[HN Gopher] Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines ___________________________________________________________________ Show HN: Markwhen: Markdown for Timelines Author : koch Score : 224 points Date : 2022-06-20 14:39 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (markwhen.com) (TXT) w3m dump (markwhen.com) | ivanjermakov wrote: | Good job! Would like to see it as an independent file format and | tools like external editor support and cli compiler (to | html/pdf/svg etc.) | Zhyl wrote: | Seconding this. I'd love to use this tool, but ideally I want | to be editing in the text editor/IDE of my choice and then to | be able to own the viewer offline. This would be especially | important for actual project management as employers/clients | don't tend to allow you to use online tools and that's what I'd | most likely be using this for. | trenchgun wrote: | Thirding this. | | Ideally this would be an emacs package. | captbaritone wrote: | Looks similar to Mermaid-js's Gantt chart support: | https://mermaid-js.github.io/mermaid/#/gantt | | Once nice thing about Mermaid is it's built into [GitHub's | markdown](https://github.blog/2022-02-14-include-diagrams- | markdown-fil...) and has support in Notion | prepend wrote: | This looks neat. I wish it used iso8601 [0] dates. It's pretty | convenient as the time periods uses the format YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY- | MM-DD and I think is easier to mentally parse than MM/DD/YYYY- | MM/DD/YYYY. | | Of course I didn't even know what a solidus ("/") was until using | iso8601. | | Also, I usually find standards pretty much as overhead, but 8601 | seems pretty good as a universal standard. | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 | koch wrote: | Yeah, so long form 8601 are supported | | `2022-08-02T23:00:00.000Z - 2022-08-03T00:00:00.000Z: Event` | | but in general I do need to figure out a way to allow more | customizable date parsing.[0] | | [0]https://github.com/kochrt/markwhen/issues/27 | JoshTriplett wrote: | I would definitely like to use YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM-DD, ideally | without any additional configuration required. | chriswarbo wrote: | > It's pretty convenient as the time periods uses the format | YYYY-MM-DD/YYYY-MM-DD and I think is easier to mentally parse | than MM/DD/YYYY-MM/DD/YYYY | | Especially for those outside the USA! | thedougd wrote: | In life I use the latter, but on computers I try to | exclusively use the former. YYYY-MM-DD sorts the same | lexicographically or chronologically. | ethbr0 wrote: | As someone who grew up in the US, it's still bizarre as a | programmer to have a mixed-significance ordering (MM-DD-YYYY) | instead of any consistently-endian ordering (DD-MM-YYYY or | YYYY-MM-DD). | | Out of curiosity, in what order do Europeans _verbally_ say | full dates with month names? Or does it vary by language? | irrational wrote: | These replies are fascinating. When saying a date I always | say month day year. I hadn't considered that this might be | cultural. | ethbr0 wrote: | As an American, same. I was wondering where the weird | month-first came from and figured it might have been | verbal first, then codified in writing. | irrational wrote: | At first I wondered if it had something to do with word | order in English, but it sounds like other English | speaking countries don't follow this pattern. | frutiger wrote: | I moved to the US from the UK a little over 10 years ago. | | The numeric month and day of my birthday happen to be the | same. For this anecdote lets assume it's 01/01/1970. | | When medical staff ask me for my date of birth, I'll say | "1st Jan 1970". They'll reply asking "Sorry, Jan 1st?" | And I'll say "yeah". This blew my (programmer) mind. | | Over the years I've rewired my brain to say "Jan 1st | 1970" and avoid the extra round trip. | rzwitserloot wrote: | Germanic (Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian) | languages just say "10 october", they'd never say "October | 10th". Before we get our 'english is so stupid!!!' hat on, | in many of these (e.g. Dutch and German), the number '87' | is pronounced 'seven-and-eighty' ('zevenentachtig' - 'zeven | en tachtig' - seven and eighty), which is stupid. Languages | are weird). | | Same for the romance ones: It's just "Quatorze juillet" - | 14th of July (Bastille day). | | English is the weird one, but not that weird, "7th of | october" is not much more complicated to say than "October | 7th". | codetrotter wrote: | European here. When I state my date of birth I state it as | "7th of October 1990". | | When a date is within the current year I state it as for | example "27th of