Suggestion: Granular Timeline with custom/dynamic color coding.
I was looking at a timeline of Seleucid and Ptolemaic rule and I was trying to get a feel for the relationship in time of when Qumran was active, when the Temple Scroll was suspected to be written, all in comparison to the other Qumran documents.
The first problem I ran into was, the more specific I was in the search box, the less the "default" content would populate the timeline. I know this is the expected behavior.
The second problem I ran into was I would loose were the Temple Scroll was on the timeline because everything is similar in color/size and my eyes were not directed quickly to see the essential relationship information. Now I know "essential relationship information" is very subjective in this type of use of the timeline but I would guess that people use the timeline in a similar way and is possibly normative.
To overcome the subjectivity to some degree, you could have all the "default" events that populate the timeline, (because of the specified time range in the left hand box), would populate the timeline with the default color scheme already used.
Specific items that are typed into the right hand search box would have a dynamically/custom colored scheme that is more visually striking in relation to the "default" populated events.
e.g., all the events that occur between 316BCE - 250CE would populate the timeline with the default color scheme and be controlled by the drop-down menu check boxes(i.e., "on" or "off") but any "item/key word" used in the search box (i.e., Qumran, "Temple Scroll", 1QpHab) on the right would have a custom/dynamic color scheme that would be more visually discerned.
I hope that makes sense. [:D]
...and perhaps someday you could even develop a more mixed info-graphic timeline.
Comments
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The box in the upper right corner is a filter box. The timeline will only display events that match what you type in that box.
It sounds like what you want is the Find tool. You can hit Ctrl-F, or select the "Find (in this panel)" option in the panel menu. This will open a box in the upper right corner that allows you to navigate to matching events. Type what you want to find, and then use the arrows next to the box to navigate between events that match. An indicator will help you find the event in the display.
Andrew Batishko | Logos software developer
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The box in the upper right corner is a filter box. The timeline will only display events that match what you type in that box.
It sounds like what you want is the Find tool. You can hit Ctrl-F, or select the "Find (in this panel)" option in the panel menu. This will open a box in the upper right corner that allows you to navigate to matching events. Type what you want to find, and then use the arrows next to the box to navigate between events that match. An indicator will help you find the event in the display.
Thanks Andrew.
Sorry, filter yes. "Search" was my bad. [:)]
I have used the "find" but frankly it causes more problems since it changes the date time range once you start typing in the find box (usually collapsing the date range smaller). [:(]
If I'm specifically interested in events within a fixed range the "Find (in this panel)" will not honor that fixed range (because it jumps to that item with what I perceive is a left screen view alignment looking forward in time(line)) forcing me to use the "-"(minus) button to expand the date timeline range or drag the screen view to re-orientate to the date time range in question or type the range again into the "date range box". Then of course the "Find (in this panel)" is no longer relevant and wants to display the next event that matches.
I may be going about this all the wrong way but my work around is to use the filter to specify everything I wanted to see, which requires a lot of pre-look-up to determine naming conventions used in the timeline... somewhat a long way to get what I'm looking for since most of it is there until I use the filter to get a little more granularity. Then there is the issue of too many things having the same default color scheme hence my suggestion of custom/dynamic color coding.
Here is what I was trying to do.
I want to look at the event panel with a fixed date range 325BCE to 200CE.
I want to see within this fixed date range the ranging data of:
- Seleucid rulers
- Ptolemaic rulers
- Priest (Zadok, Hasmonean,etc., etc.)
- Specific Apocrypha dates
- Specific Pseudepigrapha dates
- Qumran inhabited activity
- Qumran manuscripts w/ date ranges
- many other events within the 325BCE to 200CE range.
- All of the default populated data with the ability to turn them on or off with the "Subject"/"Type" drop-down menus
- Ability to custom color some of the displayed events because of relational focus/importance.
With specificity I want to see the Temple Scroll as a central focus on the timeline in relation to the others above, within the fixed date range. Another way to say it might be that I want the Temple Scroll date range of 30BCE-30CE to be the center position of the timeline and everything is displayed relative to the Temple Scroll within the fixed date range of 325BCE to 200CE.
If I expanded or collapsed the fixed date timeline range the Temple Scroll would stay locked in the center of the timeline since it is my relational focus. (e.g., I collapse the fixed range by 50 years at each end. From 325BCE - 200CE down to 275BCE - 150CE. The Temple Scroll who's range is 30BCE-30CE would stay locked in the center.)
Currently none of this is possible so I made the suggestion in the first post that I conceptualized might allow the task to some degree.
Now that I have fiddled with it for most of the morning I see that one of the main issues that would need to be overcome is to be able to lock in fixed date timeline ranges (i.e., 325BCE to 200CE) and to declare a "view from this locked point in time" (i.e., Temple Scroll) within the overall fixed date range of the timeline itself.
You'll have to pardon my vocabulary/naming choices since I'm sure there is probably a set of terms to use. I've tried to incorporate the obvious ones but it still seems somewhat convoluted.
Hopefully this make more sense.[:)]
Unfortunately what I have ended up describing here is the need for me to build a custom visual timeline. lol Hello mind map software.
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