David: As always you are tremendously responsive. I've looked at your solution (for some reason it can't seem to do the pull from Google, but that doesn't matter, I can see what you are doing). This is certainly along the right track. It has the four (or whatever number is needed) bars. It also has a mechanism for separating the elements, but at the moment it is all from the same collection. My database is a bit more complicated. I have a "type" for the plan of record element with fields for things like name, start, end, different categories, etc. It also has lists of "id"s for milestones ( a different type which have a name, start, perhaps end, etc.), same for a list of "id"s of scientific research efforts (another type) which "feed" this plan item, same for tests, etc. Thus if a particular plan of record is selected using the facets, all of the associated elements should be shown. (or perhaps you could "facet" on a milestone or scientific research effort and it would bring along all of the plan of record elements and their associated linked items. This is why I was proposing a way to associate a collection with a bar (and perhaps multiple collections could be associated with a summary bar).
I am sending a diagram to your personal e-mail account of how some of this type of information is currently being shown (a very labor intensive excel based diagram - and aside from being labor intensive it is very static, you can't zero in on things like you can with Exhibit) and you can get an idea of the concept (but not the specifics) that I am trying to reproduce. This is an interesting problem because what I am trying to do is find a way to display, analyze, and communicate a very complex program with multiple dependencies in a way that people can understand it. I chose Exhibit because of the flexibility in the way people can select and "zoom" into areas of interest. Also the ability to show interconnected information. A good solution should be interesting to anyone managing or dealing with large projects. You will find an interesting thread on this subject on Edward Tufte's site: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000076&topic_id=1. To answer your last question, no, I haven't explored other faceted browsers. I was initially pulled to Timeline which led me to Exhibit and I haven't looked beyond your work. Thanks again, and watch for my diagram in your regular e-mail. Charles
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