Domain-Specific Language for modeling historical timelines

Abstract

Historical timelines have problems with imprecise dates, limited granularity, linearity, and a lack of support for temporal relationships, which reduces their efficiency for teaching and analysis. This paper introduces a custom domain-specific language (DSL) made to solve these challenges by providing accurate and consistent modeling of historical timelines. The DSL allows users to define events and periods with varying degrees of precision: by year, month, or exact date, and to connect them using relational links. The DSL is defined using a formal grammar which includes lexical rules, syntactic structures, and semantic rules specific to timeline representation. It supports key features such as importance levels for visual differentiation, conditional logic, loops for iteration, and symbolic modification of timeline elements. Parse trees are used to validate syntactic structure and demonstrates how timeline components are organized and interpreted by the language while ensuring that the language remains expressive and consistent. Through its design, the DSL has the goal to reduce the barriers that limit timeline construction in academic and educational contexts.