Seems not right for the comments here to be empty but I don't have much to say other than this looks incredibly nice. Hope I have an excuse to use it at some point.
Is there syntax for dependent tasks in the timeline? In other words tasks that only start once prerequisites are done.
If the date of the original tasks changes, the dependent tasks move accordingly automatically, without needing to edit a full list of dates for each dependent item.
Besides the tool itself that website typography is excellent. Guess I'll have to use Playfair in my next project.
Edit: One thing I'd like to see with the basic syntax example is fiddle with your default dates to make it more obvious that the span is a span. At the time scale it is now, it just looks like another dot.
That's weird. It works perfectly for men much older computers and also on my M2 Mac Pro. What version of OSX are you using? I created that product, btw.
This is neat! It reminded me of this project by cheeaun that enables one to create a visual timeline based on a simple texted based format. The purpose was to plot one's life events in a visual way.
@USERNAME's life
===============
- 24/02/1955 Born
- ~1968 Summer job
- 03/1976 Built a computer
- 01/04/1976 Started a company
- 04/1976-2011 Whole bunch of interesting events
That is a great project! I wonder if anyone has created a visualization that uses a "life in weeks" format (like https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html) rather than a linear horizontal timeline.
Been working on markwhen for a few years now, originally inspired by cheeaun's life timeline that another commenter posted about.
At this point markwhen is available as a VS Code extension, Obsidian plugin, CLI tool, and web editor in Meridiem.
Some recent markwhen developments:
- Dial, a fork of bolt.new (Stackblitz's very cool tool that leverages AI to help quickly scaffold web projects): an in-browser editor that lets you edit existing markwhen visualizations like the timeline or calendar or make your own. I just released that yesterday so it's still rough but I have big plans for it (it's one of the visualizations in meridiem)
- Event properties: each entry can have it's own "frontmatter" in the form of `key: value` pairs. I wanted this as I'm aiming for more iCal interoperability in the future, so each event could theoretically have things like "attendees" or google calendar ids or other metadata. This was released in the last month or two.
- remark.ing: this one isn't ready yet by any means but it's like a twitter/bluesky/mastodon-esque aggregated blog site. So you write markwhen and each entry is a post. In this way "scheduling" a post is just writing a future date next to it, and you have all your blog in one file. This one is a major WIP
I skimmed the documentation and didn't see any reference as to whether Markwhen supports dependencies? I.e. MSProject-style make one event dependent on another task ending or starting.
Congratulations on your release! I've working on building exactly the same tool but you beat me to it... I cannot compete with this functionality, and completeness. Amazing work!
Remark.ing sounds incredible. I've been considering building something like Memos but based on Markdown files rather than a relational database for personal use, but this comes really close to what I was looking for.
Are you planning to open source it? I couldn't find it on your GitHub.
It’s plausible that it could be a trademark issue, were “markdown” strongly enforced. “When” isn’t the furthest from “down”. However, the reason behind Gruber’s issue with it has been misinterpreted and the Markdown name is very widely used without any arrangement with its creator, and a trademark for Markdown is not registered with the USPTO by its creator AFAICT.
> However, the reason behind Gruber’s issue with it has been misinterpreted and the Markdown name is very widely used without any arrangement with its creator
Correct. Not to get too in the weeds on a 10 year old controversy, but Gruber has gone on the record to say he is cool with things like GitHub-flavored Markdown but from what I gathered back then and since then whenever he spoke on the subject (which has not been a lot), his issue with the CommonMark project (as it would eventually be called) using any name that included “Markdown” in the name wasn’t cool with him since they went ahead with an ask forgiveness instead of receiving permission approach on attempting to basically expropriate Markdown. GitHub-flavored Markdown and things like it don’t do that, they just claim to be a different kind of Markdown.
Also never understood why he didn’t just go ahead and trademark it, but at this point would it even be enforceable? It’s kind of generic now, but I don’t know if it’s generic enough to not be enforceable either, and maybe he doesn’t want the obligation of having to enforce it.
EDIT: anyway, point is, this is so far from being Markdown or claiming to be that I don’t think there is a single issue with Markwhen as presented that would ruffle any feathers in Philly. The creator shouldn’t have to worry and nobody should be telling him to worry. Like, seriously, none of this is relevant. Markwhen is just a cool looking thing that exists now and I like timelines.
Joel tried to write an IETF Standard by the backdoor for a thing he didn't invent.
Having been kicked off the word standard, they immediately thought "how can we still do this while technically obeying it". So they picked the closest possible word to Standard, implying it really was the definitive version.
Yeah, I'd be grumpy too.
If he'd called it 'Atwood Flavoured Markdown' there wouldn't be an issue. But Joel wanted to own the definition of Markdown.
As a group of tech CEOs they decided to co-opt someone's idea without even asking if it was okay.
In fact kicking John off the project was the point.
You can do that, you just can't keep the name they created.
Here's the license (http://daringfireball.net/projects/downloads/Markdown_1.0.1....) and I don't think Gruber mentioned anything about a "trademark"? It seems like it was mostly about the name of his project just being taken unethically. Just like if someone would take a open source project name and makes it look like an official for when it's not. Maybe not a trademark infringement, but certainly not nice or ethical.
