgrading Easy Timeline! Amen. --ACrush 10:36, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is a bit more complicated than you think. EasyTimeline allows embedded links in a text. This is crucial on a wiki. This is something that Ploticus does not support. So EasyTimeline works around Ploticus by drawing texts in segments, non linked text, linked text, non linked, linked, etc. With unicode fonts, which are generally not monospaced, texts can only be positioned properly if one knows the length of a text segment in pixels, given a certain font name and point size. In fact unicode fonts are so much different in size depending on which font is used that even without embedded links text positioning would be a mess without these metrics. In Ploticus chart texts are often only placed along the axis or tuned for a specific chart, so that is a difference with Wikipedia. Since Ploticus has freetype support it is logical to add this function to Ploticus so that EasyTimeline can query for these metrics (I have a proposal for that on the shelf). I know I promised to add unicode support long time ago, but the thing is I have several projects which take more time than I have free time besides my day job. It is certainly my goal to return to Easytimeline this summer. (In fact I offered to do a workshop about it on Wikimania, that will serve as a good reminder) Erik Zachte 21:03, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

If you know someone who can build both a Linux and Windows version of Ploticus, based on these instructions, that would be helpful to speed things up. I tried to build Ploticus for Linux, I believe I used Mandrake, not sure, it is quite a while ago, which had wrong libraries at the time. Erik Zachte 21:17, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I 'd like to see UTF-8 working. Especially the links. If variable font is a problem, why not adding a symbol infront of every text and link on that symbol instead of whole text. If the symbol can also be specified, that would be great help. I can use the symbols beside the color to categorize the events.
I compiled Ploticus a month ago using http://www.cygwin.com/ on my XP. Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. I needed to modify your perl script to bypass os detection. It thinks it is windows, but it is linux really. I used it to work offline.
I have vacation now and one or two days to spare for this issue. It would be great if you could compile a modified Ploticus under cygwin so that I can test script modifications under Windows. I'll post a Ploticus patch on your user page somewhere next week. Erik Zachte 9 July 2005 12:47 (UTC)

Progress report: I spent the last week of my vacation to dig into this external font/unicode support issue. I got it working on cygwin. Now I need to ask the author of Ploticus to provide a new Linux version with my patch applied (so that Ploticus can be queried for font metrics). Again if someone can build Ploticus exe on Linux with these instructions that could speed things up considerably. The problem is I don't have Linux myself, only basic knowledge of it, and my attempt to prepare a Mandrake compile PC failed (Mandrake complained about missing libraries for Ploticus build and could not add them automatically) According to [2] RedHat or Debian seem better suited for it. If you can help I'll send you the patched c file.

Good news is with proper font (e.g. very impressive shareware font code2000) most languges can be displayed.
Bad news is Ploticus (or underlying FreeType libs) do not show Hebrew, Arabic, etc in proper right to left direction. Erik Zachte 01:31, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Musical pitch range

Thanks Erik for compliments. I want put this to an English version on en:. I speak little english. Is the title musical pitch range OK ? Lzur 11:50, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Vocal and instrumental pitch ranges. Lzur 13:35, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In Template:Vocal and instrumental pitch ranges link to "basso" is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/alto_28%voice). It's should be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alto_(voice) or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alto_%28voice%29 Lzur 13:43, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline

Is it possible to make playoff trees in EasyTimeline? // Sander of Sweden 08:35, 2004 Sep 18 (UTC)

With perseverance you might be able to bend the syntax into a playoff tree. But the resulting script would not be very intuitive as a model for reuse by others. A html table seems more appropriate, until someone makes a new <playoff> extension. Erik Zachte 13:07, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Take a look at wikitex which is currently being tested on Wikisophia: there is a tree-drawing tool which might help. --Phil | Talk 07:59, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeLineScale

Hello! I'm working with a timeline over swedish goverment secretaries for various departments (it's here!) and I've run into some problems. I would to have years as major scale and election years as a minor scale but the problem is that the period between parlimentary elections changes from 3 to 4 in 1994 (i.e. the next election was in 1998 not 1997). This appear to be impossible to accomplish?! (i've tried "LineData" but the lines are too thick to fit into the chart). Cheers!/ Narym 18:13, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I added width:0.5 for LineData. I'm afraid I'm a bit behind with the documentation, some options are not yet covered. Erik Zachte 20:28, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Thanks, great work! Narym 21:21, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] How to install EasyTimeline in an own MediaWiki project?

