Fred Slota
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Posts posted by Fred Slota
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The ability to generate reports of all issues, owned and missing, of Titles that I Own, grouped by Title, sorted by Issue, is very useful at completing Titles.
Wouldn't it be nice to generate reports of all issues, owned and missing, of Storylines that I own, grouped by Storyline, sorted by Part, to aid in completing Storylines?
In order for this to work usefully, it would be helpful if the things reported in the Storyline field were separable between "This is the name of the multi-part Storyline Series", "This is the name of this chapter of the multi-part Storyline Series", "This is the name of this Issue's standalone Storyline" and "These are the names of the individual tales in this anthology Issue". You know me, I would love to separate this into separate fields.
Thankfully, the current task can be mostly accomplished without this, by recognizing the difference between Storyline entries that are unique vs. those that are repeated in multiple different issue entries. For example, the Storyline "Funeral for a Florist! (text story)" appears in a single issue, In the Days of the Mob #1, while the Storyline "Funeral for a Friend" occurs across 8 different issues (and is the shared with a 2-parter in Transformers, The (Marvel UK), not to be confused with the single issue Storyline "Funeral for a Friend!" in The Transformers #26). Obviously, some editorialization would be needed.
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Clarify, for those listening to mid-conversation posts focusing on one detail or another, and thus helpfully providing incomplete answers.
Ideally, I'd like to get at least
Title, Publisher, Years, Issue, Quantity, Condition, Price, Cover Date, Street Date, Storyline, Wanted, Custom Check Boxes, each as separate fields
For both Owned and Missing issues, of Titles that I Own.
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I'm back to working on my Hole Finder Project, for which I need information about both Owned and all Unowned Issues for Titles that I own.
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2023 is for series that ended in 2023, while Present is for ongoing series, yes?
I think some cleanup is needed.
Partial list of false Presents
Amazing Spider-Man (5th Series)/(6th Series)
Black Widow (7th Series)/(8th Series)
Iron Man (6th Sereis)/(7th Series)
Justice League of America (2nd Series)/(5th Series)
Teen Titans (5th Series)/(6th Series)
Thor/Thor (6th Series)
Uncanny X-Men (3rd Series)/(5th Series)
Wolverine (6th Series)/(7th Series)
Partial List of 2023 that might be Present?
Batgirls
Batman Incorporated (3rd Series)
Deadpool (8th Series)
Fantastic Four (7th Series)
Gambit (8th Series)
Ghost Rider (11th Series)
Human Target (4th Series)
I am Batman
Immortal X-Men
Iron Man (7th Series)
Justice Society of America (3rd Series)
Marauders (2nd Series)
Savage Avengers (2nd Series)
Spider-Man (4th Series)
Star Wars (3rd Series)
Strange (3rd Series)
X-Force (6th Series)
X-Men (6th Series)
X-Treme X-Men (3rd Series)
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Argh.
An idea how often this has happened, how many titles this effects?
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I'll look into these in a little bit. Thanks.
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I think ComicBase should add the concept of Prime Issues.
Prime Issues are non-variant first print issues if they exist; if they don't then they are variant A first print issues. This would exist for all types, whether Regular, Annual, Book, etc.
Identifying Prime Issues would allow ComicBase to do a variety of things:
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Titles can indicate how many issues are in a Title.
- Titles can indicate if you have a complete set of Prime Issues.
- Titles can indicate how many Qualified Issues are owned, how many are missing, and what percent of completeness you have.
- You could generate reports of Title Completeness.
- You could search based on "Titles >= 90% complete" or "Titles missing <= 3 Prime Issues"
- You could add these to Wanted.
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Additionally, Qualified Issue Ownership could have four levels
- Prime only
- Prime or any variant, first print only
- Prime variant only, any print
- Prime or any variant, any print
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With Prime Issues and Qualified Issue Ownership levels, ComicBase can identify ownership holes
- can search for "Prime not Qualified Owned run <= 3"
- You could add these to Wanted.
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Titles can indicate how many issues are in a Title.
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The Export feature has a checkbox for Export only Owned Issues, but I'm looking to process information for Owned Titles only.
An exported Item Checklist Report allows me to select all Owned Titles and get some information about owned and missing issues, but I'm looking to get a little more information.
At a minimum, I would like to get Cover Date and/or Street Date. Wanted and Storyline would be good, too.
Export, including everything, returns too much information to load into Excel.
Any thoughts?
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Was running an Item Checklist for the purpose of Exporting, but wanted to visually verify the report before Exporting.
So, I choose my options, Press the Preview button, and walk away, as this takes time.
When I return, I find that the preview is showing, but the report has also started to print...
This happened at least twice this morning.
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Is there a reliable field that indicates if an issue is actually published vs. future solicitation? Is CoverDate reliable?
