I think the title says it all. There should be an option to display pretty HTML charts, perhaps with some interactive CSS/JS when you hover over elements.
See Also:
T37320: Make Timeline generate SVG instead of PNG images
T54689: Consider deprecating Ploticus PNG generation in favor of SVG
T29156: EasyTimeline: replace perl script & Ploticus backend with PHP and output via GD or SVG
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | Feature | None | T37320 Make Timeline generate SVG instead of PNG images | ||
| Open | None | T62263 Rethink how EasyTimeline works (no more PNGs?) |
I don't think a user preference would be appropriate.
Re-thinking how we generate timelines is certainly needed, though. I've envisioned SVG + JS, after seeing some of the work that Mark Holmquist did with it. There may already be a bug about this. If not, I'd recommend repurposing this bug or filing a separate bug report. It's unclear what exactly would be better, but we know for sure that the current implementation, which involves static PNGs (with link overlays?), could definitely use love. :-)
By the way, EasyTimeline has no maintainer and relies on some ancient Perl script, as I recall. Perhaps a good GSoC project for 2014?
I don't think anyone likes the png output. The graphing program used makes some pretty ugly output, plus no bidi support. The main thing stopping someone from changing it is it would represent a lot of work to rewrite the entire script.
For the curious, easytimeline can output svg, but that was semi-broken for other reasons last time I checked.
(In reply to comment #3)
For the curious, easytimeline can output svg, but that was semi-broken for
other reasons last time I checked.
Which bug is that?