In first instance I copied the sample (the timeline) in a WIKI page, but of course as in the sample are defined <html>, <head> and <body> tags, it could not work. In a wiki page we already are inside the <body> tag, and the browser does not like redefining such tags very much.

I have not a clear idea about how to have this kind of <head> and <body> nested tags affect the rendering of the page.
Take a look at this...
http://xepecnet.environmentalchange.net/xwiki/bin/view/ICT/GoogleMaps
Here the code...
http://xepecnet.environmentalchange.net/xwiki/bin/view/ICT/GoogleMaps?viewer=code&showlinenumbers=0&language=en
<head> and <body> are also defined in the Google Maps snippet, but the page is correctly rendered. No errors at all.

Ok, this means I was wrong ;) Maybe the difference is in the header (with the <!DOCTYPE ), and also I believe that the //<![CDATA[ might play a role … But I’m really not a good web developer …

I then tried the trick from the TIMELINE-24 issue also, but it failed to work. I don’t know if I left this “patch” on the page, because my wiki is currently broken … :/ It removed the URL prefiks issue, but nothing was displayed.

I didn't succeed by specifying a value for Timeline_urlPrefix. And I don't know how to apply the patch proposed by Sami Radi last October. Of course I can put timeline-api.js in one of our servers and modify it, but I don't know how to call all the dependencies.
To make it work I modified timeline-api.js as described in the issue (just replaced the block indicated), attached the timeline-api.js in a wiki page, and replaced its URL in the WikiDev.TimeLine. But I’m not sure it’s needed in fact … Or maybe it’s needed if you don’t use <iframe>

So the trick was to have a page WikiDev.TimeLine, with the sample, another page WikiDev.TimeLineFeed with the sample script to generate the XML (it works well, I only added new things inside it). Basically the timeline feed page generates XML with a root <data> tag, and a number of <event> tags inside, with a date (“start”) and a “description”. So it’s very easy to generate using any events as entries. In the WikiDev.TimeLine page you have to put URL of WikiDev.TimeLineFeed as first parameter of the tl.loadxml() method.

This is another point I fail at. I am not a programmer, so I have to learn how to produce this XML output from XWiki items.
Let's write down here a couple of simple examples showing the structure you describe...
http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/docs/example1.xml
http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/docs/example2.xml
And the HOW-TO from Simile...
http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/docs/create-timelines.html

The sample from Jeremi is quite simple and works very well to display all News elements in the timeline :

{pre}

#set($feed = $xwiki.feed.getFeed("$xwiki.getURL('Main.BlogRss', 'view', 'xpage=rdf')"))

#foreach($entry in $feed.entries)

<event start="$entry.getPublishedDate().toLocaleString()" title="$entry.title" color="blue">$xwiki.getXMLEncoded($entry.description.value) ... $xwiki.getXMLEncoded("<a href=$entry.link target='_blank'>Suite</a>")

</event>

#end

Note : ADD CODE HERE TO ADD OTHER EVENTS IN THE XML

</data>

{/pre}

The #foreach parses all entries in the feed (constructed with your wiki blog), and writes down an <event> entry with date and description. It’s not too complicated, but it’s development … In the ADD CODE HERE … , I put the groovy code to generate the XML from the page updates and the FAQ entries and such, but it’s more complicated, not very readable, and most of all there are many hard-coded specific things inside it. Once I’ll get something clearer I’ll share it with you or add it in xwiki wiki ;-)

Then, in the page where I want to show the timeline, I added a <iframe>, with “src” equals URL of WikiDev.TimeLine. Also had to give it a height and width for proper display. Inside the <iframe> it’s like in another page, so there is no problem of <head> or <body> tags anymore. The WikiDev.TimeLine page does not show up (you get the URL prefiks error), but the <iframe> in the other page should display correctly.

The <iframe> way works perfectly. I am only still curious to understand why Google Maps work without it.
I am too (see above). I believe it would be nicer to be able to do as for Google Maps, but we would have to understand better why it works …

Hope this helps …

Yes, it does! Thanks for your message, Jeremi. I keep working to produce a clear page about how to use Simile TimeLine in XWiki, although I think you are the one for this task! :-)
If you prefer I can get the point ;-) But is this a code snippet, an application, macros … ? I believe it belongs to snippets … And can I make use of Jeremi’s modified sample, because HE is the creator of this xwiki timeline after all ….

Regards,

Cheers,

--

Ricardo Rodríguez

Your XEN ICT Team