> for plainly writing logs , gantt charts , blogs , feeds , notes , journals etc.
So, how would this combine with markdown, for the content within dated blog/journal entries? And how would I use dates as plain dates rather than special markwhen entities?
Nice, these “Markdown for X” tools are super neat. Wish this worked nicely with mobile view, seems like a lot of the text are overflowing and margins are squished in the demo
The charts you linked don't look like the same kind of chart to me. There's information about what happened after what, but the information about how much each task took seems missing.
101 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 206 ms ] threadThanks for sharing!
Is there syntax for dependent tasks in the timeline? In other words tasks that only start once prerequisites are done.
If the date of the original tasks changes, the dependent tasks move accordingly automatically, without needing to edit a full list of dates for each dependent item.
Edit: One thing I'd like to see with the basic syntax example is fiddle with your default dates to make it more obvious that the span is a span. At the time scale it is now, it just looks like another dot.
https://github.com/cheeaun/life
Sample file (from the repository):
[1] https://days.rory.codes
[2] https://git.rjp.is/rjp/daysgo
https://jvidal.dev/memento-mori
Trying to build a timeline like this:
title: History of the World
0: Foo Calendar's civilization founding.
124: Invention of the Foo Calendar
220: Founding of Bar
1310: Invention of GlooblyGock
5621: Demon invasion.
Edit: After trying it don't think it works for this usecase.
Been working on markwhen for a few years now, originally inspired by cheeaun's life timeline that another commenter posted about.
At this point markwhen is available as a VS Code extension, Obsidian plugin, CLI tool, and web editor in Meridiem.
Some recent markwhen developments:
- Dial, a fork of bolt.new (Stackblitz's very cool tool that leverages AI to help quickly scaffold web projects): an in-browser editor that lets you edit existing markwhen visualizations like the timeline or calendar or make your own. I just released that yesterday so it's still rough but I have big plans for it (it's one of the visualizations in meridiem)
- Event properties: each entry can have it's own "frontmatter" in the form of `key: value` pairs. I wanted this as I'm aiming for more iCal interoperability in the future, so each event could theoretically have things like "attendees" or google calendar ids or other metadata. This was released in the last month or two.
- remark.ing: this one isn't ready yet by any means but it's like a twitter/bluesky/mastodon-esque aggregated blog site. So you write markwhen and each entry is a post. In this way "scheduling" a post is just writing a future date next to it, and you have all your blog in one file. This one is a major WIP
For the record, I used the Obsidian plugin to develop, then deployed as static HTML.
Did you need/use that functionality?
It doesn't look at task completion but you can base events on other events
Just a note. It was really hard to find how to sign up.
EDIT: and I still haven't found how to sign in in the desktop app.
Are you planning to open source it? I couldn't find it on your GitHub.
Gruber (who has trademark in “Markdown”), appears to not like people using his trademark name.
https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-commo...
Correct. Not to get too in the weeds on a 10 year old controversy, but Gruber has gone on the record to say he is cool with things like GitHub-flavored Markdown but from what I gathered back then and since then whenever he spoke on the subject (which has not been a lot), his issue with the CommonMark project (as it would eventually be called) using any name that included “Markdown” in the name wasn’t cool with him since they went ahead with an ask forgiveness instead of receiving permission approach on attempting to basically expropriate Markdown. GitHub-flavored Markdown and things like it don’t do that, they just claim to be a different kind of Markdown.
Also never understood why he didn’t just go ahead and trademark it, but at this point would it even be enforceable? It’s kind of generic now, but I don’t know if it’s generic enough to not be enforceable either, and maybe he doesn’t want the obligation of having to enforce it.
EDIT: anyway, point is, this is so far from being Markdown or claiming to be that I don’t think there is a single issue with Markwhen as presented that would ruffle any feathers in Philly. The creator shouldn’t have to worry and nobody should be telling him to worry. Like, seriously, none of this is relevant. Markwhen is just a cool looking thing that exists now and I like timelines.
Having been kicked off the word standard, they immediately thought "how can we still do this while technically obeying it". So they picked the closest possible word to Standard, implying it really was the definitive version.
Yeah, I'd be grumpy too.
If he'd called it 'Atwood Flavoured Markdown' there wouldn't be an issue. But Joel wanted to own the definition of Markdown.
As a group of tech CEOs they decided to co-opt someone's idea without even asking if it was okay.
In fact kicking John off the project was the point.
You can do that, you just can't keep the name they created.
So, how would this combine with markdown, for the content within dated blog/journal entries? And how would I use dates as plain dates rather than special markwhen entities?
Mermaid is supported by gitlab/github and other markdown editors (within code blocks).
[0] https://mermaid.js.org/syntax/gantt.html
I wonder how we can "end" a timeline and start a new one in the same doc? So that I can write stuff like:
# My important project.
Description of the project goes here
## Timeline of the project.
2024-12-02: This is what I did today.
2024-12-01: This is what I did yesterday.
# My other important project.
Description of the project goes here.
## Timeline of the project.
2024-12-03: This is what I plan tomorrow.
---
Some thoughts about what I have written above.