Your decision to avoid bloat is wisdom in action. Bells and whistles, not as important as simplicity.
I decided, though, that I wanted to integrate timelines with Scrivener. Since the files are all readily accessible, it was easy to write a quick Python script to spin through the documents and notes, looking for strings in the form, "//event start time end time blah blah… //.
Works great. Now I can drop timeline events in document notes, or in comments, or wherever I want, and extract them to a file my (unfortunately overpriced) Timeline Maker utility will import.
Please keep up the good work!
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