Peter R. Bickford

If you copy your database to a new machine, and don't also copy over your pictures, your database will likely mistakenly think it was larger pictures still available to it on that machine. To fix this, go to File > File Tools > Manage Pictures and Movies and reset the location of your pictures--this clears any stored picture references in your database.

To all: - This is a user-controllable setting. If you don't want to auto-match, just uncheck it at the bottom of the Updates dialog. How it all works/why you might (rarely) get a false match: - When an item is unknown, it looks for either: A single exact match of the title in another media type which is in the "official" set. If so, it changes the media type. A single exact match of the barcode in a known title. This is limited to working with EAN+5 barcodes, not UPC barcodes (so we don't mistakenly map newsstand items to non-newsstand entries). Newsstand items are also explicitly excluded from auto-matching. When a magazine, etc. matches to what seems like a completely wrong title, this is likely what's happening. (And it's EXTREMELY rare!). For a mismatch to occur using this, it would need to (a) be an item which is unknown, and (b) have another wrong item in our dataset using the exact same barcode (!). If this ever happens, PLEASE submit the corrected item/barcode so we flush it out. A single, exact match of the item and title in another title that matches identically stripped of punctuation. (e.g. "Man From U.N.C.L.E." would match "Man from UNCLE".

Build 2685 changes up the drag and drop behavior, let me know if this helps: 1. If you drag folders of items, it attempts to auto-match the title from the folder name and put the corresponding items in each (this is an old behavior, but little-known) 2. If you drag multiple items, it does not auto-rename at all. It's assuming that the items are named properly 3. If you drag a single item--if does not auto-rename if the corresponding item is in the grid. E.g., if I drag an item marked 3 (or 3-NS) into a grid which contains an item called #3 (or #3/NS), it leaves the original item name alone--regardless of what the original file was called. 4. If you drag a single item over where it's either a direct drag from a web browser, or a file whose name does not correspond to a given item in the grid, it renames it to match your drag targeted row. 5. And finally, you can always override and do manual renaming by holding down Alt when dragging. -Pete

Give build 2217 a shot and let me know if you find it fixes it for you. -Pete

I'm afraid this one's likely insoluble given the current technical display framework (Windows Forms 4.8) and your hardware setup. Briefly, Windows has always struggled mightily to handle multiple resolutions and magnifications across different screens, and Windows Forms v4.8 does... a just sorta OK in most circumstances... job of handling it. If you want to see the whole thing to to heck in a handbasket, however, drag a form across multiple monitors with different magnifications. Wild things occur, and it's not within our capabilities to satisfactorily resolve them. I know Microsoft keeps trying different techniques for addressing this (the current one is "per monitor dpi awareness v2", but until they crack it (or ComicBase migrates to an entirely different display architecture [don't hold your breath on the latter--it would break many of the components used by ComicBase]) try to limit your use to configurations with only one DPI scaling percentage.

I don't have a firm opinion on pseudonyms, but my first inclination is to simply standardize Mr. Garcin as a map to Pascal Garcin (we have this facility now, and currently map some thousands of creator aliases to their official names). For more colorful aliases, I think there's some utility for using the format of "Denny O'Neil (as Jim Dennis)" or alternately "Jim Dennis (Denny O'Neil)" -- either one would appear automatically in searches (albeit not necessarily in alphabetical order). That said, I'd love to hear others' opinions on this. Feels at the moment more like an editorial decision than a programming one...

Support updated (queries to the old support@human-computing.com now automatically forwarded to the current address). Thanks for taking the time to point this one out! -Pete

Couple of ideas/guesses: 1. Are you installing to the default location, or to someplace special like a network file share? If so, it won't work: The drive the database is on has to have a drive letter (e.g. C:, not a UNC share name (e.g. \\MyFiles\... 2. Try deleting your database file (it _SHOULD_ be at c:\ComicBase\ComicBase Databases and try installing again. -Pete

I'd suggest doing an Items > Mass Change and setting your Price to the Year 4 Value (it'll automatically account for grade when doing so). You can also do a Setup > Grading, double-click to edit and grade and click "Save" -- when closing you'll be asked if you want to reprice everything according to the current grades. Click Yes. -Pete

It's Anl 9 under Fantastic Four (Vol. 1). We'll try to insert a cross-reference to make it easier to locate in the future.

