Character Index

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louisxiv
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Character Index

Post by louisxiv »

Browsing the forum over the last few months I’ve seen some expressions of a need for a way to look up which characters appear where in the story. This seems to be the one thing the (stunning!) Wapsi Square Guide doesn't cover.

As I do a Misfile index and a Gunnerkrigg Court index and, having been following Wapsi Square since about 2006, I thought I’d make a start on a Wapsi Index.

Each comic page is linked and tagged with characters and stuff appearing or significantly referenced. Some contributed javascript allows filtering of the "show all pages with characters X and Y" variety.

Currently it covers from Start to July 2004, plus August 2014 to present. I’m adding the current daily pages as they arrive and aiming for a month a day for catch-up, maybe 5 days a week.

Feedback and corrections (especially) much appreciated.

I hope you find it useful as is, but obviously it’ll get better as time goes on.
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TazManiac
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Re: Character Index

Post by TazManiac »

I'd usually respond to something this momentous with my patented
dude...
, but in this case I'm going with
" https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... x3Z8#t=119 "...
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illiad
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Re: Character Index

Post by illiad »

Hey am I the first to ask if you can do a 'text search' ?? :P :D :P :D
ohnorobot.com does a few years, but in the old web address format.. :)
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louisxiv
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Re: Character Index

Post by louisxiv »

illiad wrote:Hey am I the first to ask if you can do a 'text search' ?? :P :D :P :D
ohnorobot.com does a few years, but in the old web address format.. :)
Depends what you mean by text search?

It is just a web page with some cunning javascript. Essentially all the available data is on the page – there’s no database behind it. If the select or on-page search box doesn't do what you want just use the browser search perhaps?

If you want a character dialogue text search, err, no, sorry. Don’t have that data.
Though if someone wants to do the necessary typing I’d look at extending the index page to accommodate…
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illiad
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Re: Character Index

Post by illiad »

{groan} so where on this page, is the text in the graphic hidden??
http://www.misfile.com/?date=2014-11-25
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louisxiv
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Re: Character Index

Post by louisxiv »

illiad wrote:{groan} so where on this page, is the text in the graphic hidden??
http://www.misfile.com/?date=2014-11-25
Ah! I thought you were hinting at full dialogue.

Yes, for Misfile and Gunnerkrigg the page description in the index is usually a bit of significant dialogue from the page. That is slowly being added to the middle years of the Misfile index on a round-tuit basis, though is added as a matter of course to the daily updates. Quite a chunk of Gunnerkrigg was ‘crowd-sourced’ so that is complete throughout. I’m afraid that deciding what to add as a description from dialogue (or worse still, no dialogue at all) is a lot slower than just tagging a page for characters appearing, so I am not doing it systematically.

Wapsi pages have a page title in later years, which I’m using because it is easy to extract. The early years just use a mmddyyyy date. Where an obvious title leaps out at me for an old page I’ll put that in. Not sure what I’ll do about the less obvious — probably go the same dialogue route as the other two, in a second, fill in the blanks, pass.

I’m happy to take titles for the untitled pages — and indeed full tag details for untagged pages — if anyone wants to pitch in?
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illiad
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Re: Character Index

Post by illiad »

well I found ohnorobot a while back, but it only covers a few years.. ( and the web addressing has changed since then, but the dates are correct..)

also there is something extra below the comic, that was missing for a while.. (shhh! keep it a secret!! :D )
check your messages! :)
Last edited by illiad on Sun Nov 30, 2014 4:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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louisxiv
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Re: Character Index

Post by louisxiv »

illiad wrote:well I found ohnorobot a while back, but it only covers a few years..
Hmm, I could ‘leverage’ that, you mean? Interesting thought.
also there is something extra below the comic, that was missing for a while.. (shhh! keep it a secret!! :D )
So secret, the whooshing sound you hear is something going right over my head I’m afraid.
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Jabberwonky
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Re: Character Index

Post by Jabberwonky »

Most impressive at first look. \m/ I'll skull around in it when I have more time and give some feedback. Excellent work sir!
"The price of perfection is prohibitive." - Anonymous
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louisxiv
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Re: Character Index

Post by louisxiv »

Now up to end 2004…

655 pages indexed, 292 tags
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Catawampus
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Re: Character Index

Post by Catawampus »

