How to use Reading Lists...

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evilhero
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Re: How to use Reading Lists...

Post by evilhero »

Tucker28 wrote:I have a question about reading lists. I have Blackest Night in the reading list manager, and a couple of issues are already there. All the rest of them are listed as wanted or snatched, most as wanted. However, I had downloaded the entire set some time ago. I have tagged them all with the ComicTagger GUI, both CR and CBL, and then dropped them into my watch folder, but they aren't being pulled into the library. Any idea how best to handle this?
Mylar only checks for story arc issues in 2 places: your watchlist, and the specific story arc directory for a given story arc. Dropping them into your watch folder isn't going to do anything unless you have those series on your watchlist, in which case Mylar would post-process them, mark them accordingly and then upon a refresh of the story arc it would reload the Status'. The 'best' way is to have the series on your watchlist, have Mylar post-process the issues that you have - and then the arc's will handle themselves. You can also put the issues in the relevant story arc directory, and it 'should' pick up the issues and mark them accordingly, but I haven't fully tested that portion out as of yet so it's probably hit / miss.
Also, I see the option of putting all the issues in the story arc directory and that is perfect for the tie-ins for series that I don't normally want, but I don't want issues from my Green Lantern/Green Lantern Corps directories duplicated in the story arc directory. How best to handle this? If crossovers weren't that common, I would just use symbolic links in the story arcs directory and have the best of both worlds as the issue would be under the main titles, but I could access them through the story arc folder as well. But crossovers are frequent in the comic world and I would drive myself bonkers trying to keep up with those links.
Just don't check off the option to copy all the issues into the story arc directory. If mylar finds an issue that corresponds to a story arc (you have to be on the story arc screen to initiate a search for a given arc anyways) it will do one of two things depending on if that option is enabled/disabled. Enabled, it will put the issues in your normal watchlist series directory if the series exists on your watchlist, and then it will also copy the issue into the story arc directory. If the issues for a series aren't in your watchlist, it would just put in into your story arc directory.Disabled, it will put the issues only in your normal watchlist series directory if the series exists on your watchlist, otherwise it will just dump them into the story arc directory.

(That's the desired behaviour - if you discover differently, please let me know so I can fix things so they work accordingly)

And symlinks would work on nix-based OS', and could in theory be managed by Mylar - but symlinks on Windows are a nightmare, and managing them even worse, so that's primarily the reason I haven't pursued that any further thus far.
Tucker28
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Re: How to use Reading Lists...

Post by Tucker28 »

That's good to know. That will save me a lot of OCD nightmares knowing that tie-in issues will go to the story arc directory and the rest will go to the main directories. =)

I had a feeling Windows symbolic links (or junction points) was going to be a hold up if you ever thought about adding the functionality. It drove me crazy with that, one of the reasons I switched to Mac and anything Unix based, the other reason being stability.

Ok, this brought up a new question. The reading list pane will search for issues and I have seen it start up torrents of issues not on my main watch list. However, if I am understanding you right, it won't pick it up on the post processing watch folder list? Or it will? Your answer seemed to indicate it wouldn't on the first answer, and that it would on the second one. I know I have to be missing something.

This seems to say it won't pick it up from the watch folder if it is not on the main watch list, even though it's on the story arc watch list.
evilhero wrote:Dropping them into your watch folder isn't going to do anything unless you have those series on your watchlist
This seems to say it will pick it up as long as it is on the story arc list
evilhero wrote:Disabled, it will put the issues only in your normal watchlist series directory if the series exists on your watchlist, otherwise it will just dump them into the story arc directory.
By the way, I love this app! Is there a place to donate some money when I have some extra?
Spritzup
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Re: How to use Reading Lists...

Post by Spritzup »

I also have the same question. It seems that Mylar has downloaded missing issue's from the story arc's, but is not post-processing them. Is this expected behaviour?

Thanks!

~Spritz
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evilhero
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Re: How to use Reading Lists...

