But first, thanks all this work… especially for adding the “add by clicking in blank space in list” option for certain new item or edit windows. (Some windows still lack it which makes me wonder even more how i could do without it until now

My main concern :
Before i could test the export functions, something weird happened, a new problem which did not occur in v.0.3.1 on my Mac Mini — I was then under MacOS 10.5.7. I now use 10.5.8. Might be related (?) :

Anyway, in Story Arc View, when i switch back to Timeline view, the changes i just made in SAV are not implemented. I have to close and reopen the file to be able to see them (File which, for some reason, was saved with all its changes implemented… without any “do you wish to save ?” popup window from Aeon. (I did hit CMD S before closing but Aeon showed no sign of responding to the command in the File menu, which usually, in most software, becomes black for a short time.)

Even weirder : If i go back and forth from one view to another (as i did at first to test whether new elements had appeared in the timeline view or not), it becomes soon impossible to click on anything in the window (buttons, lists, etc. are grey) and the only solution is to quit through the File menu (keyboard shortcuts won’t work) and then reopen the file (which, here too, has been saved).

Not weird but annoying : even when i just move one item from one Story Arc to another, the software takes a lot of time to visually implement the change (several seconds) — the dreaded Mac OS rainbow wheel which would indicate processor slowness does not appear, so i deducted it has to do with Aeon, not the OS or the machine, but i might be wrong.

Finally (for now), a suggested improvement for Story Arc view : have long story arc titles wrap up in the lateral box, for it is hard to sum up a Story Arc in a few characters.

More later after i test the export functions.

NM

I will basically add an option in the Entity Management Pane to set the ‘age at first event’. This will apply to whatever event becomes the first event they are involved in… so you would say that the grandfather is 55 the first time he is involved in an event, and everything would be calculated from there (alternatively, I may make it associated with a specific event when it is set, just in case you do decide to add an event 20 years earlier, and inadvertently change his age by 20 years as a result).

I’ve been having a play round with Aeon Timeline for the past few versions and it’s a really excellent piece of work. I confess I wasn’t entirely sure how the story-line view was going to work, so now of course, I’m kicking myself: its so brilliantly simple. Congratulations.

Anyway, sycophancy out the way (all sincere, honest), I have one wish-list request for further versions.

Specifically, a facility to set an entity’s age at the time of their birth.

I know, I know, it sounds a bit abstract, but it would be very useful to be able to cut to the chase, particularly if there are large age differences between characters. If we could assume (say) that the granddad character is ‘born’ on the same day as the kid hero character, but is born aged 55, that would hack out a fifty year or so extension in the timeline which I’d otherwise have to keep skipping past — the time compression is good, but it would be useful to skip every single character’s day of birth, child-hood, adolescence etc.

You’d obviously still have to enter an exact day for this occasion, so it wouldn’t directly solve the question of ‘fuzzy’ dates exactly, but it would be very useful.

Other than that, best of luck with the development of the program. I think you’re onto something unique here.

Vince

I should also mention, that I am a mouse person, and use relatively few keyboard shortcuts, and so the interface is probably a little mouse-heavy for things like date entry. I will try to incorporate some of your suggestions for the next minor update, and will add the rest to the list of things to look at when I do the next big sweep on usability.

As for localization – as I said, this is something I will do last, so I will look for volunteers then. In terms of the application itself, it is just a matter of translating the menu items, and the various text that appears on buttons, windows, Inspector, etc. It would be a fairly small list, and being just one or two word grabs, would probably only take a few hours for a bilingual speaker.

If the user manual was translated as well, that would obviously take considerably more time, but I am not sure whether that would be necessary.

Great compression algorythm, bravo!
Many other comments at this stage (as per your request for feedback) :

• Bug in the Manage entities menu :
doesn’t take into accourt earlier changes to an entity made directly through the inspector if said entity is selected when you first re-use the menu — until you click out of the entity name and then click back on it (The “refresh” button solves this pbl in the entity/story arc views, but there is none here, and even if there was one, it would still look like a bug since we are in a text, not a graphic view .

(bug?) in the inspector, in the text date line, hours :
- 1) don’t show
- 2) can’t be changed
(they can only be seen and changed by clicking in the visual calendar on the right)

• Bug in the automatic transformation of 24hrs input in the visual calendar windows (see below)

– Suggested Improvements / data entry and management:

You did a great job at imagining @ creating the visual interface. But at the items management levels, the windows lack “create” and “delete” toolboxes buttons (Who doesn’t hate those very small + and – signs that are down there far away at the bottom of the screen, whether in Scrivener, StoryMill or elsewhere? They are so not Mac.)

