ComicRack / ComicInfo.xml

gotson commented 4 years ago

Part of ComicRack, which is not developed anymore. The single developer, cYo, disappeared from the internet. ComicRack is/was also a shareware model, which could limit the steering capability of the format.

Format: XML, usually stored inside the archive at the root

A schema is available, but is not versioned. At least two versions have been lying around (1, 2).
Does not use XML Namespaces

Known limitations:

There is a StoryArc field, but no field to indicate the ordering of the book in this story arc.
It is impossible to specify more than one Story Arc per book.
No field to specify the day of a release date. Only has Year and Month. ComicTagger is using the unofficial Day tag.

SenorSmartyPants commented 4 years ago

Re: Known limitations:

There are the AlternateSeries and AlternateNumber fields. These allow for a number to order the alternate series (which is similar use to StoryArc).
ComicRack for Android will split AlternateSeries by commas and display them separately in the Stories view. But I haven't found a what to do the same thing in ComicRack for windows.
But there is no true multiple ordered StoryArc or AlternateSeries support
ComicRack 0.9.178 does store day of release in the Day field.

SenorSmartyPants commented 4 years ago

Not all information stored in CRW database is exported to ComicInfo.xml.

Here is an example of both current ComicInfo.xml output and and the corresponding data stored in ComicDb.xml. These examples include custom fields (not output to ComicInfo.xml). This is not an exhaustive example of all possible data stored in CRW.

ComicInfo.xml (obtained from right clicking issue and selecting 'Copy Data')

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ComicInfo xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <Title>You Had One Job</Title>
  <Series>Fantastic Four</Series>
  <Number>22</Number>
  <Volume>2018</Volume>
  <AlternateSeries>Empyre</AlternateSeries>
  <SeriesGroup>Fantastic Four</SeriesGroup>
  <Summary>THE RETURN OF THE NEW FANTASTIC FOUR?! The events of EMPYRE threaten all life on Earth and the future balance of power throughout the cosmos! And the secret mission that the FF have placed into Valeria and Franklinâ€™s hands requires some big-league help!</Summary>
  <Notes>Tagged with the ninjas.walk.alone fork of ComicTagger 1.3.3 using info from Comic Vine on 2020-08-06 11:23:02.  [CVDB787351]
Scraped metadata from Comixology [CMXDB844632]</Notes>
  <Year>2020</Year>
  <Month>10</Month>
  <Day>1</Day>
  <Writer>Dan Slott</Writer>
  <Penciller>Paco Medina, Sean Izaakse</Penciller>
  <Inker>Paco Medina, Sean Izaakse</Inker>
  <Colorist>Jesus Aburtov, Marcio Menyz</Colorist>
  <Letterer>Joe Caramagna</Letterer>
  <CoverArtist>Espen Grundetjern, Iban Coello, John Rauch, Nick Bradshaw</CoverArtist>
  <Editor>Alanna Smith, Martin Biro, Tom Brevoort</Editor>
  <Publisher>Marvel</Publisher>
  <Genre>Superhero</Genre>
  <Web>https://comicvine.gamespot.com/fantastic-four-22-you-had-one-job/4000-787351/</Web>
  <PageCount>24</PageCount>
  <LanguageISO>en</LanguageISO>
  <AgeRating>9+ Only</AgeRating>
  <Characters>Alicia Masters, Captain Marvel, Franklin Richards, Human Torch, Invisible Woman, Jo-Venn, Mr. Fantastic, N'kalla, Sky, Spider-Man, Thing, Valeria Richards, Wolverine</Characters>
  <Teams>Cotati, Fantastic Four, Kree, New Fantastic Four, Skrulls</Teams>
  <ScanInformation>Zone-Empire</ScanInformation>
  <Pages>
    <Page Image="0" ImageSize="1833151" ImageWidth="1988" ImageHeight="3056" Type="FrontCover" />
    <Page Image="1" ImageSize="759685" />
    <Page Image="2" ImageSize="1512273" />
    <Page Image="3" ImageSize="1744159" />
    <Page Image="4" ImageSize="2231538" />
    <Page Image="5" ImageSize="1368429" />
    <Page Image="6" ImageSize="2192419" />
    <Page Image="7" ImageSize="1896222" />
    <Page Image="8" ImageSize="1920578" />
    <Page Image="9" ImageSize="1790033" />
    <Page Image="10" ImageSize="1883198" />
    <Page Image="11" ImageSize="2125301" />
    <Page Image="12" ImageSize="2057496" />
    <Page Image="13" ImageSize="1487550" />
    <Page Image="14" ImageSize="3230017" />
    <Page Image="15" ImageSize="3913563" />
    <Page Image="16" ImageSize="1392762" />
    <Page Image="17" ImageSize="1361652" />
    <Page Image="18" ImageSize="1491465" />
    <Page Image="19" ImageSize="3472903" />
    <Page Image="20" ImageSize="1492856" />
    <Page Image="21" ImageSize="2104835" />
    <Page Image="22" ImageSize="2697168" />
    <Page Image="23" ImageSize="750766" />
  </Pages>
</ComicInfo>

ComicDB.xml (obtained from finding ComicDB.xml on the filesytem and opening in an editor)