Hello!
At first I hope you understand my school English...
I am running my own MediaWiki project (inspired by the Wikipedia) and I like the graphs, generated by your tool very much. I would like to have it included into my wiki, too (like in Wikipedia), but I can't find any documentations about it. At your site I only can download the script for using it "offline" at my local computer - or am I blind and couldn't see a page called "How to include EasyTimeline into MediaWiki"?
Perhaps you can give me some hints on my German talk page, how to do this...
Yours, --Erlando 17:36, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Timeline_Classical_Composers_Medieval

Apparently the Template:Timeline_Classical_Composers_Medieval was incorrectly the same as Template:Timeline_Classical_Composers_Classical. I hope I changed it correctly?

Donar Reiskoffer 11:02, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline vertical bars

Any chance we might eventually have the ability to create multiple vertical bars that don't overlap. I was playing around with it and apparently the only option is a single overlapping vertical column. Just as an example, it would be nice to be able to take a chart like you see at Template:Timeline Geological Timescale and turn it on its side so that the three vertical columns are side-by-side. —Mike 09:06, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

Mike, as a test I took this unual 'timeline' from [3] and rotated it 90 degrees (I removed the texts which would have been been misplaced on the map, as they are in hard-coded coordinates). I would say these bars are vertical and non-overlapping. Is this what you want? Erik Zachte 14:29, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Yes, that works. It looks like it is because I wasn't using the 'bar:'. And I couldn't find any example that used multiple vertical bars to copy from. Thanks —Mike 19:45, Jan 16, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with Timeline reported on Meta

Are you aware of the problem reported m:Help talk:EasyTimeline syntax#Timelines and Templates here on Meta? If you put a timeline into a template, it is apparently not possible to use parameters because the transclusion system doesn't substitute the parameters inside the <timeline> tags. --Phil | Talk 18:01, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

You might not be the person to talk to about this, but the English website link at statistics for all Wikipedias no longer routes directly to the English page. Moogle 03:56, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Links aren't working in my EasyTimeLine graphs

If I put a link in a page it is highlighted like a link but is not clickable. I have my own mediawiki setup. I just installed (05Mar2005) the latest EasyTimeline.php and EasyTimeline.pl so I have the latest versions. I copied the code from an example, so I verified I am using the correct syntax. EasyTimeline seems to work in every other way, that I can tell. It just does not allow links. I am running on a Linux server. I am using EasyTimeLine to show (at a high level) development schedules. Since I have the latest EasyTimeline, I am assuming this has to do with my setup. Any ideas on what could be causing this?

Please check revised Help:EasyTimeline_activation, no ready-made solution, but possibly some useful hints. Please give feedback when you solved this. Thx. Erik Zachte 23:49, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I checked out the link. The workaround submitted by Twhite worked for me. Thanks for the help! --MikeKordik 18:48, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That fix worked for me, but the links aren't quite right. They look like http://www-intranet-dev.mathworks.com/wiki/index.php/%241/Theodore%5FRoosevelt when they should look like http://www-intranet-dev.mathworks.com/wiki/index.php/Theodore%5FRoosevelt. Do you know why this extra "$1" is in there? Is it left over from a failed substitution? Thanks for your help! Matthew Simoneau 21:14, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link colors in EasyTimeline

Being the developer of EasyTimeline, I'd like it if there's a way to customize the link color. The reason that this is needed can be shown at User:KelvSYC/Timelines, where my "history of the NHL" timeline (a wip) has a bar color corresponding to a team's colors. The blue ones, of course, obscure the links to the relevant team pages.

