Scrunched Events on NeatlineSimile Timeline

Hello there,

This is likely a question with a simple answer, but I am very new to using Neatline specifically and digital history in general.

I am finding that when I have three or four events in one year of my NeatlineSimile timeline, they are scrunched near the bottom of the timeline, obscuring the date. I am aware that one can adjust the settings for the appearance of events and the width of the timeline in the Neatline editor, but no sets of values seem to solve this issue.

You can seem my map here: http://www.justinbroubalow.net/omeka/neatline/show/mapping-chicagos-south-side-1871-1920

The problem is clearly visible at the year 1904. Right now I have the values for track and tape set at 0, and, oddly enough, that has given me the best visual so far.

Thanks in advance for your help!

N.B.: As I said, I am a very beginner DH student, so please pay no mind to how unimpressive the exhibit is.

Hi jbroubalow,

Unfortunately, I don't have a great solution for you. The stacking of items with close dates is part of the somewhat older Simile library that provides the timeline. We often recommend work arounds for people who run into this issue. One frequent one is to figure out if there is a way to group content differently into a smaller number of records. We also sometimes recommend using the Waypoints plugin to show key features/records, and take a bit of stress off of the timeline. For exhibits with strongly time-related records, this doesn't always work though. Yours looks like it might be of that type.

We're looking at replacing the Simile library in the future, which will help fix issues like this, but for the moment, we don't have any easy fixes.

Best,
Scott