I'm looking for software which would help me with a non-fiction writing project. I don't have any experience with software designed especially for writers (Scrivener etc.) though there are many options I am familiar with which may also do some of the job (DocxManager, RightNote, UltraRecall, Hyperplan, MyInfo, Word etc.).

The software would need to be on Windows, pay once (no subscription), allow footnoting and referencing (and creation of a bibliography from those references) but also ideally be able to create a timeline. I've not come across writing software that can create a timeline, though I'm sure it must be around. If not, if anybody has any suggestions for a cheap and easy to use timeline creation package, I would appreciate any pointers.

Thanks in advance for any forthcoming wisdom!

Graham

Hi Graham.

I am not sure what you need the timeline feature for.

There are several novel writing apps with a timeline feature. But I am not aware of one that comes at a pay-once price. An app some of my novel-writing colleagues use is Plottr: https://plottr.com/

What might come handy is an old Windows app that is no longer supported but can be used for free: Writer's Cafe, a collection of several tools including Storylines. That's a basic timelining tool that I used a couple of years ago. I haven't installed it in Windows 10 or 11, though.
You find it here:http://www.anthemion.co.uk/writerscafe/

Best wishes
Franz

Well, it’s a little old now, but still a good piece of software: Anthemion’s Writer’s Cafe is available for free, and does some of what you want (although it’s not really a bibliographic reference tool): http://www.anthemion.co.uk/writerscafe/

Graham Rhind wrote:

I'm looking for software which would help me with a non-fiction writing
project. I don't have any experience with software designed especially
for writers (Scrivener etc.) though there are many options I am familiar
with which may also do some of the job (DocxManager, RightNote,
UltraRecall, Hyperplan, MyInfo, Word etc.).

The software would need to be on Windows, pay once (no subscription),
allow footnoting and referencing (and creation of a bibliography from
those references) but also ideally be able to create a timeline. I've
not come across writing software that can create a timeline, though I'm
sure it must be around. If not, if anybody has any suggestions for a
cheap and easy to use timeline creation package, I would appreciate any
pointers.

Thanks in advance for any forthcoming wisdom!

Graham

Oh, and actually, the successor to Writer’s Cafe, Jutoh, does pretty much everything you’ve described: https://www.jutoh.com/features.html

Ah, you and I replied more or less simultaneously, Frank ;-)

Franz Grieser wrote:

Hi Graham.

I am not sure what you need the timeline feature for.

There are several novel writing apps with a timeline feature. But I am
not aware of one that comes at a pay-once price. An app some of my
novel-writing colleagues use is Plottr: https://plottr.com/

What might come handy is an old Windows app that is no longer supported
but can be used for free: Writer's Cafe, a collection of several tools
including Storylines. That's a basic timelining tool that I used a
couple of years ago. I haven't installed it in Windows 10 or 11, though.
You find it here:http://www.anthemion.co.uk/writerscafe/

Best wishes
Franz

Oh, and of course I’m forgetting an obvious candidate: TextMaker by Softmaker. It doesn’t have timelines (although I believe you could create one using the built-in tools), but it has excellent reference/bibliographical support (footnotes/endnotes, multiple bibliographical options, Zotero integration).

I am not sure what you need the timeline feature for.

Ah, right - I see I need to be more specific.

So I'm not looking for a storyboard feature or a flow diagram feature. This is a book about real events, and it needs to accurately portray that person A was in place B at time C, so they could not have been in place D doing action E at that time. There are a lot of sources which tend to contradict each other, so actually plotting them on a time line would enable me to see where the clashes occur and where clarification is required.

Thanks for the suggestions up to now! I'll check them out!

You might want to add Manuskript to the list, too: http://www.theologeek.ch/manuskript/

I believe that Aeon Timeline would fit the bill:
https://www.aeontimeline.com/

It is a versatile stand-alone programme offering several powerful timeline formats.

It is pay-once software, available for Windows, macOS and iOS.

While stand-alone, it can also be integrated with Scrivener and Ulysses.

Last but not least, Aeon recently launched a so-called Narrative view which complements the timeline; I'm still checking it out, but it seems quite powerful:
https://www.aeontimeline.com/guides/narrative


Graham Rhind wrote:

This is a book about real events, and it needs to accurately portray
that person A was in place B at time C, so they could not have been in
place D doing action E at that time. There are a lot of sources which
tend to contradict each other, so actually plotting them on a time line
would enable me to see where the clashes occur and where clarification
is required.

I believe Tinderbox has a timeline view. Very strong community support, but also has a certain learning curve.

