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Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines
- teo_zero 2y agoDoes it work with non-English dates?
- wild_egg 2y agoSeems 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. Thanks for sharing!
- jbaber 2y agoIs there support for date ranges? e.g. 2024-12-25 - 2025-01-06 ?
- ks2048 2y agoIt's the second example in "Basic Syntax" on the right.
- snappr021 2y agoThis looks very good. 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.
- genezeta 2y agoIt's a timeline that tracks events and periods. It doesn't seem to have the concept of a task in any way.
- KaoruAoiShiho 2y agoIt has checklists
- sleepyfran 2y agoThis looks amazing, will definitely try to incorporate it into my workflow!
- sprobertson 2y agoBesides 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.
- koch 2y agoJust edited the example so it looks like a span, thanks for the feedback!
- KaoruAoiShiho 2y agoAny chance you can copy some of this for aesthetics? https://www.chronoflotimeline.com/timeline/shared/3118/Home-Page-Timeline/ https://www.chronoflotimeline.com/timeline/shared/3118/Home-...
- owlglass 2y agoHopefully without the latency, it's slow to respond on a 2022 M2 Macbook Air (tried Firefox and Safari)
- alexkearns 2y agoThat'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.
- alexkearns 2y agoHa! That's my product. Thanks for mentioning!
- neumann 2y agoJust in case anyone else is out of the loop like me. This can be used as a plugin in obsidian! https://obsidian.md/plugins?search=markw https://obsidian.md/plugins?search=markw
- accrual 2y agoThis 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. https://github.com/cheeaun/life https://github.com/cheeaun/life Sample file (from the repository): @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
- AlanYx 2y agoThat 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 https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html) rather than a linear horizontal timeline.
- kerneis 2y agohttps://newsletter.pnote.eu/p/life-in-weeks https://newsletter.pnote.eu/p/life-in-weeks and it's interactive (you can make your own timeline)
- zimpenfish 2y agoRory Codes made a "life in days"[1] (which I shamelessly copied for my own amusement[2]) [1] https://days.rory.codes https://days.rory.codes [2] https://git.rjp.is/rjp/daysgo https://git.rjp.is/rjp/daysgo
- ta1243 2y agoWhat a depressing site!
- jvidalv 2y agoI do :) https://jvidal.dev/memento-mori https://jvidal.dev/memento-mori
- x1ph0z 2y agoReally cool project, looking forward to using it in Obsidian.
- robinhowlett 2y agoThis looks excellent - i've been looking for a timeline-based, simple-entry tool like this. Well done.
- KaoruAoiShiho 2y agoDoes this work at all for fantasy timelines? 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.
- jiangplus 2y agoThis reminds me of blocks.md (https://blocks.md/ https://blocks.md/), a Markdown based form builder.
- koch 2y agoCreator here - glad to see people like markwhen! 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
- d--b 2y agoLooks very good. 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.
- mturk 2y agoI used Markwhen recently to make an interactive Gantt chart for a proposal to a collaborator and it went swimmingly. (We got the gig!) So, thank you! For the record, I used the Obsidian plugin to develop, then deployed as static HTML.
- doctorhandshake 2y agoSorry if this is a dumb Q but what took that from Markwhen/down to HTML?
- mturk 2y ago
- tiffanyh 2y agoBe careful. Gruber (who has trademark in “Markdown”), appears to not like people using his trademark name. https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-common-markdown/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/standard-markdown-is-now-commo...
- cal85 2y agoThis has a different name.
- SllX 2y agoNot only is this a different name, but that was an attempt to essentially expropriate Markdown. This is nothing even close to that.
- benatkin 2y agoIt’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.
- SllX 2y ago> 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.
- desireco42 2y agoOK, this is fantastic, like others mentioned. Now... to figure out how to use it in existing markdown... love the Obsidian integration.
- einpoklum 2y ago> 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?
- shepherdjerred 2y agoI wonder how easy it is to render the timeline in a custom manner
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- neoconomist 2y agoNeat, something like this was missing in my text-based workflow. Thanks for building !
- ynx 2y agoMeridiem seems to only have ARM builds, no Intel builds. Could you perhaps update it to include Intel?
- jusgu 2y agoNice, 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
- atoav 2y agoNote that Mermaid also supports timelines (if it is new enough): https://mermaid.js.org/syntax/timeline.html https://mermaid.js.org/syntax/timeline.html Mermaid is supported by gitlab/github and other markdown editors (within code blocks).
- otikik 2y agoThe 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.
- edvardas 2y agoMermaid Gannt[0] diagram type might be similar to what you have in mind. [0] https://mermaid.js.org/syntax/gantt.html https://mermaid.js.org/syntax/gantt.html
- bcooney_info 2y agoi was using mermaid for this for years, but markwhen just seems/feels instantly easier.
- pflenker 2y agoGreat project, I always felt that this was missing in Markdown. 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.
- _ink_ 2y agoAwesome! I really would like to see a Discourse Plugin for that.
- dotancohen 2y agoAgain reimplementing Emacs Org mode. Nice work! This looks terrific, but honestly Markdown is a document markup language. Org mode, while superficially similar in scope, is actually a data storage and exchange format. The data manipulation and querying built around Org mode are unlikely to be replicated in Markdown.
- vslavkin 2y agoAgree. This could be easily done in org. I feel that if org was more popular, a lot of these solutions would disappear, or would be a small project that just reads some org properties. I guess it would be key to have better support for easier editors, like vscode and maybe even a dedicated editor
- uludag 2y agoJust to name a few, https://github.com/legalnonsense/elgantt/ https://github.com/legalnonsense/elgantt/, https://github.com/elsatch/org-timeline-viewer https://github.com/elsatch/org-timeline-viewer, https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-taskjuggler.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-taskjuggler.html . Org-mode users and things like this seem to be like moths and a fire. I'm always surprised by the sheer amount of packages written for org-mode, a package itself of a rather niche piece of software.
