The Timelines section in the item pane
The Timelines section sits in Zotero's item pane, below the sections Zotero ships. For the selected library item it lists every event, on every timeline in the same library, that cites the item. It only reads: adding or changing a citation happens in the event editor in the Timeline tab or through the library context menu.
To find an item's events and jump to one, see How to find which events cite an item.
Where it appears
The section is titled "Timelines". Its icon is also in the item pane's side navigation, where the tooltip reads "Timelines".
The section is disabled, and so hidden, for:
- attachments, because an attachment is cited through the item it belongs to, not on its own;
- the plugin's own items: the "Zotero Timeline (plugin data)" container and its storage and vocabulary notes.
Every other item gets the section, including standalone notes.
What the section shows
Matching is by library and item key. An event matches when one of its sources points at the selected item. Only timelines in the selected item's own library are read; a timeline cannot cite an item from another library.
Groups
Events are grouped by timeline. Each group has the timeline's name as a heading and one row per matching event. A timeline with no matching event has no group. Groups follow the order in which the plugin lists the library's timelines.
Rows
A row has two lines.
| Line | Content |
|---|---|
| First | The event's title. |
| Second | The date, then ·, then one entry per matching source, joined by ; . |
The date is the event's date. An event with an end date shows date – end date.
Each source entry has the form
<reference> — <type>or <reference> — <type>: <name> when the source has a name. The reference is the same label the event editor's source list uses. The type is the link type's current label, or "(unknown type)" if the type was deleted from the library's vocabulary. An event that cites the item twice, under two types, shows both entries on one row.
Rows take keyboard focus. A click, or Enter or Space on a focused row, jumps to the event in the Timeline tab. The jump is described in How to find which events cite an item.
Empty and error states
| Situation | What the section shows |
|---|---|
| No event cites the item, and every timeline was readable | "Not cited by any event." |
| No event cites the item, and at least one timeline could not be read | "A timeline in this library could not be read." |
| Events cite the item, and at least one timeline could not be read | The groups, then below them: "A timeline in this library could not be read; this list may be incomplete." |
The second state replaces the empty text on purpose. A timeline that will not parse is skipped, and from the section alone that would look the same as an item no timeline cites. The plugin cannot claim that when it could not read every document. See what the plugin stores for how a document can become unreadable.
When it refreshes
The section reads when you select an item and again after any write to the library's timeline data, including edits to the link-type vocabulary. A citation added from the context menu appears without reselecting the item, and so does a renamed link type.
The section reads a cache of the library's timeline documents. Selecting items one after another in the same library does not parse the documents again until one of them changes.
Related
- How to find which events cite an item
- The library item context menu
- Settings, for the link-type labels shown in each row