Perspective Events

What Is a Perspective Event?
Adding a Perspective Event
Editing a Perspective Event
Adding a Set of Perspective Events
Cleaning Up Perspective Events
Technical Information on Perspective Event Sets

Timeline Chart

Editing Timeline Charts

Editing Objects in Charts

What Is a Perspective Event?

A perspective event is an event of historical significance which you can add to a timeline chart, thereby enhancing the legend of the chart. Perspective events can be placed anywhere by clicking and dragging. You can add perspective events one at a time, or you can add an entire set of perspective events.

perspective event

The timeline example below contains perspective events related to aviation history.

Adding a Perspective Event

To add a perspective event, choose Timeline > Perspectives > Add One. This opens the Perspective Event window, wherein you can enter the perspective event name and set the year that the event took place.

(Another way to add one perspective event is by holding down the Control key and clicking a perspective event. This will show a pop-up menu. Choose Add Event from the menu.)

Editing a Perspective Event

To edit the name or date of a perspective event on a chart, double-click the perspective event. This also opens the Perspective Event window, described above.

(You can also hold down the Control key and click a perspective event. This will show a pop-up menu. Choose Edit Event from the menu.)

To change other attributes of perspective events — such as the line color, line width, text color, text size, etc. — select the perspective event and use the tool panel buttons. Perspective events can also be rotated.

Adding a Set of Perspective Events

Opening a set of perspective events adds the contents of the set to any existing perspective events in the chart. To open a set of perspective events, choose Timeline > Perspectives > Add Set. By default, you'll be shown the contents of this folder: Home/Library/Application Support/Reunion/Perspective Events.

Cleaning Up Perspective Events

To neatly arrange all perspective events, use the last four menu items in the Timeline > Perspectives submenu. The examples below show the effect of these commands. (Perspective events placed below a timeline are not affected by these menu commands.)

Menu Item Appearance on the chart
Clean Up Left
Clean Up Split
Clean Up 45°
Clean Up 90°
Technical Information on Perspective Event Sets
Note: This material is considered "advanced." To use perspective events in timeline charts or the Ages sidebar, it is not necessary to know any of the material below. The information presented here is only for people who desire to create their own perspective event sets. If you do create one or more perspective event sets, we encourage you to share them with other Reunion users via our web site.

A perspective event set is a text file with simple formatting.

Perspective event sets should be in a folder called Perspective Events, and stored here: Home/Library/Application Support/Reunion

The format for lines in the perspective event set file is...

Day Month Year<tab>EventDescription<tab>EventPlace<return>

examples...

Rules...

examples...

File Format

Perspective event files can be saved as text files or RTF files. Tab, font, and color settings can be maintained when the file is opened for viewing or re-editing. To edit perspective event files, simply drag the file onto the TextEdit application.

Each line in the perspective event file must conform to the specifications below and each must be on a line by itself, otherwise the line will be ignored.

Comments can be included within the file as long as they don't inadvertently conform to the command structure. The best way to avoid this is to not start a comment line with a valid date.

While perspective event files made for earlier versions of Reunion will work with Reunion 13, the name of the file must be changed to end with '.pEvents'

It is recommended that all editing of perspective event files (old and new) be done in the TextEdit application that comes with Mac OS X. When creating a new file you must force the file type to be 'pEvents'

Ages Sidebar

When perspective events are used in the Ages sidebar, the Event Description is placed in the Event column and the Event Place goes into the Place column.

Alternatively, formatting can be applied to the Event column by adding an "ages" line at the top of the file. An ages format line has this structure...

...where ages is the exact text "ages" and format can contain any text and any of the following tags...

agesN is the same as ages but is used in cases where an event has no optional place data.

Examples of an ages line...

If there is no ages or agesN format defined the internal default is...

If the “Show Pictures” option is checked for the Ages sidebar then a perspective event icon will appear in the pictures column next to each perspective event.

Custom Icons in the Ages Sidebar

A custom icon can be applied to a perspective events file by adding the following line near the top of the file...

...where iconName can be one of the following icons that are installed with Reunion...

Anchor Ball Book
Canada Car Census
Church Computer Crown
Europe Flag Gear
Gold Graduation Jet
Knight Man Medical
Movie Music Netherlands
Newspaper Passport Pencil
Rocket Saturn Sword
Temple UK US
Sample
Note: The eventIcon line is optional.
If this line is not included in the perspective events file, then the generic event icon will be used instead.

Timeline Charts

When perspective events are imported into timeline charts, the Event Description is used as the text and the Event Place is append with a comma.

Alternatively, formatting can be applied to the event text by adding a timeline line at the top of the file. A timeline format line has this structure...

...where timeline is the exact text "timeline" and format can contain any of the same tags above. If you have a perspective event file that has events both with and without the optional place field, you can specify how to format lines without places using a second format line called timelineN for no place.

When you open a perspective event set into a timeline chart, Reunion will only import the perspective events that fall within the bounds of the timeline (starting year to ending year).

On This Date Report

Perspective events can be used as reference dates in the On This Date report. These appear when you click the Reference Date button (they're in submenus, at the bottom of the pop-up menu). See this example.