- ambigious7777 2y agoI really want to like Org mode, but I just can't. The syntax feels too out of place. With markdown it's just a few extra symbols, but using Org mode feels like writing LaTeX in a way. Same thing with MediaWiki - I love the wiki system but WikiText is just so bad.
- bergie 2y agoThis is pretty cool! I'm the developer of a semi-automatic electronic logbook system for sailboats: https://bergie.iki.fi/blog/electronic-logbook/ https://bergie.iki.fi/blog/electronic-logbook/ Right now I'm using YAML for the file format, as I wanted something that would be reasonably readable for both humans and machines. Markwhen would also fit the bill nicely, so that's something to consider, at least as an export format. My entries have a lot of properties, though (stuff like wind speed, vessel coordinates, barometer, etc). Traditional ship's logbooks were done in a tabular manner to record all this. So I'm not sure if that would end up looking quite messy. Here is an example of a day of log entries in the current format: https://github.com/meri-imperiumi/log/blob/main/_data/logbook/2024-08-07.yml https://github.com/meri-imperiumi/log/blob/main/_data/logboo... I'm using these also for some data analysis, like watermaker membrane health, or sailed miles per crew member.
- noisy_boy 2y agoThis is neat. What I am waiting for is markdown for tables with cells supporting multiline content in an easy to use manner.
- dustedcodes 2y agoThings like Markdown work because they are intuitive, but the date range syntax in Markwhen is anything but intuitive. Why 2025-01-22 / 2026-10-24? Why not 2025/01/22 - 2026/10/24?
- dimava 2y agoBecause this is ISO 8601 date format, the standard date format that intentionally uses dashes to not confuse 25/01/22, 01/22/25 and 22/01/26 which are the same date in different formats (that's why it uses dashes for dates, as for why it uses / for interval I have no idea)
- thunfisch 2y agoIt's using a slash because that's how ISO 8601 defines time intervals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Time_intervals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Time_intervals
- funnybeam 2y agoThanks for linking that. I’m a big proponent of using ISO 8601 but had either missed or completely forgotten about it specifying a format for intervals. Note that ISO also permits a double hyphen as the interval separator which is hugely preferable to me personally and also works with file names (as mentioned in that Wikipedia article)
- account42 2y agoDoesn't look like IOS 8601 allows spaces though so this is still an ad-hoc syntax. RFC3339 at least lets you replace the ugly T with a space but also doesn't specify any spaces around "/" for ranges.
- dustedcodes 2y agoI know ISO 8601, but that doesn't answer my question. Let me rephrase this, why was a format intuitive to a machine chosen instead of a format which feels more intuitive to a human? I think YYYY/MM/DD - YYYY/MM/DD will mean the correct thing to many more people than YYYY-MM-DD / YYYY-MM-DD, which I suspect many will interpret as an OR and not a RANGE.
- dirkc 2y agoI'd love something that can support uncertain timelines - I maintain a list of space events that I'm interested in, but I haven't yet figured out how to do the dates.
- SuperV1234 2y agoThis is really cool, I wish there was some sort of life planner software where I can write down appointments, notes, ideas, and more in a simple format like Markdown, and automatically get notifications/reminders based on what I wrote.
- funnybeam 2y agoHave you looked at org mode for eMacs? That does precisely this
- thomasreggi 2y agoJust wanted to say congrats on the project. This is truly a masterpiece from the utility of it, the novelty, to execution with the vscode / meridian app, and sass. Brilliant execution!
- nivertech 2y agoWhat shortcut used to preview Markwhen documents in Obsidian? I create a "Markwhen" folder and create a "test.mw" not there, but it doesn't render, and I can't an option for preview in the command palette.
- SamBam 2y agoHow would one go about creating Obsidian support for a timeline that was scattered across multiple files? I'm thinking like the network visualizer that Obsidian has, it would be great if it could find tagged dates in any file and display them on a common timeline.
- nemacol 2y agoBig fan of timelines. I am going to use this for sure Have had an idea for a timeline search/visualization. Search a thing and that pulls pages and related pages with date/times from Wikipedia. With a zoom in/out to adjust resolution like google maps - weight nodes on timeline based on page views/edits/links. Have not gotten around to try to make something like it. I bring it up here just in case something already exists and I missed it.
- omnster 2y agoLooks neat! Is there a way to make it work with pandoc?
- myfurends 2y ago[dead]
- marjipan200 2y agoLove this! If you're into representing time with simple markdown, check out the Chronos Timeline plugin for Obsidian too https://obsidian.md/plugins?search=chronos+timeline https://obsidian.md/plugins?search=chronos+timeline
- rhizoma 2y agoNice that it installs on mobile too.
- rattray 2y agoBelated, but especially when I see the group syntax, I wonder if this should be like a Markdoc extension or something?
- markgoho 2y agoare those the actual pronunciations of your products? here'd be my recommendation: /ˈmɑːɻk.wɛn/ and /məˈɻɪd.i.ən/
- garfieldnate 2y agoI would love to be able to manage my actual calendar with this. By which I mean, I want a seamless bridge with google calendar, iCal, etc. that also lets me view, edit, source-control, etc. my calendar with an mw file. I think this is very cool!
- IndieCoder 2y agoThat is such an elegant solution. True sweet spot which was missing for me in traditional markdown!
- T3RMINATED 2y ago[dead]
- Siira 2y agoIs there something similar for org-mode?