[...] Database, [...] Database

[Fredrik Ekman]

In reply to Harry about the database (see, I'm picking up):

Actually, I didn't intend to go in public with this, but since you bring 
it up yourself... Now, since I am not certain about the details about The 
Gleam, I won't use that as an example, but I think it is similar to what 
I am thinking of. (If you have no interest in the database, stop reading 
now and flame me. How many are interested anyway?)

Perhaps you remember that when you were about to start making this 
database I brought up a few points, one being that I wanted some 
redundancy among the titles? I think that was the only one of my points
that didn't get through to the present version of the stuff. Anyway, I 
wasn't then even sure that I knew myself what I was talking about. Now I 
am, so here's more opting for redundancy:

Just about a week ago I downloaded the Swedish .issues files for a 
friend, and what did I notice? Well, all the titles are quite useless! 
This is due to the fact that you currently take all titles from the story 
files rather than the issue files. Thus, we get a lot of T(itles) and 
D(escriptions) and the like but very few Sw(edish). I suppose the 
situation is similar although better for the American comics. You will 
see the same title for the first printing and all reprints and you can't 
really say if a R(eprint) title belongs to this particular reprint or if 
this one was untitled or what. But please correct me if I am wrong.

Now, what should we do? The obvious answer is: Create redundancy! Every 
story entry must of course have a title and this could keep the format it 
has today, although all translations from non-English titles could 
perhaps be labelled Tr(anslation) or somesuch since it's really not 
useful to know which language it originates from. (Meaning the 
translation, which is unlikely to be the original title anyway.)

The issue files, then should ALSO have a title entry. Stories that have 
no title remain blank of course (and get the title including designator 
from the story files) and titles that are IDENTICAL to the T(itles) entry 
could just get a "T:", titles that are IDENTICAL to the R(eprint) could 
get a "R:" etc to reduce redundancy. But ALL NON-ENGLISH issues should 
have ALL TITLES included in the issue files. STORIES IN .issues FILES 
THAT HAVE THEIR ORIGINAL TITLE SHOULD HAVE NO DESIGNATOR in order to tell 
them apart from the others. Thus, if story A has no title in its first 
printing and is titled "B" in its second, the first entry (in the .issues 
file) will be "T:B" and the second will be "B".

In addition, all Swedish, Danish and other such languages should use the 
Latin-1 standard until something better is sufficiently standardized.

Naturally this causes problems. Perhaps lots of people will have to do 
lots of proof-reading and re-indexing if we go with this, but I for one 
certainly think it is worth it. I don't know if there is any boring 
manual labour that could be done without having access to any actual 
comic books, but if there is, I am willing to do it.

Phew! Now, did any of the above make sense to anyone? I didn't try to 
make anyone but Harry understand and like I said it wasn't intended to go 
out to everyone originally.

  /F