How to create a timeline with LaTeX?

Question

In history-books you often have timeline, where events and periods are marked on a line in the correct relative distance to each other. How is it possible to create somethin

Answer 1

Just an update.

The present TiKZ package will issue: Package tikz Warning: Snakes have been superseded by decorations. Please use the decoration libraries instead of the snakes library on input line. . .

So the pertaining part of code has to be changed to:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
%draw horizontal line
\draw (0,0) -- (2,0);
\draw[decorate,decoration={snake,pre length=5mm, post length=5mm}] (2,0) -- (4,0);
\draw (4,0) -- (5,0);
\draw[decorate,decoration={snake,pre length=5mm, post length=5mm}] (5,0) -- (7,0);

%draw vertical lines
\foreach \x in {0,1,2,4,5,7}
\draw (\x cm,3pt) -- (\x cm,-3pt);

%draw nodes
\draw (0,0) node[below=3pt] {$ 0 $} node[above=3pt] {$   $};
\draw (1,0) node[below=3pt] {$ 1 $} node[above=3pt] {$ 10 $};
\draw (2,0) node[below=3pt] {$ 2 $} node[above=3pt] {$ 20 $};
\draw (3,0) node[below=3pt] {$  $} node[above=3pt] {$  $};
\draw (4,0) node[below=3pt] {$ 5 $} node[above=3pt] {$ 50 $};
\draw (5,0) node[below=3pt] {$ 6 $} node[above=3pt] {$ 60 $};
\draw (6,0) node[below=3pt] {$  $} node[above=3pt] {$  $};
\draw (7,0) node[below=3pt] {$ n $} node[above=3pt] {$ 10n $};
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

HTH

Answer 2

There is timeline.sty floating around.

The syntax is simpler than using tikz:

%%% In LaTeX:
%%% \begin{timeline}{length}(start,stop)
%%%   .
%%%   .
%%%   .
%%% \end{timeline}
%%%
%%% in plain TeX
%%% \timeline{length}(start,stop)
%%%   .
%%%   .
%%%   .
%%% \endtimeline
%%% in between the two, we may have:
%%% \item{date}{description}
%%% \item[sortkey]{date}{description}
%%% \optrule
%%%
%%% the options to timeline are:
%%%      length The amount of vertical space that the timeline should
%%%                use.
%%%      (start,stop) indicate the range of the timeline. All dates or
%%%                sortkeys should lie in the range [start,stop]
%%%
%%% \item without the sort key expects date to be a number (such as a
%%%      year).
%%% \item with the sort key expects the sort key to be a number; date
%%%      can be anything. This can be used for log scale time lines
%%%      or dates that include months or days.
%%% putting \optrule inside of the timeline environment will cause a
%%%      vertical rule to be drawn down the center of the timeline.

I've used python's datetime.data.toordinal to convert dates to 'sort keys' in the context of the package.

Answer 3

The tikz package seems to have what you want.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{snakes}

\begin{document}

  \begin{tikzpicture}[snake=zigzag, line before snake = 5mm, line after snake = 5mm]
    % draw horizontal line   
    \draw (0,0) -- (2,0);
    \draw[snake] (2,0) -- (4,0);
    \draw (4,0) -- (5,0);
    \draw[snake] (5,0) -- (7,0);

    % draw vertical lines
    \foreach \x in {0,1,2,4,5,7}
      \draw (\x cm,3pt) -- (\x cm,-3pt);

    % draw nodes
    \draw (0,0) node[below=3pt] {$ 0 $} node[above=3pt] {$   $};
    \draw (1,0) node[below=3pt] {$ 1 $} node[above=3pt] {$ 10 $};
    \draw (2,0) node[below=3pt] {$ 2 $} node[above=3pt] {$ 20 $};
    \draw (3,0) node[below=3pt] {$  $} node[above=3pt] {$  $};
    \draw (4,0) node[below=3pt] {$ 5 $} node[above=3pt] {$ 50 $};
    \draw (5,0) node[below=3pt] {$ 6 $} node[above=3pt] {$ 60 $};
    \draw (6,0) node[below=3pt] {$  $} node[above=3pt] {$  $};
    \draw (7,0) node[below=3pt] {$ n $} node[above=3pt] {$ 10n $};
  \end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}

I'm not too expert with tikz, but this does give a good timeline, which looks like:

Answer 4

If you are looking for UML sequence diagrams, you might be interested in pkf-umlsd, which is based on TiKZ. Nice demos can be found here.

Answer 5

Tim Storer wrote a more flexible and nicer looking timeline.sty (Internet Archive Wayback Machine link, as original is gone). In addition, the line is horizontal rather than vertical. So for instance:

\begin{timeline}{2008}{2010}{50}{250}
  \MonthAndYearEvent{4}{2008}{First Podcast}
  \MonthAndYearEvent{7}{2008}{Private Beta}
  \MonthAndYearEvent{9}{2008}{Public Beta}
  \YearEvent{2009}{IPO?}
\end{timeline}

produces a timeline that looks like this:

2008                              2010
 · · April, 2008 First Podcast    ·
       · July, 2008 Private Beta
           · September, 2008 Public Beta
                · 2009 IPO?

Personally, I find this a more pleasing solution than the other answers. But I also find myself modifying the code to get something closer to what I think a timeline should look like. So there's not definitive solution in my opinion.

Answer 6

There is a new chronology.sty by Levi Wiseman. The documentation (pdf) says:

Most timeline packages and solutions for LATEX are used to convey a lot of information and are therefore designed vertically. If you are just attempting to assign labels to dates, a more traditional timeline might be more appropriate. That's what chronology is for.

Here is some example code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{chronology}
\begin{document}

\begin{chronology}[5]{1983}{2010}{3ex}[\textwidth]
\event{1984}{one}
\event[1985]{1986}{two}
\event{\decimaldate{25}{12}{2001}}{three}
\end{chronology}

\end{document}

Which produces this output: