Difference between revisions of "Documentation:The Editor and data format"

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''Start date'' and ''End date'' - Instantaneous events have only start date, while time intervals have both start and end dates. The date format is this: MM.DD.YYYY. This is an example of an event with a full date <code>some event with a full date;;;;05.25.1965;;</code>. Also, you can specify only month, without a date: <code>05.1965</code>. Or you can specify only year: <code>1965</code>. When you specify only year, the event will point to a moment between June and July of that year. If you specify month without a date, the event will point roughly to the middle of that month, a moment between 15th and 16th day of that month. In general, when event is pointing to a moment between days, that shows that we don't know the date precisely, and the positions of events on the timeline should not be taken literally in such cases.
''Start date'' and ''End date'' - Instantaneous events have only start date, while time intervals have both start and end dates. The date format is this: MM.DD.YYYY. This is an example of an event with a full date <code>some event with a full date;;;;05.25.1965;;</code>. Also, you can specify only month, without a date: <code>05.1965</code>. Or you can specify only year: <code>1965</code>. When you specify only year, the event will point to a moment between June and July of that year. If you specify month without a date, the event will point roughly to the middle of that month, a moment between 15th and 16th day of that month. In general, when event is pointing to a moment between days, that shows that we don't know the date precisely, and the positions of events on the timeline should not be taken literally in such cases.
To specify that a year is BC/BCE use the minus sign. Note, that the minus should go before the year, not entire date. For example: <code>03.15.-44</code> is correct, and <code>-03.15.44</code> is not. Also note that even though we use the minus sign, we don’t use the astronomical year numbering system where 1 BC corresponds to year Zero, 2 BC to year -1 and so on. There is no year Zero on the Timeline, and minus simply means BC. For example year -44 is year 44 BC.


''Color'' - All events of a layer have the default color. So usually you don’t need to put anything in this field. However, if you need to give some events different color, you put color index in this field. For this to work you need to have the needed color in the list of colours. More on that later. Also you can make the background of the time interval transparent by putting letter ’t’ into the Color field instead of an index.
''Color'' - All events of a layer have the default color. So usually you don’t need to put anything in this field. However, if you need to give some events different color, you put color index in this field. For this to work you need to have the needed color in the list of colours. More on that later. Also you can make the background of the time interval transparent by putting letter ’t’ into the Color field instead of an index.
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Notice, that once you have sources and or colors specified, you have to put ‘events:’  before the list of events.
Notice, that once you have sources and or colors specified, you have to put ‘events:’  before the list of events.
==The Parser==
In this article we did all the manipulations with data manually just to teach you the data format. That’s not how you usually create layers for the Timeline though. There is a program called Parser that greatly facilitates the creation of layers. You can learn how to use it from this [[Documentation:How to use the Parser|article]].

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