The grid actually does that (throw out the change and revert to the previous value), with the trigger being values over 99 million. It's possible, of course, depending on your barcode that what you scanned didn't trigger that behavior.

To get into the details of what's new: - Express+ (the new name for Express) now includes Over 200,000 cover thumbnails from Marvel, DC, Dark Horse, Image, IDW, Boom, and Dynamite -- as well as the #1 issues of all titles in the database - It also now includes (and gets updates for) cover artists for all issues. Previously, this was one of the creator fields which only was included in Pro and up editions. -Pete

Link should be fixed now.

Those windows will open on their last position--UNLESS (and this is probably what's doing you in)... - The monitor geometry has changed such that the window would be offscreen, or... - You're running a different version number of ComicBase (even the tiny build versions will reset the window positions, as it's difficult/impossible to track when a build involved any changes to a form's size; so, ComicBase resets all window positions to opening dead center on the main screen whenever the build number changes from the last one you ran.

Sorry--looks like we broke that in a recent interim build. Fixed in the latest build, 1659, just posted.

Please check build 1236 and let me know if you can confirm the trouble is fixed for you... -Pete

Please guide build 24.1.0.1229 (just posted) a shot and let me know if it resolves this for you.

The trigger to writing a new entry in value log is the content update--it's not just any change to the database. So, for instance, if you added a bunch of books on 4/12, they wouldn't show up in the value history until you downloaded the 4/17 content update (in the value history--obviously, they show up in the database itself immediately). -Pete

Restart, then hold down shift while choosing Internet > Check for updates in ComicBase. Click Yes when asked whether you want to download it again. (Guessing you had some sort of problem with the download--it seems to work fine here). Let us know if you're stuck. -Pete

Make sure you exit the program, then try again. If you get any sort of error message when exiting/closing, let us know. (Basically, it had trouble creating the temporary tables used to update). Be sure to also download the very latest build. -Pete

It looks like you copied your pix to the wrong folder--basically, whatever folder you specified in File > File Tools > Manage Pictures and Movies is not the same as where your pictures are at, so only the new pictures you're interacting with (and auto-downloading) are appearing. Keep in mind: the location specified for that folder is the folder which _contains_ the Pictures folder, not the pictures folder itself. If in doubt, click the "Reset" button, and move your pictures into the <Public Documents>\Human Computing folder on your computer. -Pete

The sales log is unchanged--you'll just need to pull up the log file in question (log files are now located in <documents>\Human Computing\Logs

One point of clarification: There's both a Sales Report (which I think is what you were screen shotting--don't see the whole page so not sure). There's also a sales log file. Were you thinking of that one?

Seems to be working properly in build 2298. Can you retest/confirm? -Pete

There's a computed search key which is based on the original term, stripped of diacriticals, and both é and ú are included in the translation (to "e" and "u", respectively) when computing it. If you get a chance, do a File > File Tools > Rebuild Lists of your issue and storyline/contributors to force it to rebuild this (some older versions of the name may have slipped in, can compromise the auto-select list based on the "dumbed down" version of the name with the down-translated diacritical versions.) Worth noting: As we flesh out support (and as awareness grows) for the proper use of diacriticals, we're going to be going through some growing pains as we get the proper versions of each diacritical-heavy creator to take their place as the authoritative version for updates' sake. (I'll bore everyone silly with the long version of this story on a livestream sometime--"everything you never wanted to know about UTF-8 Collations on SQL Server" or the like... 😉) Finally as we progress into Unicode-land (the original table was based off of Windows Western diacriticals), we're adding more entries to the table, (e.g. ē, ). If you notice one's we're not handling properly, please call them out. -Pete