Welcome to Radial-Timeline Discussions!

[EricRhysTaylor]

Welcome!

Please us the Radial Timeline Repo Discussions as a place to connect with other members of our community. I hope that you:

• Ask questions you’re wondering about.
• Share ideas.
• Engage with other community members.
• Welcome others and are open-minded. Remember that this is a community we
  build together.

To get started, comment below with an introduction of yourself and tell us about what you do with the Radial Timeline.

[Fioretin]

Hi! I just found this plugin and it looks so cool! I'm really interested in trying it out! ^ _ ^

I have a couple of questions though. First, is it possible to use a custom calendar? I'm writing a sci-fi fantasy novel and since it's set in another planet, the people there uses a different calendar (like, 1 year for them is 24255 days, with 19 months and 75 weeks). So I'm just wondering if you can maybe support that kind of thing later down the line?

Also, for now, would it break something if I change the "When" property to something else, for example either text or numbers?

Another question I have is if it's possible to use it alongside Longform. Right now, I've already written over a hundred thousand words in my Longform folder so I'm not really interested in redoing or moving all that to Radial Timeline... I'm just wondering if there's an easy way to use the two together?

Also... I'm trying it out right now, but for some reason I can't use the Gossamer mode. It keeps saying "No story beats found. Create notes with fontmatter "Class: Beat" (or "Class: Plot" for backwards compatibility". Even though I already did make a note with frontmatter Class: Beat...

Another issue is that I can't download it from Obsidian, so I had to get the files from Git instead (I'm using the recent one, the 4.3.0 version). I'm not sure why I can't download your plugin through Obsidian itself when I can do so with other plugins.

Anyway, this seems really cool and seems to have a lot of potential! I'll keep playing with it to see if it fits with my workflow. Thanks a lot for making this plugin!

[EricRhysTaylor]

Hi Fioretin,

I know it's been months, but i did want to check in on how you are doing. I think most of those issues have been resolved hopefully by now. The Alien Planet has been fully adopted for Chronologue mode. Does it work for you?

For When, that needs to be a standard date and time or it will break.

Regarding Longform, I've added an entire publish section with many features to support robust markdown and pandoc latex exports. 4 pdf templates are supported now and a custom basic design wizard is in testing. Possibly you do not need longform anymore.

Beats have been completely revamped with an entirely new manager in Settings Core. You can quickly switch from one system to another at will. A note auditor keeps YAML organized.

Plugin is now part of Obsidian community plugins.

See my videos on youtube. Some at my old address, but I'm migrating to the new location from www.youtube.com/@ericrhystaylor -> www.youtube.com/@radialtimeline

The Wiki is full of info now. Please check that out.

Best,
Eric

[Fioretin]

Thanks a lot for the reply! ^_^ I'm now trying to understand how it works and if it's a good fit for my workflow. I do have a few more questions.

First, it's really cool that you made the Planetary Calendar! I like that I can make my own calendar for my world and see it in the graph. However, when I try to use the Planetary Calendar Calculator, it asks me for the date and time in Earth.

I don't know the Earth time, that's why I wanna use the calculator. I know the time and date in my world's calendar, but I don't know how to calculate that to Earth's calendar (especially when my world's calendar is very different!). So... yeah, it feels like it kinda defeats the purpose of having a Planetary Calendar Calculator when you have to do the calculations yourself first (>.<)

My next question might sound kinda silly... but how do you make chapters and arcs? Is one chapter a scene? But I thought that one chapter can be made up of multiple scenes? I don't get it... Maybe it's just me, but this whole scenes and beats and acts feel so technical and complicated...

Also, what about arcs? Like, say I want to write about an arc where the main characters are in another city, but it's still part of Act 1. How do I do that? Should I make it as a bunch of scenes or separate each arcs into Acts?

I try to understand the documentation, and I really do appreciate the amount of info it has, it's just... Hmm, I'm not sure how to say it. Like, see my previous questions about making chapters and arcs. It feels like it doesn't make enough intuitive sense?

There's a lot features that... it kinda feels overwhelming and a little confusing to start.

Also, I don't get the Publish part. Do I need to install Pandoc and the fonts myself? I've clicked on the 'Install' button multiple times and it doesn't seem to do anything. I thought pressing it would download all the required files from somewhere and easily integrate it with the plugin, but it seems I need to manually install stuff first?

And what if I want to use custom fonts? Can I do that with this? Also, I often use wikilinks while writing to remind myself of stuff or concepts about the world I'm making. Does Publish remove wikilinks when it exports the PDF?

Btw, for the daily session target, is it possible to have the option to switch it to word target instead of time target? Sometimes, I can spend an hour on a chapter and only write a few hundred words. Other time, I hit my word target much faster. Personally, I find word target more usually than time target because you can just spend that time not writing.

Anyway, thank you so much for all your work on this plugin so far! It really does seem like a cool tool to use for writing. It just... also kind of feel complicated to actually use. But that might just be a 'me' problem...

[EricRhysTaylor]

Thanks for laying this out so clearly. None of this sounds silly, and I don’t think it’s a “you” problem. This kind of feedback helps me identify areas where Radial Timeline can be improved.

I know the tool can feel overwhelming at times. I’ll do my best to address these concerns in upcoming releases and improve the onboarding experience as the project continues to evolve.

Thank you again for taking the time to share such detailed feedback. It’s genuinely helpful. Let me know how things go, and good luck with your writing projects!