Linux program to create a timeline diagram? [closed]

"Dia is a program to create diagrams on Linux, it's similar in practice to Visio.

Dia is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program 'Visio,' though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape."

"In LaTeX you could try the tikz-package. Here is some example-code:

\begin{figure*}[htbp]
\caption{some caption}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw (0cm, 0cm) -- (15cm, 0cm);
\foreach \x in {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15} \draw (\x cm, 3pt) -- (\x cm, - 3pt);
\draw (0cm - 3pt, 0cm + 3pt) -- (0cm, 0cm) -- (0cm + 3pt, 0cm + 3pt);
\draw (0cm, 0cm) node[above=5pt] {0};
\draw (5cm, 0cm) node[above=5pt] {100};
\draw (10cm, 0cm) node[above=5pt] {200};
\draw (15cm, 0cm) node[above=5pt] {300};
\fill (12cm, 0cm) circle (2pt);\draw (12cm, 0cm) node[above=5pt] {some text};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{figure*}

That creates a nice horizontal timeline."

Have you tried either of the existing LaTeX packages designed precisely for this, viz., timeline or chronology?

"OpenOffice can do a decent timeline. Create a table 8 rows high and the number of items you have plus 3 columns wide - so if you had 17 items to put in your timeline, you would make a table 8 rows high and 20 columns wide. Set all cell borders to none. Merge the top two and top bottom two rows of cells, four at a time. Merge the two middle rows two cells at a time. You can use the cell borders drawing button to draw lines to individual cells. This is all much easier as a picture rather than trying to explain:

Your dates or times go in the two-cell boxes in the middle, anything you like goes in the four-cell boxes above and below. I know it's not LaTeX, although I'm sure you can get LaTeX to layout a table in a similar fashion. You could, of course, export the diagram as an image from OpenOffice to include in your LaTeX document."