Timeline - New
Timeline is a visualization tool that displays information sequentially in time. It is very suitable for non-fiction historical research and writing, plot design of fictional novels or scripts, and also for simple project and schedule management.
There are several basic concepts of the Lattics timeline that need to be understood first:
Event：
An event is something that happens at a certain time. It records the name, start time, end time, and details of the event, etc. In Lattics, events are stored in the form of cards or articles. One event corresponds to one card or one article. Cards and articles are essentially the same data in Lattics, except that cards are stored in the card library as a knowledge base, while articles are stored in the project as articles to be seriously written or published.
In the timeline, you can double-click the canvas to create a new event, or drag a card or article from the card library, project outline, graph to the timeline to turn it into an event.
Each event has a start and end time. The default is the time point to which you drag and drop. But you can set a time span by manually in the event time range panel, or you can drag time span indicator to extend it.
Events can also be set to different color markers, different shapes, to mark it to facilitate the distinction of different event types.
Note：In order to expand the scope of use of the timeline, Lattics also supports adding files to the timeline, that is, placing the file on the timeline as a special event. However, please note that Lattics does not support editing these files, but only provides a convenient way to present them in a time dimension. Editing these files still requires software that can edit them.
Track：
Even a very simple story or history, also needs to be composed of a series of events.
The track provides such a capability. It can accommodate a lot of events and arrange them in chronological order on a track. When the events are very dense, the later events will be superimposed on the earlier events.
The track can be renamed, and set a background color to distinguish it. It can also be dragged and dropped to change its position in the lane, and even to different lane. When dragging the track, all events in the track will be moved together and keep their time order unchanged.
Lane：
For a more complex story or history, there are often many characters and plot branches that develop in parallel. If a character or a plot branch is a track, then multiple characters or multiple plot branches require multiple tracks to carry them.
The Lane is used to accommodate multiple tracks. A Lane can accommodate 32 tracks by default, which is enough to cope with very complex stories and histories.
Lattics supports the creation of multiple lanes, because when analyzing very grand and complex history, such as the history of Britain, the United States, and China in the 19th century, 3 lanes are needed, each of which reflects the history of a different country. Together with the three lanes, you can compare the possible relationship between the order of many events in the same period in the three countries.
The lane, like track, also can be renamed, set background color, and dragged to change position. In addition, the lane also support folding and unfolding to save screen space. Lanes can also be adjusted their height by dragging their title lines.
Each project has a timeline
Lattics is a writing tool, so each project is considered a writing project, which may be a book, a paper, or a report. Therefore, each project will have one and only one timeline. there is no need to create a timeline separately. You only need to switch to the corresponding project and open the timeline tool.
After the above basic concepts, let's introduce other advanced features:
Time zone positioning
Lattics' timeline can display a very large time span, from hundreds of millions of years ago to hundreds of millions of years later, but the screen size is limited and can only display a portion of it. So, when you need to view or locate a certain time period, you can use the calendar icon at the top of the interface to enter the time you need to locate. We provide the "Today" and "This Year" options by default for easy use
Search
Lattics provides two search modes. One is the "focus mode" that highlights events in the timeline. In this mode, events that meet the search criteria in the timeline are highlighted; the other is the "global mode" that searches the entire Lattics database. In this mode, articles, cards, and files that meet the criteria are displayed in a list. You can drag them from the search list to the timeline to turn them into an event.
Adjust the timescale
Lattics supports time scales including: minute, hour, day, week, month, year, 10 years, 100 years... all the way to 10 million years, which is enough to handle event management of various time spans. Under different time scales, the distance between events will change. For example, events that occur two days before and after will be very far apart at the scale of minutes, and may not even be displayed on the same screen. However, they will be very close at the scale of years, and may even appear to overlap.
The adjustment of the timescale is very simple. You only need to two finger pinch the touchpad of the laptop to zoom in and out. You can also adjust the slider in the upper right corner of the interface, or directly select an item in the time scale list.
Finally, Lattics's simple and easy-to-use design principle is also applied in the timeline. You can easily and freely operate any element in it. You can drag the timeline slider at the bottom to move the content you want to display on the screen, or you can move it left and right by move finger on the touchpad.
The above is the guide of the timeline tool. It seems simple, but we spent a lot of time and redesigned it many times to make the actually very complex function simple and easy to use, so that the seemingly simple interface can cope with very complex historical research and fictional story design.