Post by evilhero »

Tucker28 wrote:Ok, this brought up a new question. The reading list pane will search for issues and I have seen it start up torrents of issues not on my main watch list. However, if I am understanding you right, it won't pick it up on the post processing watch folder list? Or it will? Your answer seemed to indicate it wouldn't on the first answer, and that it would on the second one. I know I have to be missing something.
Mylar will only pick up on the post-processing of story-arc issues if the search is initiated within the Story Arc pages. If you have series on your watchlist that are also included in some of your story arcs, and these issues are downloaded from the series page, or weekly pull-list (basically anywhere but the story-arc pages), then they won't be included in any story-arc post-processing. However, once they are downloaded and post-processed and mylar can set the status accordingly (Downloaded), re-running the story-arc check (Search for Watchlist Issues), will scan your watchlist and then pick up on any new issues that were downloaded outside of the story-arc pages (meaning they were on your watchlist).

Does that help explain things abit better as far as story-arc processing? I'm sure there's probably more, but I think that might cover your initial question ;)
By the way, I love this app! Is there a place to donate some money when I have some extra?
Of course, I'm always happy when users want to buy me a coffee! (love my coffee) There are links off of the configuration tab - currently there's only Bitcoin and Flattr. At some point I'll probably add in a paypal link, but I've heard horror stories lately of them, so I was kinda leaning away from them so just the two exist for the time being.
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evilhero
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Re: How to use Reading Lists...

Post by evilhero »

Spritzup wrote:I also have the same question. It seems that Mylar has downloaded missing issue's from the story arc's, but is not post-processing them. Is this expected behaviour?

Thanks!

~Spritz
If you had initiated the search from within the story-arc pages, then it should be picking them up (depending on your settings of course). If the issues' were downloaded because they were on the weekly-pull list, or manually marked as Wanted from their respective series pages (on your watchlist), then the post-processing won't pick them up. You can see my explanation just above this that explains why.

It probably will be an added feature at some point, but right now that's the way things work.
Tucker28
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Re: How to use Reading Lists...

Post by Tucker28 »

As I understand it, Mylar will only pull an issue in for post-processing if Mylar initiated the transfer itself, correct? So even though I have the issues marked wanted, dropping manually downloaded files into the watch folder (I do this for older series when the only way to get them is to download the entire series in one torrent) will not do anything. Is it that for post-processing to work, the status must be enabled as 'snatched' and not 'wanted"?

I developed this theory a few days ago, but since 'snatched' is the one status that I can't manually set an issue to, then I couldn't test it.

Thanks for your help!! I'll send a coffee as soon as I figure out bitcoin =)
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evilhero
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Re: How to use Reading Lists...

Post by evilhero »

Tucker28 wrote:As I understand it, Mylar will only pull an issue in for post-processing if Mylar initiated the transfer itself, correct? So even though I have the issues marked wanted, dropping manually downloaded files into the watch folder (I do this for older series when the only way to get them is to download the entire series in one torrent) will not do anything. Is it that for post-processing to work, the status must be enabled as 'snatched' and not 'wanted"?

I developed this theory a few days ago, but since 'snatched' is the one status that I can't manually set an issue to, then I couldn't test it.

Thanks for your help!! I'll send a coffee as soon as I figure out bitcoin =)
Yes, for story-arcs at least, Mylar will only do the story-arc processing if Mylar initiated the transfer itself (in addition to the normal post-processing of course).

If you're just wanting normal post-processing (meaning not story-arcs), then dropping them into the watch folder will allow mylar to post-process them provided that the series already exist on your watchlist. Once they're in the Downloaded status, then you can flip to the Story Arc screen for the respective story arc and do a 'Search for Watchlist Matches' to pick up the newly downloaded issues within the Story Arc pages.

The actual status doesn't have anything to do with the post-processing itself. The Snatched/Download status are reserved for Mylar usage only - when a torrent/nzb has been downloaded and sent to the respective client (and or successfully file-scanned in). But when mylar sets the status to Snatched, it stores in several key items behind the scenes that's later used in post-processing and other things when needed (failed downloads, retrying the same download, etc). So for that reason, you can't manually set a status to Snatched (or Downloaded) since it wouldn't have those key items available and would cause problems later on.
Tucker28
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Re: How to use Reading Lists...

Post by Tucker28 »

Thanks for the info. While I don't know the things that go on behind the scenes in Mylar, I am familiar with coding and what can go on. Management used to ask me to do certain things on the programming I used to do, and I would have to tell them sometimes that it couldn't be done in as tight a timeframe as they wanted as some things require you to almost rewrite the entire project.

You've given me the information I need to get these items going in. Thanks so much! Now if I only knew how to get ComicRack to run under Wine. :D
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