This is Bolderbast, part of the inducks.org website.
On the the beginners page, you have seen a simple example of what an issue index looks like. But there are more kinds of indexes in Inducks, like story indexes, creator indexes, indexes about countries and languages.

Various kinds of files

Inducks consists of a set of (UTF-8) text files. We have a program (called Dizni) to link these files together, combine information, and make readable output files.

Overview

overview
The above picture gives an overview of how things work.
  • Indexer: the person who enters and maintains the indexes
  • Favorite text editor: any text editor is OK, as long as it produces text files!
  • *.DB*: the so-called input files
  • *.LOG *.TXT: the so-called output files
  • Dizni: the program to handle the input files
  • *.ISV: the so-called internal files
  • COA import: some scripts to import the internal files in a real database system
  • SQL database: the database system used by COA
  • COA website: the main website where you can browse through the Inducks indexes. This website is not described in further detail here.
  • Excel etc.: standard programs for off-line browsing through the Inducks indexes
  • End user: the person who wants to use the Inducks data. This can of course be the same person as the Indexer!

Input files

overview
The text files where indexers type in the data are called input files.
In Inducks, there are four kinds of input files:
DBS files These files contain the stories by a particular producer. For instance "D-coded" (Egmont) and "I-coded" (Italian) stories.
The main key to these files are the story codes. Other files refer to these story codes. Examples of story codes are "I TL 2123-A", "D 96003".

In the Inducks context, a story can be defined as a related piece of art, consisting of at least one drawing. Covers, illustrations, newspaper gags, etc. are all considered "stories".
DBI files These files contain the contents of comic issues of a specific country. For instance "Denmark" and "Germany". The main key in these files is the entry code: every entry in an issue has its own unique code. For instance, the covers and stories in German Micky Maus #23, 1997 have the issue codes "MM1997-23a", "MM1997-23b", etc.
DBL files Files with abbreviations and other data of characters, persons, subseries, etc.
DBX and DBP files These contain general data about e.g. countries and languages, and URLs of scans and websites.


These input files are used by the Dizni program to produce internal files and output files.

Output (TXT) files

overview
The output files have a layout that is very similar to the input files. They are mainly used by indexers to compare their input with information from other input files in Inducks.
The output files have extra information, gathered from all input files. For instance, all reprints of a story in the same country are added to that story in an output file.

Internal (ISV) files

overview
The internal files have a well-defined format, less readable for humans. These files can be used by various other programs, like our COA website.


The internal files are fit to be imported into a database program like MS-Access, or a spreadsheet like Excel.

On the next page, we'll go into further detail about the input files.
   
<< Previous page (This page was generated by AweGen 5.19 on 2024-07-27) Next page >>