Comics Organizer Program by Chuck Jordan --------------------------------------------------- ABOUT THE PROGRAM The Comics Organizer is database manager designed to handle a comic book collection. The program is designed around the comic book format to allow easier entry of data for each book (or series). It is oriented to the comics collector more than the investor or businessman; prices are included (see the FIELDS section for info), as are simple reports, but most of the functions are centered around titles, issues, and artists. The program was tested on an Amiga 500 with 1 MB of memory; I have not tried to run it with any other configuration. TO RUN THE PROGRAM --------------------------------------------------------------- The following files must be in the LIBS: directory: reqtools.library, mathtrans.library, and icon.library. Comics can be run from the workbench or the CLI. From the workbench, double-click on the Comics icon or the icon of a Comics data file. From the CLI, enter run Comics MAIN WINDOW BUTTONS, and FIELDS ---------------------------------------------------------------- The main window of the Comics program shows all the information for the current issue. Clicking in any window of the Comics program brings that window to the front. Note that Comics automatically saves each issue in alphabetical and numerical order. The current issue's information is added to the list automatically whenever you move to a different issue (or use the NEW COMIC command). The buttons in the upper-right corner of the main window are the NEW COMIC (the blank comic book) and FIND (the hound dog) buttons. Click on the NEW COMIC button to add a new, blank comic to the list. Click on the FIND button to bring up the find requester. The buttons along the bottom of the window are, from left to right: FIRST ISSUE, PREVIOUS ISSUE, SCROLL BAR, NEXT ISSUE, LAST ISSUE. Drag the knob of the scroll bar to move to that comic. Clicking to the left or the right of the knob in the scroll bar will move to the previous or next title, respectively. Comics allows you to enter the following data for each comic: TITLE, ISSUE, DATE, ARTISTS (author and artists), COVER PRICE, CURRENT PRICE, PURCHASE PRICE, NUMBER OF COPIES, NOTES, PUBLISHER, CONDITION, and FORMAT. DATE: Comics assumes the date is entered in the format XXX XX, for example JUN 71. All "update" functions and the reports will work correctly only if the date's in this format CURRENT PRICE: Entering a "=" character anywhere in this field will fill the field with the value in the COVER PRICE field PURCHASE PRICE: Entering a "=" in this field uses the CURRENT PRICE value PROFIT: This field is updated automatically every time the CURRENT PRICE or PURCHASE PRICE fields are changed. You can't enter data here. NOTES: The "Find" command can search only the Title, Artist, and Notes fields, so information which you will want to search for should be put in the Notes field. PUBLISHER, CONDITION, and FORMAT: These are buttons, not fields. Clicking on any of these will bring up a requester. Comics keeps a list of publishers, conditions, and formats that can be used in the program. Click on one of the numbered buttons in the requester to use the corresponding item in the list. (For example, "DC Comics" is number 1 in the default Publisher list. Click on the 1 button.) If a publisher, condition, or format you need is not on the list, click on Other and enter the information into the string requester that appears. (All of these fields are limited to 15 characters.) See DEFAULTS for more info on using information not in the lists. THE INDEX -------------------------------------------------------------- There are two indices available in Comics, a Title Index and an Issue Index. The Title Index lists all of the titles in the current data file; the Issue Index lists all of the issues (and dates) of the current Title. Only one index can be open at a time. Clicking on any entry in the title index window brings up the first issue with that title. Clicking on any entry in the issue index brings up that issue. The UPDATE INDEX button redraws the current index. For example, when the Issue Index is first opened, it will list all issues of the title currently shown in the main window. If the main window gadgets are used to move to a different title, press UPDATE INDEX to bring up all issues of the new title. KEYS --------------------------------------------------------------- MAIN WINDOW: left cursor key - previous comic right cursor key - next comic SHIFT/left - previous title SHIFT/right - next title up cursor - first comic in list down - last comic DELETE - Delete Comic HELP - bring up help info F1 - Mark this comic F2 - return to marked comic F9 - Title Index F10 - Issue Index SPACE - New Comic ESC - Cancel current entry ` - Update Comic F8 - Change Colors f - Find next occurence TAB - Force this comic into the list This is not necessary; each issue is added to the list auto- matically when you move to a new issue 1 - 9 - Activate field 1 activates the Title field, 2 the Issue field, etc. 9 activates the Notes field. Allows you to enter data without clicking in the field with the mouse. INDEX WINDOW: Up/Down - scroll window SHIFT-UP - top of index ESC - close Index window In the Title Index, press any letter key to go to the first comic in the list whose title starts with that letter. For example, pressing "b" could move to the first issue of "Batman" in the list. Click in the Index Window and press "b" again to move to the next issue, and so on. THE DEFAULTS ------------------------------------------------------------ Whenever you add a new comic to the list with the NEW COMIC command, default settings for the PUBLISHER, CONDITION, FORMAT, and NUMBER OF COPIES fields must automatically be entered. The default publisher, condition, format, and number of copies are select with the Defaults menu. Note that Comics saves your choices for defaults with your data file. Comics keeps a list of all Publishers, Conditions, and Formats that can be selected within the program. As mentioned earlier, if you wish to use a publisher (for example) that doesn't appear in the publisher list, you can press "Other" in the Publisher requester and enter the data. Alternatively, you can change the list itself. For example, the second item in the default publisher list is "Marvel." If you use "Marvel" rarely and "Piranha" more often, you can Select Defaults/Change Item/ Publisher... and then select "Marvel" from the requester that appears. Enter "Piranha" in the string requester, and the item will be changed