9. Working with timelines
Timelines allow the authors of Sophie books to create complex books with reader-triggered actions that change over time. Timelines can work in conjunction with time-based media or separately.
To edit timelines in Sophie, you need to open the timeline interface, which is the bottom flap. The timeline interface will show the timeline for the current page (if you have no frames selected) or for the frame currently selected.
Every page in a Sophie book has a master timeline which shows all the frames on the page. Each frame (or group of frames) has its own timeline as well.
Currently, timelines can not be triggered by the book; they can only be demonstrated by opening the timeline interface and manually moving the playhead back and forth. Much more timeline functionality will be added in the future to Sophie.
The frame timeline
Each frame's timeline appears in the bottom flap when the frame is selected. By default, it looks like this:
Currently the frame timeline shows the visibility of the frame over time; in the future, more functionality will be added in the future. If the visibility bar is purple at a certain point in time, the frame will be visible; if the visibility bar is yellow, the frame will be invisible.
The page timeline
The page timeline appears in the bottom flap when the page is selected. The page timeline lists all the frames on the page as separate channels; for a page with three pages, it looks like this:
The channels show the activation of the different frames on the page. If a frame has been set to be invisible (so that portions of its channel turn yellow), the frame will be hidden when the page's playhead moves over that span in time.
Changing visibility via the timeline interface
To change visibility on the timeline, select a channel by clicking on it. Enter a start point and an end point for an interval of time (say 0:00-1:00). Then set the value to true (if you want the frame to be visible for that span of time) or false (if you want the frame to be invisible for that span of time). Then click the Set interval button. The change will be applied.
Clicking the Set from button will change the visibility of the selected channel from the current position of the playhead to whatever the value is set to. Clicking the Set all button will change the visibility of the selected channel for the entire duration of the timeline.
