I use Scrivener combined with Aeon Timeline, on an iMac 27"-5K. It is a great combination. Some of my project are large, maybe 3000 items totalling 4 GB or larger. I know I can search and find anything in Scrivener, but love Aeon for the matrix view of the connections. the syncing is working fine (remember to close project in scrivener). In Aeon I rely fully on the 4 custom metadata fields: Start, participant, observer and Arc.
I found a unexpected thing when syncing. If the “Start:” is empty the record will be put “at random” onto the Aeon timeline. That is since I always use the matrixview, I am not concerned about placement on timeline and the only reason I found out is that after syncing complete project (back to Scrivener) there was one specific date for all, until now, empty “start:” fields.
What I did was using Keyboard Maestro to create a practical macro that would find all these records with that specific content and then replace with correct date.
Have to include that every Synopsis line in my project starts with date covering the item (put there manually, my choice). And this is in the form “2018-08-15 This is the synopsisdescrition” whereas the Start: will look like this “Tue 2022-02-25”. so I search in scrivener for Tue 2022-02-25 (the search includes the metadata fields) and since every manual entered date will be in Europian/Danish format only the records with peculiar metadata will be found. The macro then copies the correct date and paste (overwrite) into Start: … last step is to repeat search removing the just corrected record from search… and so on.
Maybe this is too hairy for the forum, but it works for me. You are welcome to ask for details.
Scrivener and Aeon Timeline is a fine match… and Keyboard Maestro is a super tool for automating both simple and complex jobs.
Yeah, I discovered the Aeon-Scrivener sync a short while ago and think Aeon could be a really useful tool once I get familiar with all its features.
I started off just using the sync to get my dates right. This took a few passes as you cant use Aeon to create metadata fields in Scriv all in one go, you have to do it one keyword at a time (something which could be fixed perhaps?).
Then I found the events were grouping into tall stacks in Aeon, even when I zoomed in quite a bit. To get around this I used keywords/tags and filters/categories to demarcate the stacks into various story through-lines. This process could be enhanced perhaps by being able to tie some more of the Aeon entities into Scrivener projects.
Really hoping the Scriv-Aeon symbiosis gets taken further and closer
Having linked my Scrivener project to Timeline and worked out a detailed event timeline, I’d find it very useful to have the Timeline dates visible in the Scrivener binder. The dates could appear in a pop-up window when the user’s mouse hovers over a binder element. Full synchronous integration between the two products would be hard to achieve, and probably overkill, but reading dates from the Timeline json file into Scrivener would, I’d have thought, be child’s play to your developers. As things stand, I need to print the timeline in order to be able to refer to it while I’m using Scrivener because Timeline can’t open an active project.
Aeon Timeline does the integration, and it uses custom metadata to store dates and other synchronized information. You should be able to go to outline mode to add those dates as columns.
Thanks, but that doesn’t appear to be the case with Version: 1.9.15.0. There are no custom meta data fields in ‘Meta Data Settings’ in my synched project.
This is the Mac forum and (a) you’re using Windows; (b) you’re using version 1.9, which, in this matter, equates to Mac v.2, which didn’t have the custom meta data fields either. Perhaps you should take a look at the Windows 3 Beta.
So, not exactly helpful with this post, Mark. 1) I came here to this thread via a cross-posted link in Feedback (Windows)https://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=31. 2) Custom Meta-data is available in the 1.9.x version of Scriv for Windows (see screenshot)
I believe you would need to set up/add the custom meta-data fields here in Scrivener to be able to see them after a sync from Aeon. Haven’t played with this lately as I’ve been working with the Win Scriv beta.
That seems off to me, but I haven’t used Aeon Timeline in a long while, and may not have the latest version. My last exposure to it though was that if you set up AT to sync with a project, then it creates custom metadata in that project to store its information.
Maybe in the latest version, the creator of Aeon Timeline has moved away from that, and just keeps track of documents within its own timelines without altering the Scrivener project? I’m sure someone on their forums would be more knowledgeable than I would be.
No, it still works the way you describe, RDale. There was a bug in the Scriv3 handling of date formats that could result in historic or future dates being off by a century, and another that could result in time zone anomalies. The workaround was to create date fields as text in Scriv in advance. I’m sure the bugs are squashed by now, as it’s been at least two revisions since they were reported, but I admit I’ve never gone back and tested it—haven’t started anything new that’s complicated enough to be worth the effort.
I think Aeon Timeline should not be separated from Scrivener. I should be an integral part of it.
A timeline in the writing of books and stories is normal. That code should be part of the code of Scrivener.
and the only reason I found out is that after syncing complete project (back to Scrivener) there was one specific date for all, until now, empty “start:” fields.
