Various replies...

[Fredrik Ekman]

Hourch!

Lately, my e-mail has been behaving very strangely. For example:
Yesterday, I got Don Rosa's message that he had returned from
Norway, to which I responded. Today, I got not only my own re-
sponse, but also Don's letter where he said that he was _leaving_
for Norway! And replies have arrived several days before the
letters they replied to. So if I seem confused, that's just
natural... Oh well, here are some various replies to recent
postings:

David wrote:
>Would any of you mind answering a posted questionaire which I
>would use to analyze the lives of Disney comic collectors... 

I wouldn't mind at all. On the other hand, I don't conisder myself as
being a collector. "Fan" might perhaps be a better description...

And Mark Semich:
>I just read William Van Horn's "Spotless Don" in WDC&S 588.
>
>Although I love the duck stories, I must confess that I'm not
>extremely well read in them.  Has Donald ever been referred to as
>"Don" in any published stories before?  It certainly struck me as
>different.

On at least one occasion: "Christmas on Bear Mountain", last seen in
DiDDA 9, I think. On the very last page $crooge says "Have some more
soda, Don!" (quoted from memory). As I'm sure most of you already know,
this story feature $crooge's first appearance. And if I ever got around
to listing my favourite Barks stories, this one would certainly be
included.

Finally, Harry on the subject of the FTP indexes:
>Maybe it is time to re-arrange some of the information, because a lot of
>information is listed 3 or 4 times (especially story credits).
>One solution would be to give each story a unique code (mostly the story
>code, but in case of newspaper strips, an own code would be easier), and
>make indexes by story code. 
>Such "story code indexes" (D-index, H-index, AR-index etc.) would list
>the credits, number of pages, an original title (or always an English
>title?), and the exact dates in case of a newspaper strip.
>Then the "indexes by publication" will contain only a story code, and maybe
>a title. For stories of unknown origin, the "index by publication" entry will
>still contain all information it contains now.
>
>We could make programs to generate complete "indexes by publication", or
>indexes by artist, for whoever would want those. 

I have for a fact thought about this, and although I am in favour of such
a solution, there are some things to consider. For one thing; many people
may not have access to a suitable compiler (I assume we would make these
programs in C, as that is the most portable computer language today) and
even if they do, compiling the programs may seem a nuisance. Having people
order thier indexes from you or anyone else wouldn't be completely
satisfying either. Right now, I can think of two possible solutions.

1) Let's reconstruct the indexes and make programs according to Harry's
specifications. (Who's gonna write the programs by the way? Harry?) Then
the programs and files could be put on some computer where people could
log on with TELNET and use the programs to extract whatever info they want.
No, don't tell me. I *know* that this is neither very practical nor worth
the effort. I'm just trying to examine all possibilities.

2) Construct the programs and indexes as in solution 1. Then put them all
on the FTP archive and finally extract such indexes as we think interesting
and put them _too_ on the archive in some special directory created for
that purpose. This would, obviously, still leave us with a lot of redundant
information, but now we have a way of extracting whatever we want and the
redundancy would be only to increase the accessability. (Please remember
that English is not my native language. :-)

>As far as I'm concerned, one thing is for sure for this moment: the
>"don-rosa" index will remain on ftp as a separate file!

Right! And I would kind of like to see the "van-horn" index stay as well.
Which reminds me, will you update that with the new info from list members
or should I do it?

Whew! That'd be my two cents worth for several days to come!

  /Fredrik

"Phooey on bears! Phooey, phooey and phooey!"