Chronology adds arbitrary gaps

Question

I'm trying to display a timeline in my document using the package chronology, however it does weird things.

I'm using the following code:

\begin{chronology}[5]{0}{30}{4ex}{\textwidth}
\event[0]{2}{$P_5$} % 2
\event[2]{3}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[3]{5}{$P_4$} % 2
\event[5]{6}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[6]{8}{$P_3$} % 2
\event[8]{9}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[9]{11}{$P_2$} % 2
\event[11]{12}{\color{gray}switch} %%%%%% gap
\event[12]{14}{$P_1$} % 2
\event[14]{15}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[15]{16}{$P_5$} % 1
\event[16]{17}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[17]{19}{$P_4$} % 2
\event[19]{20}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[20]{22}{$P_2$} % 2
\event[22]{23}{\color{gray}switch} %%%%%% gap
\event[23]{25}{$P_1$} % 2
\event[25]{26}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[26]{28}{$P_4$} % 2
\event[28]{29}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[29]{30}{$P_1$} % 1
\end{chronology}

This should produce a completely filled timeline, but there are two gaps as seen in the picture linked below. What could be the problem?

Screenshot:

@GonzaloMedina Reported and fixed. Please feel free to contribute if necessary. — LaRiFaRi, Mar 27 '15 at 15:01
I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about a bug which has been fixed in version 1.1.1 of the package chronology. — LaRiFaRi, Aug 20 '15 at 10:07

Gonzalo Medina · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-18T13:25:32.183

The package is buggy. Inside the chronology environment some counters and lengths are defined, so using it more than once will trigger errors. Also, the \event command has a conditional in the form \ifx #1e...\else...\fi which doesn't seem to do what the author expected and was responsible for the odd behaviour.

In the following code I took care of the problem with the multiple definition of lengths and counters (removing them from the environment) and also suppressed the conditional. These changes seem to fix the problem, but the best thing to do would be to contact the package author.

With the modification is necessary to always use the optional argument for \event.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{chronology} 

\newcounter{step}\newcounter{stepstart}\newcounter{stepstop}%
\newcounter{yearstart}\newcounter{yearstop}\newcounter{deltayears}%
\newlength{\xstart}\newlength{\xstop}%
\newlength{\unit}\newlength{\timelinewidth}%
\newsavebox{\timelinebox}%

\renewenvironment{chronology}[5][5]{%
  \setcounter{step}{#1}%
  \setcounter{yearstart}{#2}\setcounter{yearstop}{#3}%
  \setcounter{deltayears}{\theyearstop-\theyearstart}%
  \setlength{\unit}{#4}%
  \setlength{\timelinewidth}{#5}%
  \pgfmathsetcounter{stepstart}%
    {\theyearstart+\thestep-mod(\theyearstart,\thestep)}%
  \pgfmathsetcounter{stepstop}{\theyearstop-mod(\theyearstop,\thestep)}%
  \addtocounter{step}{\thestepstart}%
  \begin{lrbox}{\timelinebox}%
    \begin{tikzpicture}[baseline={(current bounding box.north)}]%
      \draw [|->] (0,0) -- (\thedeltayears*\unit+\unit, 0);%
      \foreach \x in {1,...,\thedeltayears}%
        \draw[xshift=\x*\unit] (0,-.1\unit) -- (0,.1\unit);%
      \addtocounter{deltayears}{1}%
      \foreach \x in {\thestepstart,\thestep,...,\thestepstop}{%
        \pgfmathsetlength\xstop{(\x-\theyearstart)*\unit}%
        \draw[xshift=\xstop] (0,-.3\unit) -- (0,.3\unit);%
        \node at (\xstop,0) [below=.2\unit] {\x};}%
}
{%
    \end{tikzpicture}%
  \end{lrbox}%
  \raisebox{2ex}{\resizebox{\timelinewidth}{!}{\usebox{\timelinebox}}}}%
\renewcommand{\event}[3][e]{%
  \pgfmathsetlength\xstop{(#2-\theyearstart)*\unit}%
    \pgfmathsetlength\xstart{(#1-\theyearstart)*\unit}%
    \draw[fill=black,draw=none,opacity=0.5,rounded corners=.2\unit]%
      (\xstart,-.2\unit) rectangle%
      node[opacity=1,rotate=45,right=.5\unit] {#3} (\xstop,.2\unit);%
}%

\begin{document}

\noindent\begin{chronology}[5]{0}{30}{3ex}{\textwidth}
\event[0]{2}{$P_5$} % 2
\event[2]{3}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[3]{5}{$P_4$} % 2
\event[5]{6}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[6]{8}{$P_3$} % 2
\event[8]{9}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[9]{11}{$P_2$} % 2
\event[11]{12}{\textcolor{gray}{switch}} %%%%%% gap
\event[12]{14}{$P_1$} % 2
\event[14]{15}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[15]{16}{$P_5$} % 1
\event[16]{17}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[17]{19}{$P_4$} % 2
\event[19]{20}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[20]{22}{$P_2$} % 2
\event[22]{23}{\color{gray}switch} %%%%%% gap
\event[23]{25}{$P_1$} % 2
\event[25]{26}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[26]{28}{$P_4$} % 2
\event[28]{29}{\color{gray}switch}
\event[29]{30}{$P_1$} % 1
\end{chronology}

\end{document}

enter image description here

Thank you very much. I will contact the author as soon as I get to it.. — henrik, Apr 18 '13 at 13:37

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 20 '15 at 10:06

This has been fixed in version 1.1.1 of this package.

Please note that there is a new syntax since 1.1 which looks like:

#1 (optional) = stepsize, 
#2 = yearstart, 
#3 = yearstop, 
#4 = postscaledtimelinewidth, 
#5 (optional) = prescaledtimelinewidth

The code for your example looks like the following:

% arara: pdflatex

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{chronology}

\begin{document}
\begin{chronology}[5]{0}{30}{\textwidth}[1.2\textwidth]
    \event[0]{2}{$P_5$}
    \event[2]{3}{\color{gray}switch}
    \event[3]{5}{$P_4$}
    \event[5]{6}{\color{gray}switch}
    \event[6]{8}{$P_3$}
    \event[8]{9}{\color{gray}switch}
    \event[9]{11}{$P_2$}
    \event[11]{12}{\color{gray}switch}
    \event[12]{14}{$P_1$}
    \event[14]{15}{\color{gray}switch}
    \event[15]{16}{$P_5$}
    \event[16]{17}{\color{gray}switch}
    \event[17]{19}{$P_4$}
    \event[19]{20}{\color{gray}switch}
    \event[20]{22}{$P_2$}
    \event[22]{23}{\color{gray}switch}
    \event[23]{25}{$P_1$}
    \event[25]{26}{\color{gray}switch}
    \event[26]{28}{$P_4$}
    \event[28]{29}{\color{gray}switch}
    \event[29]{30}{$P_1$}
\end{chronology}
\end{document}

and results in:

Chronology adds arbitrary gaps

2 Answers2

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