Database (Jo/rgen in digest #524)

[H.W. Fluks]

J[some iso-8859-character]RGEN, about a (Norwegian) index:

> I use 1994 instead of 94, because the format otherwise will look a bit 
> strange in about five years.

I never thought of that! I didn't even think our database would last that
long...

> If you (Harry) left that out to save space,
> why not remove plotter and inker instead?

In a lot of Egmont stories, plotter and writer are two different persons
(look at Ole's Danish index). In the MM newspaper stories, we also need
a Plotter and Inker column.

> How do you 'normalize' the story codes?

I have some undocumented algorithm... Apart from sorting, the main goal
is to find the same story in different files, to be able to make cross
references. And if I want to find D2572, I always grep on '2572', or look
in the file 'd-0-6999.stories', where all D-coded stories are listed 
sorted by code.

> Too many comments can also make machine reading more difficult.

??? Most of the comments in my database are _generated_ by the machine.
Most of the others have a standard layout, such as [Ap: FE].

> [...] I would have to look through more files to find a certain story.

Are you planning to put the entire index in one file? When people asked for
smaller files on ftp, I limited the size of a file to 64K. In the new version
of the Database (to be expected in January..), the Swedish index will contain
7 files, the Dutch 16, the Gladstone index 6, and the Western (Dell/Gold Key)
index will contain 18 files!

> Maybe [empty columns] should be filled by something

I only learned about 'awk' a few weeks ago (really!). And I think it is more
readable to have spaces on a line. Of course, one could always make a program
that generates output that is more suitable for 'awk', and less suitable for
humans.

> Suggestions to solve the problem [...] Stop using MS-DOS ;-)

MS-DOS is not the problem. Most of the time, I work on a Unix machine. Only
when I do things at home, a transfer files to my PC. Latin-1 is no problem
there. The problem is in my mailer (HP's "SoftBench Mail") that seems to
convert those characters before I can do anything about it. Maybe I should
go back to "elm"...

> New Barks story in Italy

> Sounds interesting, but I would rather guess that the Italians haven't
> heard about a country far up in the north, than that Barks suddenly 
> have become very productive ;-)

Possibly they meant it was the first publication in its ORIGINAL LANGUAGE.

BTW: I thought Luigi had left us. Nice to see you're still there, Luigi!

--Harry.