Foorball, and Database

H.W. Fluks fluks at pcssdc.pttnwb.nl
Fri Oct 21 10:21:30 CET 1994


Anders about the Database discussion:
> Count me in...

Of course. How could I forget our famous Swedish contributor to the Database?
All Swedish titles are his. Jag taler inte Svensk. Or so.

----
Sigurdur:
> Where are the baseball stories? Football stories?

I remember two stories off-hand, both without Donald though:
A 4-page story from "Mickey Mouse Almanac 1" ("September Scrimmage"?) by Barks,
where Scrooge and the Nephews play football and try to cheat.

A 12-page story from "Back To School 1", drawn by Strobl. Gladstone is the
coach of HDL.

----
(still more database stuff..)

Fredrik: I think we agree on several points without knowing it. I'll give
an example in 'pseudo-code' (I hope that's not too unreadable for anyone):

When determining a title in an issue file:

IF the story has a title in that issue
THEN use that title without any tags (case A)
     [in a lot of cases this could mean: get the title from the stories files,
      and remove the tag]
ELSE use whatever data is in the stories file, with the appropriate tag
     (cases 1 to 6 below)

When determining a title in a story file:

IF the story has an English title in the first USA publication
THEN use T:that title (case 1)
ELSE IF the story has a title in one or more of the USA reprints
     THEN use R:one of the titles (case 2)
     ELSE IF the story has a description in the book "MM in Color" or
             in one of Gladstone's "CBL in Color" albums 
          THEN use D:that description (case 3)
          ELSE IF the story has a description in the credits of a Gladstone
                  comic
               THEN use D:that decription (case 4)
               ELSE IF someone ever gave an English description of the story
                    THEN use O:that description (case 5)
                    ELSE use a foreign title or description, with a tag 
                         like H:Dutch, A:Danish, Sw:Swedish, No:Norwegian
                         (case 6)

Some remarks:

I don't care for "original titles" for European stories: I still want the
_stories files_ as English as possible. But the "foreign" _issues files_
could be as foreign as possible.

I'm thinking of making distinct tags for case 3 and case 4. And maybe
case 3 should go before case 2?

It would be nice to know, at least in ENGLISH publications, that a story's
title is not the original title (Example: "The Sinister Sorcerer"). In that
case the database program should list both titles

> I (perhaps foolishly) have undertaken the 
> mission of converting these files for the Grand Comics Database

Do you think the readers of that database, being super-hero comics fans,
are interested in a Disney index?

> example D88215. Suppose John Anderson called it "Day of the 
> Triplets". Then Stefan Dios translates it to Swedish and calls it 
> "Knattarnas stora dag". Finally, Anders Engwall indexes the Swedish 
> publication of the story and retranslates the title as "The big day for 
> Hewey, Dewey and Louie".

In this case, we would have in the stories file: "O:The big day for HDL",
unless we _know_ the original title (as we sometimes do with Don Rosa's
stories), then it would be "T:Day of the Triplets". The Swedish issues file
would have "Knattarnas store dag" (without tag as you propose).

> I think it's confusing enough having to keep track of Sw, D and N.

With my new proposal (the pseudo-code above), these tags will occur as little
as possible in the stories files, and (almost) not at all in the issues files.

I quoted you:
> > ALL NON-ENGLISH issues should have ALL TITLES included in the issue files.

This is an example of me trying to make the quotes as short as possible.
Apparently, relevant information is lost. But I think I know what you meant
now: if a Swedish story has a title, that title should be in the issues
file. Always.

--Harry.



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