Absolute and Relative Timelines
Absolute and Relative Timeline Styles
Most timelines will use absolute dates, meaning that you specify an exact date or year for each event on your timeline.
However, Aeon Timeline supports several other timeline “styles” that allow you to specify times relative to a theoretical “zero”. Uses for such relative timelines include:
- Planning a fiction story without needing to think about specific dates and times
- Planning a project or development schedule based on weeks before you know a definite kick off date.
- Planning a seminar or training workshop that you will repeat many different times.
- Planning screen or stage time in a movie, where you want to map out scene times over a period of several hours.
Setting the Timeline Style
The timeline style is set in the Range -> Date section of Settings, and can be set to the following values:
- Regular Dates: Dates are represented in the normal way as absolute values (a specific day/month/year)
- Weekly: Weeks count forward from zero, i.e. Week 0, Week 1, Week 2. Events can be specified as occurring on a specific day or time during that week – e.g. “10:00 Monday Week 6”.
- Daily: Days count forward from zero, i.e. Day 0, Day 1, Day 2. Events can be specified as occurring at a specific time during that day – e.g. “10:00 Day 3”.
- Time: Time counting forwards or backwards from zero, e.g. 02:32:34 or -12:45:00.
Setting the “Zero Date”
When changing from regular dates to any of the weekly formats, or vice versa, you will be asked to specify the date to be used as “zero” in your conversion. All existing dates in your timeline will be converted based on their relative offset from this zero date.
For instance, if you convert from Regular Dates to Daily using a zero date of “1 Jan 2016”, existing dates would be converted as follows:
- 1 Jan 2016 becomes “Day 0”.
- 3 Jan 2016 becomes “Day 2”.
- 5 Jan 2016 12:00pm becomes “Day 4, 12:00pm”
- 3-7 Jan 2016 becomes Day 2-6.