My Daily Comics Plugin (2 Viewers)

[TimmyT]

Hi DogBoy1169

I'm glad you like the plugin. As for your question about the sequentially numbered comics - that doesn't work yet. Right now, only date-based URL's work. I have planned to include this functionality in my next release (although I can't say when this will be...)

Could you send me (or post) the working xml-section for the Dilbert comic so I can add it in my config as well? Thanx

Cheers,
TimmyT

 

[DogBoy1169]

TimmyT
Great work on it ... my XML for Dilbert is as follows:
<comic id="3">
<name>Dilbert</name>
<url>http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-[yyyy][MM][dd].html</url>
<banner>http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/images/new_top_nav/nav_logo_dilbert.gif</banner>
<enabled>1</enabled>
<language>eng</language>
<startswith>/comics/dilbert/archive/images/</startswith>
<endswith></endswith>
</comic>

Enjoy!

 

[druffski]

Hi,

This is a great idea. Am running Project Mayhem 3 skin, but will give the My Comics plugin a go at some stage this weekend...

 

[Anthrax]

Another Comic...

Hi TimmyT and everybody else,

first off, nice little plugin!

I instantly added http://www.nicht-lustig.de/ (german, sorry folks) and it worked like a charm.
And allthough the site is not being updated at the moment, these are some of my all time favourite comics:

<comic id="10">
      <name>nicht-lustig.de</name>
      <url>http://www.nicht-lustig.de/comics/full/[yy][MM][dd].jpg</url>
      <banner>http://www.nicht-lustig.de/system/img/info/impressum2_01.jpg</banner>
      <enabled>1</enabled>
      <language>de</language>
</comic>

The last comic sadly dates back to 2006-10-04, but holding down the left button while focus is on the date field will bring you there pretty quickly ;-)

Another point, which will lead me directly to an improvement suggestion, is that this site doesn't release it's comics on an everyday basis, so there are huge gaps between the dates sometimes...

Therefore it would be nice, to have the plugin count back in time automatically as long as there is a http 404 for the currently requested picture.
BUT: This would cause numerous requests in a very short amount of time and hopefully wouldn't result in a DoS attack for the content provider.

Could anybody please comment on this?

PS: Please, consider this link before http://www.nicht-lustig.de/copyright.html (german)

 

[TimmyT]

Hi Anthrax

Thanx for your input (and your link to nichtlustig, I really like this comic strip). I am aware of the problem with the huge gaps on noteveryday comics. Unfortunately I haven't found the perfect solution yet. I hope will get "enlightened" when I find the time to attack the next release. ;-)

Cheers,
TimmyT

 

[Anthrax]

Glad you liked it... these strips are simply brilliant and very nicely done (check out them yetis!!!).

Well, I think to overcome the gaps there is no other way than asking the server for a picture and automatically request the next one when it could'nt be displayed. To decrease the server loads, already found pictures could be remembered in a list (thinking database...). Of course this would ultimately result in a huge amount of additional expense and I hope this issue isn't too far beyond your scope, cause this would enrich your plugin even more!
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As mentioned before, another field for sequentially numbered cartoons would be very nice and should cover a whole lot of additional comics.

If you plan on incorporating this TimmyT, please let the plugin remember the last selected number when it's left.
(don't wanna run up to #423312 again everytime, do you? But that's just my two cents, and yes I know your focus was on daily comics ;-) )

As for a numeration placeholder i'd like to suggest the following (please forgive me TimmyT for bothering you with such triviality):

simply making it [#] wouldn't work as you certainly figured already,
because /00001.jpg => /0000[#].jpg would result in 000010.jpg and therefore break on the 10th.

So the placeholder would have to be like [#n] => [#], [##], [###] and so on, filling in zeros where a digit isn't needed for the current number yet.


One more thing (stop me if I'm getting to greedy):

right now we have these to play with, according to your readme:

Placeholders
------------
The plugin will replace the following placeholders:
[yy] = year (07)
[yyyy] = year (2007)
[MM] = month (03)
[dd] = day (08)

common sense tells me that this should be more than enough, to cover the dates... BUT some server admins like to add some extra complexity by having paths like this:

.../07/dec/xx.jpg
.../07/march/xx.jpg

so what about prophylactically adding [mmm] and [mmmm] to cover evil paths like these?


bye and thx once again,
Anthrax

 

[TimmyT]

Hi Anthrax

so what about prophylactically adding [mmm] and [mmmm] to cover evil paths like these?

That should be no problem, I will integrate it in the next release (even though I've never seen a comic that uses that structure, but better safe than sorry).

Unfortunately I'm pretty busy at work right now, so I can't release anything new for at least two weeks. So you have to be patient... ;-)

Cheers,
TimmyT

 

[DogBoy1169]

TimmyT
Hell - I just installed this little wonder - I'll wait a month for this feature!

Keep up the great work ....

 

[MatthewJ]

Does your script have issues with PNG's ? I looked through the code, but couldn't see any problem reading them. But i can't get this comic to show. Even if i supply a direct url to it.

http://www.xkcd.com/

It downloads the banner ok, but not the comic.

This is what i tried for my xml.


<comic id="11">
<name>XKCD</name>
<url>http://www.xkcd.com/</url>
<startswith>http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/</startswith>
<endswith></endswith>
<enabled>1</enabled>
<language>eng</language>
</comic>

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-Matt

 

[TimmyT]

Hi MatthewJ

No, there's no general problem with PNG files, but your selected comic strip is not supported yet :-(

the reason is that there's no date in the url/picture nor a increasing number in the image source. I'm sorry

TimmyT