Reading timeline

Given we can now enter dates we began/ended reading a book, wouldn't it be great if we could generate a timeline to see which books were being read at any particular point? I think it would be cool.

A widget that displays all the books you're currently reading (i.e. start date exists and either end date does not exist or end date is before start date) would be neat, too.

I was trying to get someone who knows what they're doing re: programming to set up a calendar view a while back, but it didn't take... there's a several-months-old thread about it here.

I can write the html but I'd love to have LT do it automatically from my "date read" dates.

Your calendar is great! I was thinking, however, of something like the below, whilst recognising it is virtually impossible. Say in my library at the moment, part of my timeline would look like this:

17/6 24/6 8/9 16/10 28/10 31/10 10/11 15/11
Paris I----------------------------------------
Crimes against Humanity
I---------------------I
Brave New World I------I
I Claudius I-----I
Claudius the God I-----

See what I mean? I know how unwieldy this would get, but how wonderful it would be!!! Let's you see which books get read quickly, but also which ones you take months to read. The above is not to scale or anything, but I think it shows a good image of what I was after.

Aaaah. My timeline didn't come out with the spaces in the right spots. Bum.

. . . the post editor trims out spaces and uses a proportional font unless you tell it otherwise. I'll have a go here:

.17/6..24/6...8/9.16/10.28/10.31/10.10/11.15/11
Paris I----------------------------------------
      Crimes against Humanity
      I---------------------I
            Brave New World I------I
                        I Claudius I-----I
                        Claudius the God I-----

Ohhh, I gotcha. Yeah, that would be neat.

It would probably work okay for people like me, who tend to have only one or two books "in progress" at a time, but more than that and it would get really complicated really fast. Plus, what about books that stay "active" for a really long time? I read the first bit of Unfinished Tales of Middle Earth in April, got horribly bored, and set it down. I'll probably go back to it at some point, so the gap between "date started" and "date finished" is going to be really long, but I certainly haven't been actively reading it this whole time.

I don't have a problem with the fact that some books would seem to have taken a very long time to read; that does reflect something about how engrossing they are.

Take a look at this for an implementation suggestion. Works just as notmyrealname suggested. Very slick.

http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/

That is AWESOME! Just what I want!!! Just need to work out how to run a line between start and end points of a book, and away we go!
Cheers and thanks

That's a fascinating subject the MIT folks picked for a demo.

We had a Pearl Harbor survivor out here this past week who also was in the basement of the Dallas jail directly behind Oswald when Ruby shot him.

If that's not Forrest Gump material I don't know what is.

Actual, back on the old Google Group there was a thread about this, where someone was kind enough to test out that MIT implementation on my library (at that time, at least). The thread is here:
http://groups.google.com/group/Librarything/browse_thread/thread/23fdfae744d6d56...

And you can see the beautiful job MMcM did on the mashup here:
http://world.std.com/~jdostale/ltimeline/timeline.html

I would love for this to be a real "thing."

Okay, I'm an idiot, I didn't bother checking to see that second link still worked. It doesn't appear to. But it has been done, and it was Good!

The link given in the Google group thread should still work. The proof of concept code is still there, too, although really any substantial progress requires action on the LT side and they're pretty busy with higher priorities.

You're right - it does work again. Given I know nothing about coding, is there an easy way I can make that happen for my library? Do you need a hosted web page or can I do it via my own computer?

If it takes more than about two mins to answer, please don't worry everyone! I imagine it could get very complicated very quickly!

Have a great holiday all!

we'll need to look at Reading Dates and get those situated before we can look at this RSI. I've marked this one in my big RSI list, but it's being deferred for now. Keep bugging us about this one in the future!

>16 kristilabrie:

Why are you responding to an RSI that's almost nine years old and that predates not only the partial implementation of the timeline but even reading dates? For requests this old it's really hard to figure out what's been implemented in a different way and what is still wanted; better to ask them to make a new request that's consistent with the site in its current state.

And this is another reason an RSI tracker would be useful. Old, outdated RSIs could be closed.

Wow! Can't believe you dug up my thread of 2006! Also can't believe I've been a member that long...

>17 lorax: Sorry, I was responding to this request from March (https://www.librarything.com/topic/189256), and have been trying to look for similar posts to update as well, but must've skipped over that this thread was deferred in my haste. It looks like I posted the update right before I went on vacation, which explains why I might have been trying to move too fast. Sorry!

I'll admit that even if requests aren't this old, if they're only older than how long I've been here (since September 2014), it's still sometimes a challenge for me to know what's been worked on, phased out, changed, etc. I gather I'll continue to run into a few problems like this (when I'm not rushing before vacation even :) as I go. I'll try to keep your suggestion in mind for asking folks to update their requests if they're older or look like they need updating, thanks! The post I made earlier was really unintentional, I didn't mean to post on a deferred thread.