# Chronology timeline - problem with long stretches of time

This is a follow-up question to Creating a timeline with chronology.

When I use the following to create a timeline:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{chronology}

\begin{document}

\begin{chronology}[5]{1100}{1900}{16cm}[16cm]
\event[1110]{1150}{Historical event A}
\event[1555]{1575}{Historical event B}
\event[1575]{1770}{Historical event C}
\end{chronology}

\end{document}


The result is:

Obviously, this is useless as every single year between 1100 and 1900 is drawn. Ideally, only 1100, 1500, and 1900 (for instance) should be included, in addition to the years concerning the events. Perhaps also tickmarks per 100 or 50 years in between.

How does one make chronology only show selected years? I've tried to look it up, but chronology documentation is very limited... (Am I perhaps better of using tikz?)

• chronology apparently uses tikz ;-) – user31729 Mar 18 '15 at 14:55
• Sorry, I meant PGF/tikz ;) – P. de Rijke Mar 18 '15 at 14:58
• The documentation is ...really limited. – user31729 Mar 18 '15 at 15:06

The first optional parameter of chronology environment is meant for time steps, so 5 means every 5th year, which is too much for the time span of 8 centuries.

Looking into the code reveals that the 2nd argument is used for the time start and handled over to a \setcounter, but this is effectively wrong, so one should start with 1099 instead of 1100.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{chronology}

\begin{document}

\begin{chronology}[100]{1100}{1900}{16cm}[16cm]
\event[1110]{1150}{Historical event A}
\event[1555]{1575}{Historical event B}
\event[1575]{1770}{Historical event C}
\end{chronology}

\end{document}


• Great, that works! Although after trying various approaches to make it even clearer, I think I'll have to conclude that chronology just isn't right for larger timespans. Things get too crowded. – P. de Rijke Mar 18 '15 at 16:57
• @P.deRijke: Yes, but I have not used another one so far. – user31729 Mar 18 '15 at 17:01