Also, speaking of feature requests, I'd like proper centering support, as the links are slightly off-center (it's left-aligned to the center of the bar), but it's something I could live without.

kelvSYC 01:50, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline for Biology

Hello Erik Zachte! I would like to introduce my template for evolution of mankind http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0ablona:Hominidae Is there anybody working on similar evolutionary templates? Regards, http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedista:Snek01 --194.212.142.251 19:38, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline

  • hello, Erik. thank you for everything you made (and make) ;D here we have a timeline. try to click on Parménide... there's a little problem with the accents, no ? ciao ;D Alvaro 16:39, 2005 May 5 (UTC)
  • sorry, I didn't have seen that Alvaro
  • A possibly related problem: some links in these timelines seem to be replacing spaces with 5F in URLs, where it should in fact be %5F, and thus breaking the links. This seems to occur only after a comma or an accented character (see the lower of the two timelines in particular). — Dan | Talk 02:09, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Definitely a bug. I'll put it on the list. Thx Erik Zachte 12:20, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Links in EasyTimeline

I've had difficulty with two elements of links on EasyTimeline - parentheses and anchors. To make an anchor (like caca#5) I was able to use caca%235. But caca (food)%235 doesn't work - the link looks like caca28%food#5) - and using a %28 gives caca 25(food)#5. Is there a workaround for this? Thanks. --SPUI (talk) 10:25, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Aha - I saw the post a while up the page. Replacing the space with %20 worked. --SPUI (talk) 10:28, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Argh, but now the anchors aren't carrying through. The URL has the anchor but when I click it doesn't actually use it. 15 works fine. --SPUI (talk) 10:37, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

I'll put it on the list. Erik Zachte 10:56, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Another issue - not sure if this is a bug or something I'm missing. This gives me proper links on the left side. But when I remove the floating 7, the links disappear. --SPUI (talk) 17:30, 14 May 2005 (UTC)


"Yes, this has been reported before. ET does not generate a clickmap when no links are found in the PlotData section. I hope to start working on the todo list within a week or two. Erik Zachte 09:55, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Strange request

Would it be possible to add the ability to use an image from Wikipedia as the background for the timeline? This would allow dotmaps to be created without making each image separately (though I'm not sure if it would be possible to get both axes scaled). --SPUI (talk) 07:09, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sundanese timeline index

On the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TimelinesSU.htm I found the title "Graphical Timelines on Sudanese Wikipedia". The correct one is "Sundanese", not "Sudanese". Sundanese lives in Sunda Islands, and Sudanese lives in Africa. kandar 03:16, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline Question

I want to get the Bar titles on this timeline (here) to be at the top of the bar, instead of at the bottom. EG: I want "Leader" to appear at the top of the yellow bar. Is it also possible to have the bar titles at the top AND bottom? --Commander Keane 6 July 2005 11:23 (UTC)

Axis labels are always shown to the left and at the bottom of the chart. As a workaround I placed extra labels above the chart with TextData, using absolute positioning. Drawback is that translators will have to reposition these texts again. Erik Zachte 6 July 2005 14:27 (UTC)

[edit] GT

Danke, Erik. I left a response at the talk on meta. -SV|t 9 July 2005 00:21 (UTC)

[edit] Using Cygwin and EasyTimeline

I think it is better to use politicus with cygwin than compiled for windows environment. It compiles without any error (just a couple of warnings). Cygwin has png libraries. cygwin comes with perl (that might be an advantage :-) ). Emacs works very nicely under cygwin.

I can send you a compiled version. But they are also available from the politicus site. Cygwin version works. I checked. However, I think if you download the cygwin, you can compile it by yourself. If you will be developing more facilities you might like to have an enviroment that you can easily upgrade politicus by yourself and works like linux. Linux is your final target as wikimedia works under it, right? Here is some points that might help you on the way.

1) You can follow the setup rules under the cygwin site. http://cygwin.com/cygwin-ug-net/setup-net.html The default setup works for our purpose. Do not forget to include compilers and libraries while downloading (X11 lib and others will give you errors during the compiling if they do not exist in the system). Reminder; the default only includes the base pakkage.

