Replies to Don and Fredrik (Re: Disney-comics digest #253.)

[Harry Fluks]

Don Rosa:
~~~~~~~~~
> 	I am currently assisting the Germans in translating "Guardians
> of the Lost Library", and they have been supplied all my recent
> corrections and changes by Gladstone. So, you might tell your friend at
> GP that if they wait to use the German version, they will be getting the
> version with all the corrections and all colored.

I'm afraid it won't help much if I tell them that: they already bought the
Danish version including the colours...

BTW: The Dutch version of Lo$ part 4 was published last week. It does not
contain a cover of part 5. So either part 5 will be a back-up story in the
next DD Extra, or part 5 will not be in that issue at all, which means GP
editor Jos Beekman gave me the wrong information...


Fredrik: (about our Disney comics database)
~~~~~~~~
> Why not just state that every line beginning with a semi-colon (or
> whatever) is treated as a comment and let this be true for the issue
> files as well? That way you can squeeze in all the extra info you want.

Right. I'll do that, but I prefer a space over a ';' (for readability).

> > - (start) date, in the form yy/mm/dd
> 
> Isn't the international standard yy-mm-dd? If I didn't get some kind of
> explanation, yy/mm/dd would confuse me at least.

OK, I'll change it (back) to yy-mm-dd, if that's the standard. (BTW: I don't
like the form yymmdd: that makes it less readable.)

> > - title or description
> 
> This is where I have my only major disagreement with you. I think this
> should be in the issue files. Unnecessary? Well, that field will be
> filled with spaces in the issue files anyway, right?

No, I was thinking of a 'variable length' field at the end of the line, so
a story without title can save a lot of space in an 'issue file'.

> And that way, it
> will be easier to fit in (say) the Danish titles of Ole's index or any
> other future non-american indices. The story files would include a
> description, normally the original English title in the same form that
> you propose above. The issue file title would then be in Per's format
> (which I too prefer, if we have to go with your proposal). The obvious
> disadvantage with all this would obviously be that someone will have
> to type in BOTH the story file description AND the issue file title
> for any new entries. Well, you can't have everything. :-)

But I don't like to have information twice. In the many Barks reprints, the
titles (or descriptions) don't change, so one entry in a 'story file' should
be enough.

> > - remarks
> 
> Why not just on comment lines like those I suggested above?

The 'remarks' wouldn't be transferred to a 'list file' in that case. But maybe
we want it that way.

> The only thing that I really missed from your post was info about how
> you plan to make the programs, especially the user interface. Will you
> have command line parameters, or do you plan to invent your own
> database language?

I plan to make a few (quite simple) programs to generate the lists we already
have from the 'database'. Other access can be done using 'grep' or 'find',
'sort' etc. Maybe we can make more advanced programs for database access, but
we can postpone that to later.

> The latter would certainly be preferrable if we
> still plan to make an email service out of this (like someone proposed
> when this was discussed in the past). Also; will the user be able to
> do case-insensitive searches and the like?

I know nothing of e-mail services, so someone would have to help me with
that if we get that far.

> Another feature I'd like to see in the program(s) is generation of
> (optional) legends for each output produced. Such a legend would
> consist of a short natural language description of what the output
> consists of and explanations for used abbreviations. 

I'll keep that in mind as an extra 'feature' of my programs...

Thank you for your comments.

--Harry.

Harry         PTT Research       ()_()     Dutch Disney comics freak
Fluks         Leidschendam        (_)      H.W.Fluks at research.ptt.nl

              "Yeah... I've _heard_ of coral barques!"