16 posts tagged with "metron"

Issues Indexed

Not much user-facing development was done in November, but 10,612 issues were added to the database bringing the total number of issues to 88,244. I wish to give big thanks to everyone who has helped with the project. Thanks!

2024 Tasks

I've started working on a list of items that I'm planning to work on in 2024. Here's a partial list:

• Upgrade Server

  Currently, the server is fairly underpowered (1 GiB Memory, 1 CPU, 25 GiB SSD, 1,000 GiB Transfer) but is able to handle the current load without any particular issues. Based on the current user growth rate, I'm guessing I'll finally need to upgrade sometime in 2024, I'm thinking a fairly minor bump should be sufficient (2 GiB Memory, 1CPU, 50 GiB SSD, 2,000 GiB Transfer)

• Container Deployment

  Before upgrading the server it makes sense to finally set up the project to use containers (preferably Podman) when deploying the website. If anyone wants to help with this, that would be awesome.

• Look into Open Collective for Future Funding

  Eventually it will make sense to look at setting up something like Open Collective to help with future server costs. Right now the server costs around $14 a month (not including annual domain name & email hosting costs) so it's not really an issue, but down the road I probably won't want to cover all the costs of the project myself.

  Glancing at the criteria needed for acceptance to the Open Source Collective, it looks like Metron meets most of them, except having 100 stars on Github. So, if you'd like to help the project, one easy way would be to star the repository.

• Manga / International Support

  It would be nice to make a final decision on whether to support Manga and Non-U.S. issues, right now I'm inclined not to but if we do add support it will necessitate some changes to the database for things like currencies, languages, and such.

I'm sure there will be other smaller items (like tweaking the site's css and such), but these are most items I'll be looking at in 2024. 🎉

New Indexed Issues Milestone

The Metron Project reached a milestone this month by having more than 77,000 issues added to its database. I wish to give big thanks to everyone who has helped with the project. Thanks!

Metron-Tagger v1.6.4

Duplicate Page Removal

Just released a new version of Metron-Tagger, which adds a new experimental feature of finding / removing duplicate pages in a directory of comics. The feature will get the hashes for all the pages of the comics in a directory, and then ask the user if the image should be removed from the comics. This is done by using the user's system image viewer to display the duplicate image. Once the user has reviewed all the duplicated images it will ask the user whether to write the changes to the comics and then prompt them if they also want to update the ComicInfo.xml (if it exists) for the page changes.

This feature most likely will work best when running on a weekly basis, instead of on a whole comic collection, since it's asking the user to review all the duplicate images before writing the changes. I'm planning on reworking this to make it more feasible to use on a large comic collection, but that is pretty far down on my TODO list (but if someone wants to work on this I'm more than willing to review a Pull Request).

Note: I've been using this for the last month and haven't had any issues, but if you plan on using this I would suggest backing up any files when using this initially, and verifying it works correctly for you since once the changes are written they can't be undone! 💣

Miscellaneous Maintenance

The rest of v1.6.4 changes are primarily developer-side changes updating the toolsets for Metron-Tagger.

Comic-Tagger

Comic-Tagger recently released their Metron-Talker plugin which adds support for tagging any comic with metadata from Metron.

A user contacted me about adding Marvel Masterworks: The Uncanny X-Men series to Metron since we have recently added support for trade paperbacks/collected editions. I figured this would be useful exercise since it would show me what parts of the process could be improved to make it easier.

Currently, the process requires the editor to add all creators, characters, teams, etc. manually for the reprinted issues associate with the collection, much like a regular issue. One obvious way to simplify this is to automatically add any characters, team, story titles, etc. for the issues being reprinted. Currently, I've written an admin action to do this, but sometime in the future I need to expose this functionality so that anyone adding a Trade Paperback/Collection can save some time.

When I was creating Metron one of the choices I made was to add creators at an issue-level, and not at a story-level, since I wanted the process for adding an issue to be fairly simple. The downside to this approach is that adding information to a collection from an issue with multiple stories isn't really possible.😢

The Metron Project reached a milestone today by having 50,000 issues added to its database. I wish to give big thanks to everyone who has helped with the project. Thanks!

So, one of the new projects I've been working on in my spare time is a new comic book xml schema called MetronInfo.

Currently, most applications use ComicInfo which originated from the ComicRack application, but due to it's history this format has some limitations like:

• Poor handling of data. For example, cover date information that is split into separate integer types, instead of just using a date type.
• Limited types metadata stored. For example, when tagging a comic book archive with an application like ComicTagger it would be useful to know where the metadata information was retrieved from (i.e. Comic Vine, GCD, Metron, etc.) and the resources identification number.
• Lack of documentation. The Anansi Project is working on improving this, tho.

For now, the Anansi Project is working on documenting and extending (non-breaking changes) the ComicInfo schema, but in my opinion that time spent would be better spent on creating a new format not tied to a dead application. Due to the fairly unstructured nature of comic book archives it's trivial to tag one with the existing ComicInfo format and also a new format. That way users who use applications that only support ComicInfo.xml can still use them, but also gives them the option to use applications that could support the MetronInfo format.

My goals for MetronInfo.xml are:

• Fix some of the deficiencies of the ComicInfo format.
• Add information to make it easier for Plex-like application to identify data (series, character, etc/) when importing comics into their application.
• Document the elements clearly so their use is not ambiguous.

Currently I'm working right now on finalizing the new format, and would appreciate any help or feedback from the comic book community in this. Feel free to leave suggestions either at the Discussions Page or contact use over on Matrix.

Once the new format is finalized I plan on writing a tool that will create a MetronInfo.xml file for any existing comic book archive that was tagged with ComicTagger or Metron-Tagger, and also retrieve any missing data from the source of information (Metron or Comic Vine).

Welcome to the Metron Project! We'll be using this site to add some documentation and information about new project initiatives here. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us on Matrix.