<Book Id="7d20897f-75cd-4632-b576-8b6f509353c1" File="S:\Comics\Marvel\Fantastic Four\Fantastic Four\Fantastic Four (2018)\Fantastic Four 022 (2020) (Digital) (Zone-Empire).cbz">
      <Title>You Had One Job</Title>
      <Series>Fantastic Four</Series>
      <Number>22</Number>
      <Volume>2018</Volume>
      <AlternateSeries>Empyre</AlternateSeries>
      <SeriesGroup>Fantastic Four</SeriesGroup>
      <Summary>THE RETURN OF THE NEW FANTASTIC FOUR?! The events of EMPYRE threaten all life on Earth and the future balance of power throughout the cosmos! And the secret mission that the FF have placed into Valeria and Franklinâ€™s hands requires some big-league help!</Summary>
      <Notes>Tagged with the ninjas.walk.alone fork of ComicTagger 1.3.3 using info from Comic Vine on 2020-08-06 11:23:02.  [CVDB787351]
Scraped metadata from Comixology [CMXDB844632]</Notes>
      <Year>2020</Year>
      <Month>10</Month>
      <Day>1</Day>
      <Writer>Dan Slott</Writer>
      <Penciller>Paco Medina, Sean Izaakse</Penciller>
      <Inker>Paco Medina, Sean Izaakse</Inker>
      <Colorist>Jesus Aburtov, Marcio Menyz</Colorist>
      <Letterer>Joe Caramagna</Letterer>
      <CoverArtist>Espen Grundetjern, Iban Coello, John Rauch, Nick Bradshaw</CoverArtist>
      <Editor>Alanna Smith, Martin Biro, Tom Brevoort</Editor>
      <Publisher>Marvel</Publisher>
      <Genre>Superhero</Genre>
      <Web>https://comicvine.gamespot.com/fantastic-four-22-you-had-one-job/4000-787351/</Web>
      <PageCount>24</PageCount>
      <LanguageISO>en</LanguageISO>
      <AgeRating>9+ Only</AgeRating>
      <Characters>Alicia Masters, Captain Marvel, Franklin Richards, Human Torch, Invisible Woman, Jo-Venn, Mr. Fantastic, N'kalla, Sky, Spider-Man, Thing, Valeria Richards, Wolverine</Characters>
      <Teams>Cotati, Fantastic Four, Kree, New Fantastic Four, Skrulls</Teams>
      <CommunityRating>4</CommunityRating>
      <ScanInformation>Zone-Empire</ScanInformation>
      <Pages>
        <Page Image="0" ImageSize="1833151" ImageWidth="1988" ImageHeight="3056" Type="FrontCover" />
        <Page Image="1" ImageSize="759685" />
        <Page Image="2" ImageSize="1512273" />
        <Page Image="3" ImageSize="1744159" />
        <Page Image="4" ImageSize="2231538" />
        <Page Image="5" ImageSize="1368429" />
        <Page Image="6" ImageSize="2192419" />
        <Page Image="7" ImageSize="1896222" />
        <Page Image="8" ImageSize="1920578" />
        <Page Image="9" ImageSize="1790033" />
        <Page Image="10" ImageSize="1883198" />
        <Page Image="11" ImageSize="2125301" />
        <Page Image="12" ImageSize="2057496" />
        <Page Image="13" ImageSize="1487550" />
        <Page Image="14" ImageSize="3230017" />
        <Page Image="15" ImageSize="3913563" />
        <Page Image="16" ImageSize="1392762" />
        <Page Image="17" ImageSize="1361652" />
        <Page Image="18" ImageSize="1491465" />
        <Page Image="19" ImageSize="3472903" />
        <Page Image="20" ImageSize="1492856" />
        <Page Image="21" ImageSize="2104835" />
        <Page Image="22" ImageSize="2697168" />
        <Page Image="23" ImageSize="750766" />
      </Pages>
      <Added>2020-08-06T16:43:27.9014064-05:00</Added>
      <Released>2020-08-05T00:00:00</Released>
      <FileSize>46714530</FileSize>
      <FileModifiedTime>2020-08-06T22:06:48.003103Z</FileModifiedTime>
      <FileCreationTime>2020-08-06T22:06:48.003103Z</FileCreationTime>
      <BookPrice>3.99</BookPrice>
      <CustomValuesStore>,comicvine_issue=787351,comicvine_volume=112685,Covers=1,DataManager.processed=2020-08-06 17:04:43,Marvel Legacy Issue#=667,Marvel Legacy Series=Fantastic Four</CustomValuesStore>
    </Book>

Kussie commented 3 years ago

Inspired by this I have created a new repository in an effort to codify the known versions of the ComicInfo.xml file are most well known at present as well as proposing a new version to try and genericize it's potential use beyond Manga

Codifying is highly suggested so that the version itself and/or path to template can be included as attributes in the file, allowing third party integrators (Such as Komga etc) can easily reference a version and map fields much easier.

My codified version is here: https://github.com/Kussie/ComicInfoStandard

gotson commented 2 years ago

Recent requests from schema evolutions made me realize we need to have a place for ComicInfo.xml, we can't just ignore the format because ComicRack is dead, and giving the format the cold-shoulder won't work either.

I have created https://github.com/anansi-project/comicinfo under the anansi-project umbrella, and started documenting the existing requests. I plan to document the existing schema's accepted usage too, and we could also have a list of projects supporting the format. @majora2007 is also onboard this initiative for Kavita.

@Kussie we would most welcome your contributions from what you have already done in your own repo!

anansi-project / rfcs

ComicRack / ComicInfo.xml #3