I don’t think so. They are just different applications of the same process. The difference is just about which metadata field is being used.
In the terminology of dataview: you may use implicit fields (like “creation-date” (can be queried in different ways)) or an explicit field (like “date-of-birth” (which might be queried e.g. via “this.date-of-birth”).
From the perspective of dataview these are both datapoints, which are either to be displayed or used as criteria.
The problem lies mostly in the way, these datapoints are being displayed. As of today there seems to be a plugin (oz-calendar) that offers the functionality of Zotero, though not in a gantt-chart, but a calendar view. That is not helpful for the overview-functionality one would want for a proper timeline-view.
What I am proposing is a more generalized approach, as described in the post under link No. 1 above (which I won’t replicate here, but encourage you to read).
The only condition needed for something like that to work would be some metadata fields in the notes that are subject of the query. Those are:
- start-date
- end-date
- duration (in case there is no definite end-date)
- grouping-field(s) (which are optional e.g. for different time-threads)
My argument is this: If there is a strictly defined markdown-language in markwhen to describe every event that should be displayed, this code can also be produced by the plugin itself, based on the metadata in the implicit or explicit fields.
This way the user is enabled to produce any timeline, based on his notes and their content. In a way, its just a mode of display of the results of a dataview-query.