2) after downloading http://ploticus.sourceforge.net/doc/dl.html?pack=plsrc#plsrc the source code under your directory use tar to unzip it. The compilation is same as explained in the poiticus. However, If you download everything (I advise you), you will see it comes with a prolog compiler. The command line for prolog is pl. Your Easytimeline tries to work prolog instead of politicus. I did not added the directory of politicus (pl.exe) to the search path. Instead I changed the line 3331 in your progam to point the exact location of the program. $pl = "/home/tommik/pl231src/src/pl.exe"

3) System sees the os is windows so it tries to compile to gif. Change the line 235 to this so it compiles to png instead of gif under windows. {$env="windows; $fnt="png";

I would like to help you, if you have problems on the way.

Thanks a lot for your advise. I'm going to try next week. Erik Zachte 03:25, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
I expect you did not compile with freetype support. If you do two patches are needed. Actually it took me many hours to get this working. Finally got it more or less right. I got several compile errors on X11 libs. First tried to upgrade cygwin and when that failed a complete clean cygwin install, which took hours:
/usr/X11R6/include/X11/Xos.h:156:26: X11/Xw32defs.h: No such file or directory

I found this file on the web and added it, hopefully the right version, seems ok. I also had to copy the two files (at least gd.h) from /src/gd16 to /src Erik Zachte 02:06, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

I did not get Xw32defs.h. The reason was; I was compiling for linux. When I change the make file for cygwin, I got the error. I guess you can compile pl for using windows widgets or something like that. I do not know any condition that win32 extensions would be required. Sorry, for the taking so much time, which you could used for easytimeline. --tommiks 08:40, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
Not at all, it was a great way to do testing. Erik Zachte 11:00, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
I worked for a while last week to make ming library work. The remark on the website is correct about using the old version. Newer version is an object oriented version. The library gives error on line drawing routines. I thought I can fix it, but ... I might try couple of hours this weekend, but .... I have a valid reason for ming to work. Please check the section belong to that.--tommiks 08:40, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Complex Timelines and their problems.

When you are developing a map that has couple hundred dates, the image gets so big that it does not fit to size limits. I changed the limits, this time map got so big it lost its attraction. Flash is vector graphics. Sizing works nicely. If I can make the ming library work, I want to see what facilities this library brings. I would like to limit the drawing area to svga size but the graph as big as it can get. Than pan and zoom the image within the drawing area using flash routines. --tommiks 09:00, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
You could run EasyTimeline outside Wikimedia with option -b which means 'bypass size checks'. The check was needed in Wikimedia to avoid people making a 10 Gb file just for fun. You could also try SVG automation. EasyTimeline already makes SVG chart. See for example [4]. I saw colleague of mine doing great work with pan and zoom routines in SVG. Basic pan and zoom are already part of e.g. Adobe SVG viewer (works under Firefox too), but he added navigation controls, in fact treated data as 3D so that user could see a cross section for a certain date. Unfortunately he did not want to show me the code. Job protection. Erik Zachte 11:00, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
I use easytimeline work on the events (dates) and organize them so that they act as advance organizers. However moving around a flat text file is not effective. Is it possible to have something like two files. A data file and a program file. By playing with the referances in the program file to the data we can shape the image, and keep the dates intact while doing this. This also gives chance to filter the dates without loosing them. Maybe more than one program file to the same data??? Or better two data files, one for point events(at, mark), other for period events(from-to).
I'm not sure I understand what you want. A program file? Again for navigation, pan and zoom? Erik Zachte 11:00, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
If you seperate the event data, which I mean the date or period and its textual explanation, form the codes (program) that from the events on a unique map by assigning location, color, size and with general plot commands like the period, linedata, textdata, this way, a file (table) of events could be reused for different timelines. This file can consist of hundrets of events. Anyone who wants to develop their own specific timeline to explain their concept can pull the events (maybe using unique event IDs) from the event file and develop their timeline. Lets take EU's development timeline, as an example. By developing indivual countries history timelines, witout rewriting the specific occasions one can create a EU timeline by pulling the events from each country and adding specific EU dates on top of these. ALSO, what I recognize is that timelines are not objective, they are subjective entities based on the perception one takes in forming them. So, an event, like terrorism timeline, can be represented (using the same dates) couple different ways. That is what I was originally targetting. Every differnt timeline has to redefine the dates and events from scratch. If the event data and program (to build the graph) is seperate, this would ease the process. ANOTHER factor is for abstract concepts (such as social movements) dates are not solid. As one continues searching for more information the dates changes (maybe not months). It would be nice to change a date of an event and see it is reflected on all the timelines. I hope I'm more clear about what I really meant this time.
I did not know about svg format. It worked fine. I began to read about this format. I think I can use this format. Only disadvantage I can think of is that it is not as wide spread as flash.

