Timeline

A custom Bases view for Obsidian. Notes matching a Base's filters are plotted along a horizontal, zoomable time axis, single dates as dots, date ranges as bars.

Intention

This plugin is designed as a data visualization tool for structured notes about events on a linear time scale. I use it for history notes, and lifespans of historical figures.

Usage

Create a .base file, then pick Timeline from the view switcher in the Bases toolbar.

Notes are plotted from their frontmatter:

---
date: 1969-07-20
category: War
---

---
date_start: 1961-05-25
date_end: 1972-12-19
category: War
---

A note with a start and end plots as a range bar. A note with only a single date, or only one end of a range plots as a dot.

Dates may be full ISO dates (1969-07-20), year and month (1969-07), or a bare year (1969). A bare year is anchored to 1 January for plotting but displays as just the year.

BC dates

BC years are supported. Write them with an era suffix or prefix:

date: 44 BC
date_start: 509 BC
date_end: AD 476

BC, BCE, AD, CE and their dotted forms are accepted, in any case, before or after the year. Axis ticks and hover cards render BC years as 753 BC rather than as negatives.

For a precise BC date, use the ISO negative form, which is astronomical: it has no year zero, so 1 BC is year 0000 and 44 BC is -0043.

date: -0043-03-15   # 15 March 44 BC

View options

Option	Default	Purpose
Date property	date	Property holding a single point in time
Range start property	date_start	Start of a range
Range end property	date_end	End of a range
Category property	category	Drives dot and bar colour
Show labels	off	Draw a text label beside each dot and bar
Label property	file.name	Which property the label shows
Axis interval (years)	auto	Years between tick labels; auto fits the zoom level
Show axis	on	Show or hide the axis and its labels

Labels sit to the right of their dot or bar and are reserved space during lane packing, so a label never runs over the next item. Any property can be used, including file properties, so file.name shows note titles.

Colours are assigned from Obsidian's accent palette in first-seen category order, so a given category keeps its colour as filters change. Notes with no category render in grey. I'm planning to add colour selection based on tags or another variable similar to whats seen in the graph view.

License

MIT