in the menu itself and will from now on appear in the Publishers list. You could change the entire list for a certain field. For example, you could change the items in the Format list to keep track of the type of story, whether the book is hard or softcover, etc. Note that Comics does NOT save your changed lists with your data file, so if you have used the Defaults/Change Item menu, you will need to change the items each time you run the program. If "Change The" in the Defaults menu is selected, Comics will ignore any occurances of the word "The" in a title when sorting or searching. That is, "The Sandman" would be considered the same as "Sandman" and "Batman: Killing Joke" would be the same as "Batman: The Killing Joke." This is effective for sorting (adding an issue to the list) and searching. UPDATING ------------------------------------------------------------ To allow easier entry of a series of comics, the Comics program allows you to enter a new comics info based on the previous info. Updating automatically increments the issue number and adds one month to the date, and then copies the remaining data into the field exactly. For example, enter "Hellblazer," issue 5, FEB 89, Jamie Delano and John Ridgway, etc. Select New Comic from the Edit menu, then Edit/Update (or alternatively, enter a ` character anywhere in the Title field.) This new comic field will be filled with the information: "Hellblazer," issue 6, MAR 89, Jamie Delano... etc. You can select which fields will be updated with the Defaults/Update menu. If you select Defaults/Auto-Update, every new issue you create will be automatically updated with the previous issue's information. You can enter an entire series of comics with the Edit/Insert Range... menu selection. First, enter the information for the first issue in the series. Then, select Edit/Insert Range... and enter the ISSUE NUMBER OF THE LAST ISSUE. The series will be inserted into the list, each issue automatically updated by month and issue number. FIND ------------------------------------------------------------- Comics can search for a particular issue by TITLE, ARTIST, NOTES, PUBLISHER, or FORMAT, or a combination of them all. Call up the find requester (by selecting Go/Find... or clicking on the main window's FIND button), enter the data to search for in the string gadget, and select all the fields you want to search in. If you select the "Exact Match" button, the find will be slightly faster, but will look for each field to have exactly the same data as the find requester's string gadget, so it will probably miss many entries. Note that due to the format in which Comics stores the Publisher and Condition information, and "Exact Match" search will NOT work with the Publisher or Condition fields. Note that NO searches in Comics are case-sensitive. By default, Find starts the search from the current issue. If you select "From Start," it will begin searching from the first issue. Pressing the "f" key in the main window will automatically search for the next occurence of the search string. REPORTS -------------------------------------------------------------- Comics can generate reports to the screen or to a disk file. Note that the program does NOT support any printing, but you can save a report to a disk file and then print it out with almost any word processor or text editor. "All Issues" will report the information for every issue in the list. From the reports requester, select all of the field information that will appear in the report. (Note that the issue number and title will appear regardless.) The "Missing Issues" report lists any gaps in the series FOR THE CURRENT TITLE. Move to the issue for which you want to generate a report, then select Reports/Missing Issues... You will be asked for the first and last issues for the search. For example, if you had a semi-complete collection of Detective Comics, you would not want to print all the missing issues beginning with #27, as it would probably make your collection seem terribly inadequate. Enter instead a range of recent issues and the report will list each issue (by number only) missing from that range. The "Oldest...", "Most Valuable...", and "Most Profitable..." reports each bring up a sorted list of 25 comics in your list. The "Distribution" reports allow you to enter a string to search for, then report all issues in the list that have that search string. The reports remain open for as long as the program is running. If you want to close it, select any report from the Reports menu and click on the "Close Window" button in the reports requester. MISCELLANEOUS ------------------------------------------------------------- The Edit/Cut, Copy, and Paste commands work with a simple clipboard of one issue. Remember that the Comics program automatically stores each issue in alphabetical order, so the clipboard commands will be useful mainly for transferring issue information from one data file to another. Comics saves all of the selections in the Defaults menu and the color palette with each data file. Remember that it does NOT save your publisher, condition, and format lists if you have made any changes. The data files generated by this program are surprisingly large. If there is enough support for this program, I will try to find a better, more compact way of storing and saving the data to memory and disk. I have tested the program by entering my entire (~500 issue) collection (successfully), but as I would suggest for any program written by an amateur programmer, SAVE YOUR WORK frequently to avoid frustration for yourself and any undue hostility towards me, the innocent programmer. The file "Sample" is a data file with a partial collection of books, mostly DC. The prices used are from the January 1992 issue of "Wizard" magazine. PROGRAM INFO AND CREDITS -------------------------------------------------------------- This program is not public domain but is freely distributable, as long as this documentation file and other support files (i.e. reqtools.library) are distributed along with the archive. This program requires the reqtools.library (which should be included). The source requires the complete Reqtools package to be compiled; the .h files needed were not included with the archive. All files were compiled with Lattice C's lc -b1 -ffs -v -y options. This is my first attempt at a full-scale Amiga program; by all means I appreciate any comments, questions, (complaints), suggestions and bug reports. I can be reached via the INTERNET at: jordan@castor.cs.uga.edu Or at the address: PO Box 838, Conyers, GA, 30207