[edit] EasyTimeline: Lines connecting points on bars?

I asked a question about how to connect points on two bars over on m:Help_talk:EasyTimeline_syntax -- then I discovered that this page is probably the easier way to get in touch with you. Thanks, --MarcSherman 21:11, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

This variation does not yet exist. I can put it on the todo list, but don't expect it too soon. By the way what would you use it for ? Erik Zachte 00:59, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
Well, a usecase I can think of for the standard wikipedia would be to link up causality in different timelines, or say on a timeline of Kings of the United Kingdom, a link from James I on the England bar to James VI on the Scotland bar.
The use case I need it for is on my company's internal mediawiki, where I'd like to use EasyTimeline to document our Subversion branch tree; I want to plot each branch as a bar, and show branch creation and merges as diagonal lines between points on the bars.
It would make sense to position lines relative to bar position instead of absolute position, but I realize now I will have to redo the calculation that Ploticus uses for where to place the bars, based on number/width/offset on the page. Like with exact positioning of texts for variable pitch unicode fonts this may involve a patch to Ploticus to return that kind of info, don't expect this anytime soon. With some creativity I'm sure you can work around this limitation and mark transitions with coloured text or something like that. Use anchor/align attributes to put text just before (anchor:from align:right shift:(-5)) or after (anchor:till align:left shift:5) a bar.

This brings to mind another important feature we'll be needing soon -- the EasyTimeline docs suggest a max year of 9999 -- is that true, or can the year go into 5 digits? Thanks, --MarcSherman 15:32, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all the help, Erik. It turns out that the kinds of charts we needed were easier to do (and maintain) using the GraphViz extension, instead.

[edit] Easytimeline requests

Greetings. Is there a place where people can make easytimeline requests? (Not requests for Easytimeline functionality, but requests that someone make an easytimeline for a given article.) For example, the messy scatterplot at List of films ordered by uses of the word "fuck" should definitely use easytimeline instead. Thanks, – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 14:03, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Time to align

Hello Erik. I'm finding your EasyTime program very useful and simply cool. I'm only have troubble with it when I try to get things to align. For example I made this and everything worked out fine, but when I tried adding two bars to this, nothing really wants to line up. Anouther question for you is can text be vertical anywhere? Thanks. Zhatt 19:57, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

Hi Zhatt, you defined three bars in BarData, if you remove "bar:T text:", the empty bar disappears, which made it seem that the other bars are not aligned. No vertical texts at this point. For a small text you could simulate it with ~ between all chars.
One advise use the smallest font size only if absolutely necessary, it makes the charts almost unreadable when used all over. Better break longer texts with ~ and use a different vertical shift. See [5]
 Define $wrapped     = shift:(,1)   # shift texts that wrap over two lines slightly up (other texts are shift:(,-4))
 Define $nowrapped   = shift:(,-4)  # in war and events sections wrapped is default so use this for exceptions

Cheers, Erik Zachte 21:25, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Erik. I just figured out I had that extra bar defined before I read your reply, but thanks for the other tips. This is a great piece of code and is highly underutilized.
Zhatt 21:35, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Anouther problem

Is there something wrong with this code? I'm showing only code without the tags because it seems when I try to compile that code, Wikipedia either gives me a server error or crashs! It was working fine when I was in YYYY formart, but when I switched to MM/DD/YYYY format, it crashes. What's wrong?
Thank you very much, Zhatt 23:16, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

I figured out that if I change all the 01/01/YYYY to 02/02/YYYY it works for some reason. I can change them all slowly back to 01/01/YYYY but after a while, I still get a server error. I'm having trouble telling if it's unrelated or not. Zhatt 23:31, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
You probably got "The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request." The server is out of order right now intermittently anyway. See also [6]. Erik Zachte 23:53, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
Heh, yeah, that might be it. Um. One more thing... is there a way to bypass the ImageSize limits? Because this is getting out of hand. Thanks again.
Zhatt 05:05, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
The image size limits have been introduced for mediawiki (one can bypass them offline) to prevent people from inadvertently or on purpose generating a 4 Gb image and thus fill up the server. I might expand the upper limit a bit in the next version. Erik Zachte 09:17, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 2 links in an easytimeline statement