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No more harder than Finds in any other field with compound information. Like Notes.
If you want to find a Note about a wraparound cover, LIKE "%wraparound%"
Generic search for either a Universe or a Series, LIKE "%Honorverse%" or LIKE "%Honor Harrington%"
If you wanted to find a Universe, LIKE "Honorverse:%"
If you wanted to find a Series, LIKE "%: Honor Harrington"
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BTW, just noticed...
In my above examples, the searchable Titles are "Incredible Hulk, The" and "Call to Arms, A (Bane)".
But, when you display the issues of those Titles, what is the displayed Title? "The Incredible Hulk" and "A Call to Arms (Baen)"
Humbly suggest that searching for "Incredible Hulk", "The Incredible Hulk" and "Incredible Hulk, The" should all include the obvious Title in the suggestions.
Humbly suggest that searching for "Call to Arms", "A Call to Arms" and "Call to Arms, A" should all include the obvious Title in the suggestions.
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v23.1.0.2115
Comic Books
Item Checklist
Series I own
Report Items - checked both "Items in my collection" and "Missing Items"
Preview
Report only includes Items I own - Really obvious when the first Item I have is a #2.
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For those who both know and remember...
Again, I suggest that the program do the work of dealing with the program's foibles so that the user doesn't have to or even be aware of it.
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1
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Having said that, can we consider for now prepending Universe names to Overall Titles?
Honor Harrington -> Honorverse: Honor Harrington
Manticore Ascendant -> Honorverse: Manticore Ascendant
Crown of Claves -> Honorverse: Crown of Slaves
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Literary Universes are larger than individual series
.The Honorverse.
Dragonlance
Star Wars Legends
We need more data, and possibly a rethinking of the data structure larger than just Titles and Books.
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Come on, now...
Searching in Books for "a call", and the suggestions are
- Babylon 5: A Call to Arms
- 52/WW III Part One: A Call to Arms
- Black Coat, The: A Call to Arms
- Ghostbusters: Who Ya Gonna Call?
but not
- Call to Arms, A (Baen)
- Call to Duty, A (Baen)
- Call to Insurrection, A (Baen)
- Call to Vengeance, A (Baen)
(which were what I was looking for)
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Database efficiency and consistency could/would be improved by replacing the text fields of Artist, Writer, Cover, etc, with a linked Person Table.
But, does the database and grid support a field with a variable number of references? A text field can easily record that the writers are "Joe Smith, John Jones", but can the database and grid record in one field that the writers are Person-12345 and Person-67890, and resolve those to "Joe Smith" and "John Jones"?
I guess I'm asking if modern databases and the CB database supports a Table element that is an array?
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Support for either official or personal "-Alt" suffix to the standard coverscan jpg.
Could be used for Direct vs. Newsstand, scans of back cover art that isn't wraparound, bagged vs. unbagged.
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grumble, grumble, grumble...
Catch-22 of we don't think there's any difference in demand/pricing between direct and newsstand. so don't support having different entries, so can't tell if there's differences in demand/pricing
grumble, grumble, grumble...
We include cover scans to help with differentiating between otherwise identical books, but neither support separate entries nor separate covers for direct/newsstand variants.
grumble, grumble, grumble...
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Sorry I wasn't clear... Wasn't so much curious about granular weekly over time, more yearly over time, and less the gradual accrual amounts and more the pie-chart proportions. Wasn't sure, but thought internal people might have a statistic breakdown in their tools.
For current state, I suppose I could make a blank-slate database and delete all entries of each media.
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What is the approximate breakdown of Database Size, sliced and diced for different contents and over time?
How much of the official database is:
- Comic Book vs. Book vs. Magazine vs. Newspaper
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For Comic Book, how much is
- Title Info
- Basic Book Info
- Notes and Item Description
- Artist Info
- Pricing Info
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A Coverscan view which displays all variants of each book row by row...
First row would show #1, #1/A, #1/B, #1-2
Second row would show #2, #2/A, #2/B, #2-2
Etc.
Could scroll off the right edge for issues with many variants.
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And am I correct with the understanding that ComicBase mostly doesn't differentiate between Direct and Newsstand, and so these should just be entered as regular "Incredible Hulk, The" #320-323, and not as /A variants, yes?
Question - As to the UPC, should the Canadian Edition have a different UPC, not starting with 71486? At least in "Incredible Hulk, The (Canadian Edition)", all the entries that have UPC codes have codes that start with 71486, and in the case of the issues that I have, they have overlapping UPCs in both titles.
How to "Mark as Solution"
in Tech Support
Posted
So, I'm now getting e-mails asking me to mark post that gave the solution. The E-mail directs me to click a "Mark as Solution" button on the appropriate post.
Umm, I'm not seeing any buttons of this type.