Even better, and even more Mac, would be the intuitive and simple possibility of creating a new item just by clicking inside the first empty line of the list. Pleaaase implement that everywhere possible, doctor.

Including a “story arc” choice list at the creation stage of entities would be quite logical (instead of only providing the possibility to add SAs in the SAs window).

Also, addding individual tags management at the “manage entities” level. (i miss them very much there as it is much more convenient to assign tags from a general view like this than one at a time — they are easier to memorize that way and it prevents you from creating too many different tags.)

Offering a “24 hours day” option in the preferences would be very welcome – having to type AM or PM in a new box in the calendar is annoying to users from countries with a 24 hours system, especially at the end of the long date-creation process trough the small calendar (see below; ) — and If we first type “23″ instead of “11″ while AM is selected, the calendar changes “23″ into “11″ but leaves AM as AM => we end up with an erroneous entry.

In the “add event” window, it would be advisable to include a direct one line date and hour input instead of only the visual calendar’s, with its limitations.
(I would also suggest to improve the visual calendar visibility and use: include scrolling with tabs and/or arrows from the keyboard and the possibility to toggle between whole week/ month/ year/ century instead of making the user having to click on and on when s/he enters a historical event or old character birth date.)

Also, it would be a great plus to provide the exact day of the week for any date in time (past and future). Writers need that kind of info

(If you don’t wish to spend too much time on the visual calendar options, why not allow imports from Ical (and may be provide calendar templates for that purpose)?)

That’s it for now on my feedback front.

Cheers and keep up the good work,

Nathalie

PS I would love to be able to translate AT into French, but even though i am both a translator and a Mac fan, i never localized any software, so i have no idea of the techniques and amount of time/work involved => can’t commit to that without more info => i’ll ask around. We can correspond privately on this if you wish.

I am always interested in hearing additional ideas, if you can think of ways your workflow could be improved. I don’t see Aeon replacing Scrivener etc, as I still think are better alternatives for getting down the draft and rearranging sections post-writing than trying to do the same thing in a straight word processor. But the planning stage, up until the writing, is something I hope to do.

Localisation is something I will add (with the help of some volunteer translators, I hope!), but I will wait until the end of the development cycle to do so. There is no point doing it now, when so much of the interface is likely to change anyway.

Using the story in the figures above, imagine if the split story arc of “boy during the war” and “girl during the war” had different depths on the screen (so instead of splitting up and down from the perspective of the computer user, they get split left and right from the perspective of the split point — “war begins.” The user could “zoom in” on just the boy’s story or just the girl’s story, but the user could also zoom back out to see them both at the same time.

Also, each point in the story arc would be positioned “higher” or “lower” than the preceding point based on the tension.

Now, as for knowing which point belongs to what arc, maybe you could use some sort of shading technique.

Each individual story arc gets its own shade, but the shade isn’t a solid color as much as it is a kind of “light mist” surrounding each point in the arc, so that when you’re looking at on the screen, it looks like a rising or falling trail of floating colored breadcrumbs.

Perhaps a way to visualize this is like Apple’s Time Machine visualization, except where Time Machine has you facing “downstream” the view in Aeon Timeline would have you looking at it from the side (maybe you could even give the user control of the “camera”?).

I don’t know. But with OpenCL supposedly being such an easy thing to use now (I’m not a programmer, so I only have Apple’s PR claims to base this one), I’m wondering how you might be use to totally change the way we imagine timelines.

The way a timeline and characters surface in the narrative is the backbone of fiction writing, and if you manage to provide authors with a tool that really allows to manipulate that, Aeon Timeline will be much more than what its current name seems to promise, and much more than its current counterparts. I can’t wait to see those two aspects implemented.

Then, i think, i will be able go from research to writing without having to resort to Scrivener/StoryMill/Storyist or other such software, that I find both too limited on the research storage side, compared to pure notetaking software, and not specialized enough on the narrative brainstorming/designing side.

Writers can always use old paper notebooks and cards for plot and character building, while being able to manipulate multiple POV / plot elements as you describe in your future features section would be a total plus, unheard of, and one that would make our work so easier!

PS (unrelated) As a French literary translator i don’t mind using English software, but you should know there is a market for fiction writing software localized in foreign languages… Many pro fiction writers in France do use Macs but won’t work on foreign software because it implies mental gymnastics that distract them from writing… As far i as know, only one Mac novel writing software, StoryMill, is localized in French at the moment… But they did not even bother to translate the user’s guide.