Erik, is there a limitation to only read the 1st link in a statement? It's not mentioned in the Help. See {{Timeline history of international cricket}} and for example, the 1877 datapoint. The link for MCG doesn't appear, but James Lillywhite does. -- Ian ≡ talk 15:36, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I'm afraid there is a limit of one link per text segment. Sorry for not mentioning it in the Help. Erik Zachte 23:27, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Unicode progress

Hi Erik, was wondering if there was any update on the status of Unicode support in EasyTimeline. Have been eager to try it out for Chinese timelines. Thanks! Fuzheado | Talk 09:45, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] timeline question

hi; i've been looking for a new way to make the List of Mir visiting spacecrafts and crews easier to read.. i don't know much about this easy timeline, but do you think there is a way of doing it? do you think the outcome would be easy to read? thanks, Mlm42 12:27, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] thanks

I guess you get tones of those, and the most probably more well spelled, but I would really like to thank you for the wonderful easytimline, it is really useful, it easy to understand to, even if making a timeline takes some time. But the result is great. Thanks a lot. /Joakim Larsson 20:21, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline / time axis

Hi,

Is it possible to create a timeline with the lower figures on the right side of the time horizontal axis, as :

  • 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Thank you in advance

[edit] Timeline lag

Firstly, I too am very thankful for the timeline syntax, a truly wonderous addition to the Wikipedia. When creating a timeline I'm finding that attempting to preview changes and save drafts often fails to render the .png - the page just hangs. I assume this is down to the variable performance of the WP servers that we all know and love. But I wanted to ask you (and any other timeline builders who may be looking in) whether you have the same problem. Sometimes the submit/preview just hangs, other times it takes many minutes to appear. --bodnotbod 18:49, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] timelina question (axis)

Hi :) I started to build some timelines on polish wikipedia - I've just done some timelines of kings etc - and i have one problem with them - is it possible to reverse time axis? how to do it? it is very uncomfortable to read it from the top to the bottom, espacially when whole timeline is long, - and informations in article and timeline goes in reversed orders. Please reply on ma polish discussion page :)

nameless (My discussion page)

TimeAxis = ..... order:reverse
See for example Polish timeline [7] Erik Zachte
Thanks a lot :) I see, that this question repeats on your page - does exist any timeline FAQ? I am a beginner in timelines, and often have small, typical problems (which aren't explained on meta), and don't want to interrupt you with every single question ...
nameless
FAQ could be good idea. FOr now just ask, no problem. Erik Zachte 00:17, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

You have probably noticed, that brion compiled new version of ploticus and updated the EasyTimeline for mediawiki projects to handle ttf fonts. Unfortunately, the use of proportional fonts breaks the link-placing mechanism. On the other hand it is rather difficult to find a free monospace font that covers wide character range. I haven't dig into the problem very deep, but it seems solving it would require using perl's GD module. Brion told me that you plan to release new version of EasyTimeline soon, so I would like to avoid duplicate work. Could I see the current state of the new version? I have also a small patch for enabling xrgb, so I'd like to know if I should post it to bugzilla or just wait. ''--matusz'' 23:56, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

So Brion did read my post after all. Just did not bother to answer, even when he caused the problem in the first place, even though I addressed him personally. Please read my post at [8]. Erik Zachte 00:44, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Piped link in timeline breaks formatting

I tried to disambiguate Pantheon to Pantheon, Rome in the timeline Template:Roman Empire, which broke the formatting (so I have reverted myself). Other similar edits on other timelines seem to work and cause no problems, so I wonder if this is a rare bug or if I am overlooking something. Could you please take a look? Thank you, Kusma (talk) 18:02, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Brion broke EasyTimeline is a shortsighted attempt to bring unicode quick and dirty, without telling or asking me. See also my post at [9]. Brion choose to ignore this, although he did read it. Please complain to him, through wikitech or chat. I can't work on the definitive solution right now. Erik Zachte 01:56, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

