Re: Requirements Doc -- 2nd Draft

[Lionel English]

Sorry to have been gone so long--distracted by work, a cold, and business on the other GCD lists.  I'm reposting the first draft with the few extra things we decided.  With this draft, my big questions will be about cartoons.  Several people have now indicated that they want to be able to index cartoons and strips together.  So when you review the draft this time, please think about how well each of the data points and user features compare  with the cartoon model--are there things that need to be added if dealing with a cartoon?  Things that don't apply to a cartoon?  I'll call a couple of things out, but you should think about the whole picture.

We would like to build a newspaper comic strip database.

 

Any and all strips and cartoons from any and all local or national newspapers, including college/university newspapers and alternative newspapers, from any nationality, are eligible for inclusion.

 

== Data ==

 

We would like to be able to search and index from any of the following perspectives, and would like to be able to document the following facts at each level:

 

Strip meta data  -- general information about the strip.  Name of the strip. Alternate names.  Dates begun and concluded.  Creator(s).  Premise.  Major characters.  Genre.  Links to preceding and/or succeeding strips, if any. Frequency.  Format(s). General Notes. Cartoon question:  How do you determine Strip Name?

 

Strip owners -- syndicate, newspaper, or other entities who control distribution.  Names.  Address(es).  Dates.  Key personnel (and tenures and positions).  Links to previous and/or next incarnations.  General Notes.

 

Ownership -- links between strips and strip owners indicating duration of relationship.  Strip.  Owner.  Begin and end dates.  Notes.

 

Newspapers -- papers in which a strip appears.  Publication name.  Publisher.  Location/distribution area.  Links to previous and/or next incarnations. Notes.

 

Issues -- issues of above.  Date and/or vol/issue number.

 

Installments or episodes -- individual strips.  Date and/or serial number.  Installment title.  Credits.  Characters.  Synopsis or identifying caption or dialog.  Keywords.  Notes.  [Jan: I think this would be equivalent to Strip Index you've linked to]

 

Publication -- occurrences of installments in issues.  Strip Installment.  Issue of Newspaper.  Page No.  Notes.

 

Story/Continuity -- aggregates of installments that tell extended stories.  Strip.  Installments.  Story name.  Synopsis.  Keywords.  Characters.  Notes.

 

Characters -- people who appear in a strip.  Name(s).  First appearance.  Brief description.  Strip(s) and story(ies) associated with.  Notes.

 

Creators -- people who produce strips.  Name(s).  Birth, death dates.  Brief bio.  Links to work. Notes.

 

Reprints -- links between reprints of strips (presumably in comic book database) and individual installments and/or continuities.

 

Images -- can't get away with scans of each strip.  But can presumably get away with scans of isolated panels to illustrate characters, and possibly isolated strips to illustrate strip meta data and story/continuity.  This area needs further review by the board of directors due to possible legal issues.

 

== Functionality == 

 

Must be able to enter/edit/search for all of the above. Internationalized/localized UI as much as possible.

 

Must be able to work on data in bulk--create installments in bulk by specifying beginning and ending dates and frequency.  Select installments by data range to add/edit credits in bulk.  Ability to add in bulk a newspaper run (e.g. paper "foo" carries strip "bar" from date 1 till date 2, matching same date range in strip history (or matching alternate date range or serial number range in strip history)).  Add stories by selecting date ranges of strips.  Add reprints by date or serial number ranges.

We should also be able to set up a template for ongoing strips and/or allow a new strip installment to be copied from the previous days'.

Should also be able to set up a template for a given newspaper's strips and/or allow a new days worth of strips to be copied from the previous days strips (i.e. copy the same strips and page numbers to the next days issue, updating installment of each strip to next days installments).

 

An important issue is search display--many/most strips will have thousands of installments.  So when returning search results, we want to see filtered/collated results that can be repeatedly drilled down to lowest details.

 

Example:  Searching on creator or syndicate or newspaper might produce list of strips, possibly with associated date ranges.  Clicking through a given strip might produce a list of years during which the strip ran (possibly limited by the original primary search--e.g. if we're looking at a strip via a creator search, we'd only want to see the years associated with that creator's tenure on the strip).  Clicking through a given year might produce a list of weeks during that year, and clicking through a given week might produce a listing of the individual strips for that week, with full details.  For a non-daily, there might be fewer click throughs to arrive at the details.  If the strip makes use of story arcs, then clicking through the strip name might produce a list of story arcs instead of a list of years. 

 

Main idea here is we don't want to see a list of thousands of strip entries at a time, need to filter into manageable levels of detail.

--
Lionel English

San Diego, CA
lio...@beanmar.net

[Merlin Haas]

At 8:18 PM -0700 9/30/10, Lionel English wrote:
>Should also be able to set up a template for a given newspaper's
>strips and/or allow a new days worth of strips to be copied from the
>previous days strips (i.e. copy the same strips and page numbers to
>the next days issue, updating installment of each strip to next days
>installments).

This sounds like a good idea, though page number (if referring to the
page of the newspaper) should not carry over. Many papers (especially
currently) don't run the comics on the same page each day. (One
local paper puts it in a different section each day.) Also there is
the problem of different editions of a newspaper running strips on
different pages. The old Midwest edition (R.I.P) of the Chicago
Tribune had a completely different page layout than the editions
distributed in the Chicago area. We need some way to account for the
edition we're indexing.

best -- Merlin Haas

[carch...@aol.com]

I spoke with a friend here at work who used to work in a newspaper doing linotype work for newspapers in the pre-computer days. While it may now have happened often, it did happen once in a while mistakes. Sometimes the plate for the next day or previous day's strip would get accidently placed on the layout page and print. Sometimes such errors would be corrected between editions of that day's paper. I would imagine this would be the same anywhere.

 

Wow.

 

My best

-Ray

-- Group discussions are archived at http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips/topics 
 
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to 
gcd-strips+...@googlegroups.com 
 
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-strips?hl=en 

[carch...@aol.com]

Its seems to me that often that cartoons are story/gag driven, editorial cartoons are topic driven, and comic strips/panels are feature driven. Not always bit most often.

 

my best

-Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: Lionel English <lio...@beanmar.net>
To: gcd-s...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, Sep 30, 2010 11:18 pm
Subject: [gcd-strips] Re: Requirements Doc -- 2nd Draft

[Donald Dale Milne]

Sounds good to me.

- Don Milne

> lio...@beanmar.net <mailto:lio...@beanmar.net>