When you create a Graph, the most important choice is the dating type: it determines how all the content is positioned on the time axis, and it cannot be changed once you have added elements.

Next you decide which views to enable (timeline atlas, map, family tree) and whether the graph will be public or private. The rest of the configuration can be adjusted at any time.

The time axis uses real years. Positive years are AD and negative years are BC. Each element is placed on the axis according to its exact year, so the visual distance between two events reflects the real time distance between them.

When to use it: whenever your events have specific or approximate dates. It is the default type for history, genealogy and historical geography.

The time axis uses relative numbers with no year scale. You define what each number means: they can be the phases of a process (1, 2, 3…), generations, chapters, stages of a cycle or any other unit of your own.

When to use it: when the content has no specific dates, or when you want to compare structures without anchoring them to real time. Ideal for work processes, narratives, biological cycles, methodologies and comparisons between different periods.

The atlas is a grid view where the vertical axis represents time and the horizontal axis groups the content into Columns.

On the left there is a fixed bar of years (the time axis). Each year mark has a horizontal line running across all the columns as a reference.

By default the time axis is linear: every year takes up the same space. If your graph mixes very different periods (e.g. geological history with modern history), you can define scale cuts so that each segment has its own proportion.

For example: a cut at year 0 splits the axis into two segments (prehistory and the modern era), each with its own independent visual scale. Each segment takes up the same height on screen.

This is configured from the Scale cuts icon (straighten) in the top menu (“Editing” block), in edit mode.

Each Collection, Phase and Point has an importance value (0–5). When the atlas zoom is low (distant view), only low-importance elements are shown. As you zoom in, the higher-valued ones gradually appear.

Each Column takes up one vertical column in the atlas. It is used to separate content by theme: Politics, Culture, Economy, Military, or by groups of people in a genealogy.

If the graph is simple and you do not need thematic separation, a single Column called "General" is enough.

A Collection groups related Points and Phases under a common theme or period within a column. If it has dates, it is positioned automatically on the atlas time axis. Without dates, it appears off the axis as a free list.

Example: in the Politics column, a Collection "Reign of Charles I" with start year 1516 and end year 1556 groups all the political events of that period.

A Phase appears as a coloured band in the atlas covering the time range between the start year and the end year. It is used to visualise important periods: reigns, wars, geological eras, stages of a process.

If it is not assigned to any column, the Phase appears on the global axis of the graph, visible from all columns as a common reference.

The Point is the atom of information in the graph. It can represent a historical event, a person, a place, a work, a battle. It lives inside a Collection and appears in the atlas positioned according to its year.

The same Point can be present in all three views: in the atlas as a label, on the map as a marker (if it has a geolocation) and in the family tree as a node (if it has family relationships assigned).

A Note is a rich-text document attached to an element (Collection, Phase or Point). It lets you add detailed context, analysis, transcriptions or quotations without overloading the main element. The notes of an element appear in the right-hand side panel when you click on it.

The map view shows, on OpenStreetMap, all the Points that have a geolocation assigned (markers) and the Areas (area polygons). All the content can be filtered by year: enter a year in the side panel and only the elements whose time range includes it will be shown.

There can also be free markers: markers on the map that are not linked to any Point, with their own name and colour. Useful for geographic reference points.

A free marker is an independent geographic point: it does not represent any Point of the graph but a reference place — a city, an archaeological site, a port, a battlefield — that you want to place on the map without having to create a Point for it.

Like geolocated Points, free markers support a time filter: you can enter an exact year or a range so that the marker only appears on the map when the year filter includes it.

Free markers belong to the graph (unlike Areas, which are shared across all of the user's graphs).

An Area is a polygon drawn on the map that delimits a region: a kingdom, a province, a conflict zone, a route. It can be filtered by year just like markers, so that an area only appears in a given historical period.

Areas are shared across all graphs of the same user. If you have already drawn the medieval kingdoms for one graph, you can reuse them in another without drawing them again.

The family tree view represents the Points of the graph as nodes connected by kinship lines. The tree is generated dynamically from the relationships you have defined between Points: spouse, son, daughter, brother, sister.

It can be filtered by year: enter a year in the filter field and only the people whose lifespan includes that year will appear.

The Bibliography is the repository of sources for the graph: books, articles, websites, documentaries and podcasts. Each source can be linked to one or several Notes, indicating the exact page or timestamp the information comes from.

Sources are created once and reused in all the notes of the graph that need them. When you open a Note you see the cited sources with the corresponding page number or timestamp.

The importer reads an external source, extracts Collections, Phases, Points, Notes and bibliographic references from it and presents them to you as a proposal. Nothing is saved to the graph until you review the proposal and accept it.

It is opened from the more_horiz menu → Import (cloud_upload), and is only available in edit mode.

• A URL: web page, YouTube video, DOI, arXiv or RSS feed.
• A file: PDF or EPUB (up to 25 MB).