So, um, is there any way I could help with that definitive solution, so that nobody feels any need for those quick and dirty half-solutions? ''--matusz'' 13:38, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Btw, the problem mentioned above is fixed easily by using mono-spaced font, instead of the current proportional one. ''--matusz'' 14:21, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Not really, the script only knows of internal Ploticus font, and has metrics for five available font sizes hard coded. The monospaced font will have different character widths per font size. Some script tweaking would still be needed. I will soon publish the script and guidelines for what needs to be done, so that someone else can take the final steps. Erik Zachte 18:22, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Disambig fix needed at Template:Timeline History of Chess

Greetings. Template:Timeline History of Chess contains a disambiguation error: "William Jones" should refer to William Jones (philologist). can you fix this? Cheers! BD2412 T 15:12, 4 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Underscore character in text

"_" (underscore) is translated into a space in timeline text. If I do need an underscore, is there anyway to escape it. Thanks.

You can use &#95; for normal text, for link use double underscore (this should work for normal text too, but it doesn't). So ' text:[[X__Y|X&#95;Y]]' gives

hmm... Copying this script to my site doesn't seem working. It still shows 'X&#95;Y' in the image (double underscore for link works). For normal wiki text it does work, so I think it's either ploticus (2.32)' or timeline.pl problem.
It probably has to do with the unicode feature of Ploticus that recently has been switched on. I remember now that html char support is part of that. I'm not happy with this well meant but quick and dirty unicode patch as it breaks lots of existing timelines. I hope to publish a better version shortly before or after New Year. I'll look into this underscore thing as well.Erik Zachte

[edit] Dude... you rock.

An Award
I award this Graphic Designer's Barnstar to Erik Zachte for making timelines on Wikipedia infinitely more accessible and easy to use.

I just came across your stuff on European classical music and you're my new hero. --IvanP 20:25, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Gee, I'm flattered :) Erik Zachte 22:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pie Chart

Hello! love the EasyTimeline; I have just begun to discover the possibilities it opens! I am curious if you or anyone else have plans to port the pie chart type from ploticus as well? -- Dwxyzq 20:57, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

No plan, me :( It might be better too have a separate extension for stats charts Erik Zachte 18:24, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] download of Timeline.php

I get a "proxy error" when I try to download Timeline.php or Easytimeline.pl from sourceforge. Are they available anywhere else? --65.110.167.71 21:18, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I pieced together something functional from CVS logs.It's here if anyone else wants it.(Obviously, go to sourceforge.net first to see if the the real version is available )--65.110.167.71 16:27, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bar maps in EasyTimeline

There's a bug in EasyTimeline, which I discovered when doing the wrestling timeline at User:kelvSYC/Timelines:

Apparently, the links in the bar area don't seem to be working, and it's due to the fact that the <area> element itself isn't being printed, but the attributes are (creating a bunch of junk text at the top). kelvSYC 18:46, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, a bug. I added an empty link in the PlotData section to trigger generation of <area> code, until bug is fixed (may take a while) Erik Zachte 22:33, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline / Unicode

Recently I found that EasyTimeline works well with cyrillic in en: (User:Nk/Timeline; look at the bottom) but not yet in bg: (bg:Потребител:Nk/Timeline). Do you know what is the reason and how could we solve the problem? Thanks. --Nk 16:02, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The image was still from before the unicode patch. The image is not rendered every time someone reads the article but only at article save time. Only when the script is different from an earlier version a new image is created. So I added a space somewhere in the script and saved again. Now the text is in Bulgarian.Erik Zachte 20:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Thank you very much. I could guess myself :) --Nk 15:21, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Easy timeline and other templates

Hi, I would like to use easy time line with other templates, mainly color templates, we have a project going on that keeps the color standard for all canadian political parties in any number of given articles using templates see Template:Canadian politics/party colours. If possible can you make the color function read a template? --Cloveious 04:59, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

EasyTimeline does not access the Wikipedia database. It is invoked in the background by the PHP parser module. Having said that I'm not quite certain I understand what you have in mind. Erik Zachte 22:00, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline >> PNG