Heh, I remember once making up a sort of encyclopedia and index for all of the characters and places and significant objects in H. P. Lovecraft's works for somebody who was planning on using it to put together some type of Dungeons and Dragons like game. It was actually rather fun to put together.
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Thor
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Re: Character Index

Post by Thor »

Having a full text search would be nifty too, but a robust tag system that allows one to find all the strips with (for example) CalendarMachine would be very useful all by itself. Keep up the good work! :D
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louisxiv
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Re: Character Index

Post by louisxiv »

Catawampus wrote:Heh, I remember once making up a sort of encyclopedia and index for all of the characters and places and significant objects in H. P. Lovecraft's works for somebody who was planning on using it to put together some type of Dungeons and Dragons like game. It was actually rather fun to put together.
Oddly, I have done pretty much exactly that for FRPG GMing purposes…

…and…

Reading the old comics in detail is fun, seeing stuff I've missed or forgotten since I first read the comic — until I tag something, then think “$%^& — wasn't there one of those earlier” and have to trawl back through…
Last edited by louisxiv on Wed Dec 03, 2014 4:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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louisxiv
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Re: Character Index

Post by louisxiv »

Thor wrote:Having a full text search would be nifty too, but a robust tag system that allows one to find all the strips with (for example) CalendarMachine would be very useful all by itself. Keep up the good work! :D
A robust tag system is the intent, yes. It is a helluva lot less work than typing in all the dialogue.

One worry I have with adding the dialogue, apart from the work, is the copyright position. The dialogue is Paul Taylor’s direct creation so I’d be leery of copying it into the index page. Indexing is just analysis and possible to defend. I’m not so sure of adding something that tells quite a lot of the story even without the art.

There is a dialogue search for Misfile, which is very useful, but it is implemented as a searchable database rather than the plain, upfront, text that would be the case if including full dialogue in the index.

(Now at 743 pages, 321 tags, end April 2005) (corrected)
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louisxiv
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Re: Character Index

Post by louisxiv »

Hooo! Got to the end of 2005,

944 pages, 373 tags

I had forgotten how intense some of that was.
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Thor
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Re: Character Index

Post by Thor »

If I may make a suggestion for a tag here, I'd like to point out that unlike most other webcomickers, Mr. Taylor sometimes drops in these single-panel episodes in the midst of all the multi-panel normality. Perhaps a tag of "1-panel" or "single-panel" would be appropriate. If so, I would suggest "1-panel" as it will sit at the top of the alphabetical list, easy to see and use.

I was also going to suggest a "colour" tag, but I see you already have it. (But you missed it here.)
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louisxiv
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Re: Character Index

Post by louisxiv »

Thor wrote:If I may make a suggestion for a tag here, I'd like to point out that unlike most other webcomickers, Mr. Taylor sometimes drops in these single-panel episodes in the midst of all the multi-panel normality. Perhaps a tag of "1-panel" or "single-panel" would be appropriate. If so, I would suggest "1-panel" as it will sit at the top of the alphabetical list, easy to see and use.
Re: 1-panel — picture format wasn’t something I’d thought of tagging, obviously, but it seems easy enough. I assume you’d like tagged the pages clearly intended as single-picture, not cases like Do This Together where several frames seem to have have lost their borders and merged?
Thor wrote:I was also going to suggest a "colour" tag, but I see you already have it. (But you missed it here.)
Yes I only added the Colour tag lately, so some of the earlier tagged pages are un-Colour’d. I have just taken a pass over the modern pages so I hope I have most of those now. I’ll have a look back at the early years on the arrival of my next box of roundtoits.

BTW: If anyone feels a strong desire to tag more complex layouts, specific colours or, indeed, take on tagging pages I haven’t got to yet, the source files for the index are at on GitHub (usually a day or two behind) — I’ll take pull requests (and give credit).
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louisxiv
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Re: Character Index

Post by louisxiv »

Now up to the start of 2007; only 1939 pages to go.

464 tags (including the ‘untagged’ placeholder which gives me the to-go count).
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louisxiv
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Re: Character Index

Post by louisxiv »

The Wapsi index page is now up to the start of 2008: 1474 pages tagged, 540 tags.

Recent pages are tagged from July 2014.

There are 1649 untagged pages to go to catch up.
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louisxiv
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Character Index Progress – Feb ’15

Post by louisxiv »

The Wapsi character index now covers from start to early 2009: 1745 pages tagged, 605 tags.

(Also tagged: July 2014 – present.)

1367 untagged pages to go.
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