Author: grmwnr
Description:
EasyTimeline presently generates an imagemapped PNG. It would be very useful for
visually impaired users if it could be configured to output somewhat-graphical HTML
(this could even be the default behaviour) or, failing that, just generate a
plaintext/wikitext list of the contents (this should be settable as a user
preference).
Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
EasyTimeline also generates SVG. It always does at Mediawiki.
For example if you look at this ET chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Timeline_WW_II_-_Pacific_Theatre, then open the chart in a new tab to reveal the image url, like this https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/147779cbb0ee5cdec41b7d54902cee53.png then change png into svg, you'll see the vector version, which to my surprise has less issues with overlapping texts.
As a side note, here is a musing on that particular bug, making ET much less attractive: these overlapping texts were introduced many years ago by changing ET font to a proportional font, thus breaking many perfectly fine diagrams, and rendering them ugly and unreadable. My strong advice not to break the huge base of existing diagrams was ignored. It can be fixed by fixing the Ploticus API (I had a patch for Ploticus in the works). Or by finding a different way to represent clickable links (e.g. in brackets) thus doing away with partial redraw of texts in a different color.
Having said that I'm not sure there is much future for ET anyway. New solutions emerge. I loved this Wikimania2014 presentation: https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Transforming_Wikipedia_into_the_timeline_of_everything!
BTW I am longer directly involved in ET, haven't been for 5+ years. Not sure if anyone is maintaining the script.