Hi! Hw can i get a PNG picture from a timeline template ? Thanks--Cloclob € 14:42, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean. EasyTimeline generates png images all the time, at least on Wikipedia. Just rightclick with the mouse and select 'copy'. If you use a Mediawiki installation on Windows you get a GIF image instead. Copy and past the code in a temporary page on Wikipedia then, just preview, don't save. Erik Zachte 23:54, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Easy Timeline

Sorry to bother you with yet another ET query :) This one is about wikilinks - my attempts to wikilink the timeline for Richard Francis Burton ended in a horrible failure, with the wikilinks misaligning with the rest of the words (here is the version of the page with the problem). Would you be able to suggest what I am doing wrong, and what I would have to do to fix it? Many thanks, and thank you for your wonderful tool! TheGrappler 21:28, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

This problem was introduced when someone updated the ET script for unicode support in a horrible way: ET breaks a text segment with inline links in several parts to render link in different colour, with unicode font text metrics are different. After wikistats update I hope to update the ET script with a better unicode patch, hopefully in June. Erik Zachte 23:58, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
Many thanks for your response and all your brilliant work here. It is much appreciated. :) TheGrappler 19:44, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] EasyTimeline

Hi!

I've read that you're the creator of the great EasyTimeline extension; therefore, I wanted to ask you for suggestions how List of European Union member states/timeline, intended for use in the article of the same name, could be improved, streamline, made to look more professional, whatever. Any kind of comment would be greatly welcomed. =] Thanks in advance! —Nightstallion (?) 09:47, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline from SMILE

Hi,

I'd like to draw your attention to the Timeline project.

I thought it might interest you as the author of our EasyTimeline extension.

Regards,
Kpjas 06:45, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

P.S Link to this subpage on your talk page is somehow broken.

=Thanks, Erik Moeller already mailed me about it. It is very nicely done. Very nice presentation and navigation, pictures too. Possibly easier to control (haven't tried that yet). Still Easytimeline gives more control over the layout, more variety in presentation schemes. Yet I expect SMILE will increase in functionality as it is such a promising idea. Erik Zachte 00:54, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tour de France again

Template:Timeline Tour de France Winners is malfunctioning, as of the addition of Floyd Landis. The prior version works fine, but adding one line (and incrementing the last year setting) results in overlapping text. Extending the length of the image does not help. Your assistance would be appreciated. --Dhartung | Talk 20:56, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Many months ago a fix was introduced (not by me) for unicode support that breaks exisitng timelines. Now EasyTimeline uses a variable width font and texts with embedded links (which are broken in parts and drawn seprately in black and blue) are positioned incorrectly. The erorr only shows when a timeline script is updated and a new image needs to be generated. I promised a better solution many months ago but still have not had the opportunity to finally deliver, but I will when time and circuamstances permit in coming months. You can revert the article to old script, for which image still exists and add a comment that update needs to be postponed. Sorry for delay. Erik Zachte 21:29, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. I've done what you suggest and given the article editors the choice of keeping the Timeline as is or replacing it until a new version is available. --Dhartung | Talk 07:10, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Future dates question

I've been playing around with EasyTimeline to generate a graphic to plot out the time covered in the books at List of BattleTech novels but ran into a problem with dates in the far future. Apparently, ET won't generate an image if the dates are later than about 2400. Any chance this is slated to be fixed in a future update? I can see it being useful not just for my own purposes but also for other fictional future histories, like Star Trek (though I think all those dates would fall below the cut off) or others. (Of course, even better would be to find out that I'm doing something wrong and ET will handle this situation just fine!) Thanks. --Patrick T. Wynne 21:49, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

This has to do with the way Ploticus (plotting package used by Easytimeline) stores dates. As happens with most implementations dealing with date/time the internal representation is number of seconds since a fixed start date. In this case 1/1/1800 if I rememember correctly. So dates before that are not possible anyway. Any representation based on a count of seconds that is implemented as a finite integer number has an upper limit of what it can represent. I hope this makes sense. For your diagram rounding errors due to switching to format yyyy (whole years) might be acceptable? Cheers, Erik Zachte 05:43, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
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