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 something similar in LaTeX?

Answer 1

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.

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

Tim Storer wrote a more flexible and nicer looking timeline.sty. 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 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

Firstly, I prefer tikz guided solution, because it gives you more freedom. Secondly, I'm not posting anything totally new. It is obviously similar to Zoe Gagnon's answer, because he showed the way.

I needed some year timeline and it took me some time (what a surprise!) to do it, so I'm sharing the results. I hope you'll like it.

\newlength\yearposx
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=0.57] % timeline 1990-2010->
    % define coordinates (begin, used, end, arrow)
    \foreach \x in {1990,1992,2000,2002,2004,2005,2008,2009,2010,2011}{
        \pgfmathsetlength\yearposx{(\x-1990)*1cm};
        \coordinate (y\x)   at (\yearposx,0);
        \coordinate (y\x t) at (\yearposx,+3pt);
        \coordinate (y\x b) at (\yearposx,-3pt);
    }

    % draw horizontal line with arrow
    \draw [->] (y1990) -- (y2011);

    % draw ticks
    \foreach \x in {1992,2000,2002,2004,2005,2008,2009}
        \draw (y\x t) -- (y\x b);

    % annotate
    \foreach \x in {1992,2002,2005,2009}
        \node at (y\x) [below=3pt] {\x};
    \foreach \x in {2000,2004,2008}
        \node at (y\x) [above=3pt] {\x};

    % select % beamer presentation
    \only<2>    {\fill      (y1992) circle (5pt);}
    \only<3-5>  {\fill      (y2000) circle (5pt);}
    \only<4-5>  {\fill      (y2002) circle (5pt);}
    \only<5>    {\fill[red] (y2004) circle (5pt);}
    \only<6>    {\fill      (y2005) circle (5pt);}
    \only<7>    {\fill[red] (y2005) circle (5pt);}
    \only<8-11> {\fill      (y2008) circle (5pt);}
    \only<11>   {\fill      (y2009) circle (5pt);}
\end{tikzpicture}

As you can see, it's tailored to beamer presentation (select part and also scale option), but if you really want to test it in a presentation, then you should move \newlength\yearposx outside of the frame definition, because otherwise you'll get error veritably stating that command \yearposx is already defined (unless you remove the selection part and any other frame-splitting commands from your frame).