June". | | If weekday matters, and specific date is still relevant | I'll say for example "Monday 27th of June". | | I might also simply say "Sunday last week", "Monday next | week", "Monday at the end of next month", etc. | | Likewise I might say "a couple of weeks ago", "last week", | "a few days ago", "in under two weeks", etc. | | Depends on context. | | When including a date in a file name I prefer YYYY-MM-DD | for date. | | When using dates in a directory hierarchy I'll have years | on the top level, with months within them and dates within | those. | | Sometimes I might use a format like YYYY-mm-ddTHHMMz_s in a | file name. For example | "something_2022-06-20T1722+0000_1655745728_more_text.tbz" | elromulous wrote: | Where in Europe? I imagine this might vary by language / | region. And could even differ in official use vs | vernacular. | | And ofc, the mixed order is the inferior option. | mtoddsmith wrote: | YYYY-DD-MM as a folder / filename does not sort | correctly. Not a fan. | | I much prefer YYYY-MM-DD for its sorting behavior. | codetrotter wrote: | Sorry, that was a typo. I meant to say YYYY-MM-DD. Edited | now. | garmain wrote: | In German, Dutch I'll use "twenty June twenty-twentytwo". | In English "twentieth of June twenty-twentytwo | blowski wrote: | There isn't a standard. Most individuals don't have a | consistent standard, let alone languages. | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | It varies by _context_ : sometimes I'll say "20th June", | sometimes "June 20th". There's no rhyme or reason. | lawn wrote: | In Sweden we say 20th June, 2022 and we even use a "DD/MM | -YY" shorthand when signing documents for instance, | although YYYY-MM-DD is also common and "the more correct". | ulkis wrote: | Except on food where EU mandates DD-MM-YY(YY). | kseistrup wrote: | Denmark: The Nth $month $year. E.g., "Den 20. juni 2022" | (lit.: the 20th June 2022). | karencarits wrote: | The same applies to Norway | jiehong wrote: | It does vary by language, but Roman languages (French, | Spanish, Italian, etc.) say the 4th of July. | | Same in German. | | In Polish, it's the same, except for official matters since | 2002, which now follows ISO8601. | | Even in the UK they commonly say the 5th of May, and not | May, the 5th (but it does happen). | | I can't talk about other languages. | chriswarbo wrote: | > not May, the 5th (but it does happen) | | The only time I see this is in the UK is on movie | posters/trailer, e.g. "In cinemas May 5th", which I | assume is due to re-using the US material. | | PS: 5th of May is a degenerate example, since it's 05/05 | regardless of ordering | | PPS: 5th of May is also my birthday ;) | cheeaun wrote: | Really awesome to see this evolving to this stage :) | koch wrote: | I'm glad you're here to see it! | | So cheeaun here posted his life timeline project[0] 9 years ago | (!) to hacker news[1] and I always thought it was pretty neat. | I made a tool to make timelines like that and it has since | evolved into markwhen. | | [0] https://github.com/cheeaun/life [1] | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6833565 | trenchgun wrote: | Fcuking hell, this looks good! | EGreg wrote: | How about a markdown for any hierarchical info? | | And diffing to know what changed on git etc. | NathHorrigan wrote: | This is very cool! Awesome job! | jzig wrote: | Very interesting. Why is there work inside of the education | sections of the life timeline? In the project planning example, I | could see it being useful to have something like $ref references | from Swagger to e.g. reference a duration from a project group | into the overall section. | koch wrote: | There are relative dates, so you can refer to previous events | when defining new ones: https://markwhen.com/docs#relative- | dates | lootsauce wrote: | This is awesome! I want to see other tools like this. I dream of | a project management system that is text based and lives in your | codebase seems we are pretty close with this. Planning (this), | comments / descriptions (markdown), identity / people (??), | tickets (??) Anyone know of something like this? | aloisdg wrote: | Nice. It is open source? | koch wrote: | https://github.com/kochrt/markwhen is about a month behind the | live website. | | The upstream repo that the live site uses is available to | sponsors. | zimpenfish wrote: | License says yes. | | https://github.com/kochrt/markwhen/blob/main/LICENSE | | > kochrt/markwhen is licensed under the GNU Affero General | Public License v3.0 | Dangeranger wrote: | Very cool! One suggestion, this is not Markdown, this is plain | text for timelines. | | Don't be afraid to distinguish your tool from its