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Timeline not displaying properly

Hello

 

I've created timelines before without problem, however, for some strange reason this timeline is behaving very oddly.

 

The easiest way to explain is to show you the preview: http://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline/latest/embed/index.html?source=0Ao4U5uisVdWXdFBNXzZhaWtvQjhlWUx1YVE2cXlkM0E&font=Bevan-PotanoSans&maptype=TERRAIN&lang=en&start_at_end=true&debug=true&start_zoom_adjust=7&height=650

 

There are duplicated entires, the dates displayed are incorrect and, the block quotes appear garbled on some entries.

You can view the original google document here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ao4U5uisVdWXdFBNXzZhaWtvQjhlWUx1YVE2cXlkM0E&output=html

 

I'd appreciate any help people can give me

Thanks

 

Fabio

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9 Comments

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  • 0
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    Joe Germuska

    Fabio:

    I sent you a request for access to the source spreadsheet as other than the HTML version you shared above, in hopes that I might be able to try some things with it. Copy/paste from the HTML seems to be unreliable.

    One thing I note is that your dates are in inconsistent formats (month and year / full date). Also, the ones for specific dates are rendered in the European standard dd/mm/yyyy -- if that has worked for you in other timelines, then it may be a non-issue, but it's one of the things I would experiment with if I had a copy of the spreadsheet.

    Otherwise, I'd use a standard divide-and-conquer approach to bug hunting: remove half the lines and see if the spreadsheet behaves normally; if it does, replace them and remove the other half, etc. 

  • 0
    Avatar
    Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

    Hi Joe

    Thanks for your help - I've added you to access the spreadsheet as i still can't figure this out.

    I do need to use a mixture of full dates as well as month and year and we're in the UK so the European month format  - i'm sure this has worked in previous timelines. I've tried adding line by line but even then one entry seems to jump ahead to March 2014 in the timeline when the actual date is 15/12/2013 so it doens't make any sense whether you use the European format or the US - really strange behaviour .

     

    I'd appreciate any help you can offer

     

    Thanks

     

    Fabio

     

     

  • 0
    Avatar
    Joe Germuska

    Actually, without having tried it yet, that makes perfect sense to me. If one does "naive" math, March is the fifteenth month after January 2013. I would not be surprised to see 15/12/2013 rendered as 12 March 2014.  I agree that it's wrong, but it doesn't surprise me.

  • 0
    Avatar
    Joe Germuska

    Also, now that you've shared the spreadsheet with me, I see that columns with European date formats are flagged with a validation warning and the message "Invalid cell contents. Enter a valid date." 

    I must admit, I did not write the original date parsing in TimelineJS, so I can't explain it perfectly, but for the near term, I suggest you switch to US style dates.

  • 0
    Avatar
    Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF)

    Hi

    Thanks so much for your help - i do seem to have resolved the probelm by converting the dates to US standard - however, I'd really like to use the European standard - can this be implemented?

    Thanks

  • 0
    Avatar
    Joe Germuska

    I consulted with Timeline's creator yesterday. He indicated that the code to handle date parsing, because it is already so flexible and permissive, is probably the most complicated part of Timeline, and changes to it are a very delicate matter. We'll note this as a desired enhancement, but I don't know when or if it will actually be implemented.

  • 0
    Avatar
    Matt Price

    I know this is a little late,  but I think you can probably enter the dates in european format in one column and then write a macro that rewrites them in US format in another, perhaps hidden, column.  the feed from that spreadsheet should be read properly by timelinejs -- at least, I think it will. 

  • 0
    Avatar
    Joe Germuska

    Note that Timeline's Google spreadsheet loading fails when the column headers are deleted or changed. If you follow this strategy, make sure that the computed cell has the official header as in the template; use any other header for the cell in which you enter dates in your preferred format. Timeline ignores columns with names it doesn't recognize.

  • 0
    Avatar
    Nfholzinger

    Some of the dates on my timeline spreadsheet are not showing up on the displayed timeline. All the events after a certain date just don't show up. 

     

    https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-F0eRQ6lNRBFm877Yn_SDJmYHFvulKiCp52KZAP8HoY/edit?usp=sharing

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