It seems that this isn't quite possible with OneNote (yet?). I'm using OneNote to write my whole life story. As I have been doing this, I have found that one of the limitations here is the lack of a timeline. It would be really nice if I could input events at specific dates and times, or over date ranges, and be able to see a visual representation (along with event data/info) of my biography. It would be really interested to publish a biography in this form rather than traditional text-only book style, as not only would it serve and accomplish the same purposes as traditional books, but also provide a better, easier, and more comprehensive way of understanding what is going on, the timing of events, etc. Would make it easier also to organize information and remember things better.
Facebook does a really good job with the timeline frontpage, but I am wondering if there is anything out there that is like OneNote or an add-on for OneNote that can accomplish just this. Any suggestions? Help and advice is very much appreciated !
EDIT: Software idea!!
Just writing down some thoughts. A timeline would actually add as a third dimension the way I am using OneNote. Currently, in OneNote I am taking advantage of not being confined to document sizes -- so basically using the X-axis to the max for comments (and comments for comments). A timeline would add a third dimension. I imagine that you would have this line for the core of this timeline; you would be able to click on it to add an event (down to the date and second, or a range). This event would be a note (essentially), and the field of this note would use Microsoft Word or be a WYSIWIG box. Then, you could click on a specific word or highlight a specific set of words, or click on the contour of this note/event box to create a note/event of that. This way, you could branch out and make comments of comments. You should also be able to attach files (videos, pictures, documents, music) to notes.
You should also be able to categorize notes like you can categorize tasks and calendar events (you can have a category label "Birthday" using the color green, and then create all your friends birthday events in the calendar categorized under "Birthday" and using a green colored background). On top of this, there should be a mode that I call "link mode" -- you would be able to use this to link related notes together (weaving through time) -- and assign a category+color for each thread... Everything would be visually illustrated with straight/perpendicular lines.. except for link threads. Link threads would be curves/hill humps (as they go from one note to the next). And finally, you should be able to click on the curved lines of link threads (in between two notes) and make a note point there as well.
When in "reading mode", you could have the story presented in two ways (at least that I can think of): timeline mode or page-mode. I think most people would want to use page mode. The camera would be parallel with the timeline with the timeline's vector in the center of the camera. There would be two buttons -- next and previous -- you use these to go forward or backward a page. All it does it move up to the next event in the timeline and show the notes flat against your screen. If there are multiple notes (or not) at the same time, if you wanted to you could stop at that time and dig deeper into a note/event to read the comments and notes nested inside, and depending on how far the author took it you could go deeper and deeper in nested comments, and once you're done return the to root to either read deeper into other comments or to proceed forward/backward in time to the next event.
If you wanted to print it traditional book style, that could be done too! You could specify which direction you would want it to generate a document that it would print (i.e. oldest to latest time vs latest to oldest time, depends on the style you prefer). For events that have multiple/simultaneous notes, it would be the author's duty to assign a "priority number" to each note to indicate which note came first on that event (or day for example). If you have a note with deeply nested comments, that in itself could be a chapter. Notes could also have a "Title" field, so that way when generating a document, it could use the title of a root note as the header for a whole chapter (depending on how many deeply nested notes/sub-notes/comments you have).
This would be a totally different way of presenting a biography, autobiography, puzzle/mystery stories, etcetera; I think it would be a more fun way to read something; and, I think it would improve whole comprehension of a book.
