ChainsawAsh said:
The crawls of the first three don't match because they were each made three years apart, with many variables such as film stock and optical compositing, which results in crawls that are slightly different sizes and colors (and ROTJ has three periods at the end instead of four, which all 5 other films have - this will also be rectified in my ROTJ).
With digital rendering of the crawls, these inconsistencies disappear - they can be made to be the exact same color and size by modifying an After Effects template (which I'll be creating for myself based on the 1977 pre-ANH crawl). Why the prequels' crawls vary so much is beyond me - there's no reason for it since they were created digitally.
It's not so much that they occur continuously - in my mind, ESB takes place a year or two after ANH, and ROTJ about three years after ESB (implying that Luke trained on Dagobah for a couple weeks to a couple months during ESB, and completed his training over an additional 3 years after ESB). It's more about consistency of the look of the films than the idea that the beginning of one picks up where the ending of the other left off.
I'm also not going to put specific years in my edits - that's the timeframe in my mind, but it's open enough to interpretation that, even with my edits, you can decide for yourself how much time elapses between each film.
From my studies (and not on Wikipedia), The time space between ANH and ESB is 3 years, which is logical since after the Empire forced the Rebels out of their hidden base on Yavin they would need time to find the hidden base on Hoth and set up there. Also, Luke endures a series of events that helps progress his training.
The time span between ESB and ROTJ is only about 1 year or less. Luke spent months, possible half a year on Dagobah, training under Yoda's guidance. Also, the time Han spent frozen in carbonite is logical because he was near death. Had he been frozen for 3 years, he surely would have been dead. I would say the time space between ESB and ROTJ would range between 6 months and 1 year.