inspirations. | [deleted] | yucelfaruksahan wrote: | wow very cool, light mode can be also cool | scrollaway wrote: | Hat tip to a fellow follower of CGP Grey's yearly themes :) | pxeger1 wrote: | Clicking and dragging doesn't seem to work for me. Firefox | 102.0b8, Linux | pluc wrote: | Someone at Microsoft please please buy/license/implement this for | GitHub projects. | darknavi wrote: | Elsewhere someone said Mermaid is supported already by GitHub: | | https://mermaid-js.github.io/mermaid/#/gantt | renanwilliam wrote: | I like it! very pretty and useful. I really needed for something | like that for commercial proposals. Nice work | Slix wrote: | This is an excellent landing page that immediately draws my | attention and shows why I'd want to use this. This is a great | example of how a landing page can demonstrate a tool quickly. | wortelefant wrote: | This would enable a much appreciated Obsidian plugin, it seems a | natural fit | ytechie wrote: | Obsidian supports Mermaid charts. I've used that for this type | of chart before, to plan a trip. | boomskats wrote: | While the Gantt in Mermaid is decent, this would be far, far | superior as a bidirectional plugin (i.e capable of both | visualisation and editing the original markdown). | | I'd happily pay for this as an Obsidian plugin. | bombledmonk wrote: | Anyone ever run across anything like this with a simple syntax | that can do a timeline with split AND merges? I've always wanted | something like the linux timeline [1] as an interactive timeline | that can both split and merge. | | [1]https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Di.. | . | zaep wrote: | I'm working on an MIT-licensed time-tracking tool in my spare | time and I'm hoping somebody (in a "this is not legal | advice"-capacity at least) can enlighten me on licensing here: | | If I am understanding the AGPL-3.0 correctly (and assuming that | the format is also under the license), I could NOT add an "export | to Markwhen" feature to my project without then being forced to | convert it to AGPL-3.0. Is this correct? | koch wrote: | In addition to what others have said, I personally would love | to see people using the format, so please go ahead! | | I'd be interested to see what you're working on! | ChadNauseam wrote: | No, nobody can copyright a file format | ethanwillis wrote: | This, similarly you could copy(reimplement) the entire API | for this software if you wish with some caveats. | laurent123456 wrote: | Can the renderer be used separately to embed in other editors? | koch wrote: | Not right now, but it's something I've been thinking about, in | addition to separating the parser out | | https://github.com/kochrt/markwhen/issues/32 | koch wrote: | I've been working on markwhen as a way to easily create timelines | just from text. | | I've used it personally to help plan and coordinate my own | wedding (https://markwhen.com/rob/wedding) and for keeping track | of life events, and I've seen it used for event planning, project | management, and to visualize historical events or periods of | time. | | I personally like tools that let you immediately start using | them, and I set out to do that here with markwhen. | | Let me know if you have any questions! | mholt wrote: | Very cool. Some great ideas here as I build a visualizer for | Timeliner [0] (effectively its successor, Timelinize [1]) in my | spare time! | | Did you build the timeline UI yourself? Can it be used as a | library? | | [0]: https://github.com/mholt/timeliner | | [1]: https://twitter.com/timelinize | yawnxyz wrote: | hope your dad recovered from his hospital visit! | moasda wrote: | Cool tool, thanks for sharing! | majkinetor wrote: | Fantastic. ISO8601 date is a must, otherwise, its delightful :) | yashasolutions wrote: | nice! i have been using a combination of org-mode / taskjuggler | to produce gantt so far. Bit this looks nice and could be use for | simpler use cases. | account-5 wrote: | I definitely can't use this, the date overhead is too much. I | agree with the other commenter, YYYY-MM-DD is the way to go. | howmayiannoyyou wrote: | If only this were a vertical timeline with a print-friendly | format. Its great, but a guy can dream.... | koch wrote: | Exporting to pdf/png does a good job of getting everything into | view. Otherwise the 'doc' view (the third view option button in | the bottom left corner) might be your best bet, it just | displays a list | DiggyJohnson wrote: | Hey! Thanks for the workaround. Still, I second this feature | request, and opened an issue in your repo. | | https://github.com/kochrt/markwhen/issues/35 | | Awesome project. Thanks for sharing. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-20 23:00 UTC)