What's true when and where
The problem a codex solves
In book 1 the ship is called the Intrepid and Tanis is a lieutenant. By book 4 the ship has a new name and Tanis commands it. A spreadsheet gives you one cell per fact and makes you choose. The codex lets a field hold the general answer and the exceptions—by book, by series, or by date—and shows the right one for wherever you happen to be reading from.
General information
Open an entry, click Edit, and look at the at-a-glance box. A row with nothing in it says Add general information. Click it, give the value, and that's the fact that's true everywhere, at every time, unless something more specific says otherwise. For most fields on most entries, this is all you'll ever need.
Book-, series- or date-specific information
Beneath a row there's a link in the accent colour: Add book, series, or date-specific information. Click it and a small form opens with two parts:
Applies to—where this version of the fact holds. A tree of your series, with their books beneath them. Tick a whole series, or one book, or several at once; a tick on each makes one fact per place, so "Tanis is a commander in books 4, 5 and 6" is one visit to this form.
When—optionally, a stretch of time on one of the universe's calendars: from a date, to a date, either end open. Type dates the way the calendar expects (see Calendars and dates). Leave both blank for "whenever."
Then the information itself, and Save. The row now shows a small table under the general value: Dates · Series · Book · Information, one line per exception, each with its own Edit.
Which one wins
When the codex is asked "what's true here?", it picks the most specific fact that applies: a fact for this book beats a fact for its series, which beats the general one. Among facts of the same reach, the one that starts latest wins—the newer rank, the newer name. If you've written two that tie, the one you entered most recently wins, and the page shows the others beneath it as overridden, so nothing is hidden from you.
Working in: reading the codex from one place
At the top of the codex's left rail is Working in. It's the lens the whole page looks through:
- The whole universe, the default, shows general information and every entry.
- Choose a book or a series… and the counts on the left, the search, and every entry you open show the world as that book or series knows it—its exceptions applied, and entries that don't exist for it left out.
- For each calendar in use, a second row: Any time, At… a date you type, or Not on this calendar, which keeps only entries that have no dates on it. Set a date and anything that doesn't exist then falls away from the lists.
Reset filters puts it all back. Opening the codex from the editor's rail arrives with Working in set to that book.
Working in changes what you see. It doesn't change what you add: when you edit an entry, the forms always ask where a fact applies, so you can't accidentally file a general fact as a book-only one just because of where you were reading from.
View as, on an entry
On an entry's page, when it has information that differs by book, series or date, a row of chips appears under the heading—View as: general, then each book or series with its own version. Click one to see the page as that book sees it, without touching the Working in setting for the rest of the codex.
When an entry exists
Some things don't exist at all for part of the story: a character not yet born, a city not yet founded, a ship not yet built. Each entry has an Exists line in its at-a-glance box—Applies to all dates by default, or a from and to on each calendar it's known on. Give Tanis a stellar-date birth and she stays out of any list framed to a time before it; the Working in date filter is how that shows.
An entry can exist on more than one calendar at once—a stellar-date span and a Gregorian one—and each is edited on its own line.