On the other hand, I don't think it takes any knowledge of Tinderbox's scripting language to create timelines, at least if you don't need to base your timeline on an automated query.

There are a couple of timeline plugins in the Obsidian community. Obsidian is somewhat outside my experience. The Chronos plugin looks intriguing.

Google Sheets has a timeline feature. Or so I've heard. That's another environment not on my palette.

I use Aeon Timeline. If it supported a generous edit window for event notes, I would use it more.

Please post updates on your software search. It would be great to hear what you find.

So I'm not looking for a storyboard feature or a flow diagram feature.
This is a book about real events, and it needs to accurately portray
that person A was in place B at time C, so they could not have been in
place D doing action E at that time. There are a lot of sources which
tend to contradict each other, so actually plotting them on a time line
would enable me to see where the clashes occur and where clarification
is required.

In this case, I'd use Aeon Timeline as Alex already suggested.

Graham Rhind wrote:

I'm looking for software which would help me with a non-fiction writing
project. I don't have any experience with software designed especially
for writers (Scrivener etc.) though there are many options I am familiar
with which may also do some of the job (DocxManager, RightNote,
UltraRecall, Hyperplan, MyInfo, Word etc.).

The software would need to be on Windows, pay once (no subscription),
allow footnoting and referencing (and creation of a bibliography from
those references) but also ideally be able to create a timeline. I've
not come across writing software that can create a timeline, though I'm
sure it must be around. If not, if anybody has any suggestions for a
cheap and easy to use timeline creation package, I would appreciate any
pointers.

So I'm not looking for a storyboard feature or a flow diagram feature.
This is a book about real events, and it needs to accurately portray
that person A was in place B at time C, so they could not have been in
place D doing action E at that time. There are a lot of sources which
tend to contradict each other, so actually plotting them on a time line
would enable me to see where the clashes occur and where clarification
is required.

Thanks for the suggestions up to now! I'll check them out!

Lattics is designed for exactly this type of use.

Ticks all your boxes (even with options for storyboard & flow diagram :) )
Integrates with Zotero which would help with managing sources and bibliography.

The timeline feature is very useful, and I haven't even thought of opening Aeon Timeline since I started to use Lattics. AT is more comprehensive and has far more options for timelines - but is complex and relatively unwieldy. You would need to decide whether that extra power is required for what you want to do.

The one box it doesn't tick completely is the 'no subscription'. There is a free version, which you could organise yourself to stay within most of the time. The subscription is $90 for 5 years (more than enough for most projects) or $21 for one year or $4 for one month. The free version is mostly sufficient; I'd miss the statistics and themes most if I didn't have the subscription, but they're clearly not essential. The big feature I'm looking forward to is versions, which is on their roadmap, but the multiple backups are enough for comfort in extremis.
Aeon Timeline has an optional subscription - $65 to buy outright with one year of updates, but $35 a year after that if you want future updates.

Thank you for this information. Would you happen to know whether (with a licence) the timeline gets exported along with the rest of the project, or whether it can be exported separately?

Dormouse wrote:

Lattics is designed for exactly this type of use.

Graham Rhind wrote:

Would you happen to know whether (with a

licence) the timeline gets exported along with the rest of the project,
or whether it can be exported separately?

Good question. And idk.

Like most of these database apps, export in Lattics is murky and incomplete - though the developers tend to be good at answering in-app submitted questions by email. And will often add new features when they're clear about the rationale and fit for their vision.
I'd like it to be better, but stopped being hypercritical when I realised that even file based apps like Obsidian struggled with exports of the features you use the program for. So I only check those exports that matter to me.
Lattics is very good at exporting documents in usable forms.

Events in a timeline also become independent notes, which are easy to insert into a document and thence easily exported. There may be ways to do it, but I've not found a way to export notes en masse. tbh I haven't really looked for one - I'm used to such efforts becoming a trail of tears with these database apps. These notes do not include the timeline specific info.

What Lattics does have is a backup option that contains everything. It used to be in json format but they changed it last year - but nothing documented that I have seen. But it is still readable in a text editor and I suspect that it's a tweak or extension of the famously loose specification of the json format. (I have checked that the timeline data is in there.) I believe that I could probably find a way of parsing that into other forms, should I ever need it. But that's a backup of everything. And idk how easy it would be to extract just the subset of info that'd want.

I'd take the simple approach if I wanted to use the timeline info in another program. I'd export all the events/cards in a document. And use screenshots of the visual timeline. Clumsy but manageable for a rare one-off event. In practice I've accepted that everything is in Lattics - because I use it for writing etc, I have no need to export anything except the documents.