Webcomics Collector

• Home
• About Webcomics Collector
• Requirements
• Download
• News
• RSS Feeds
• Documentation
• • Usage
  • Making comic definitions
• Making comic definitions (for 0.5.x only!)
• Supported comics
• Questions and Answers
• Disclaimer
• History of Webcomics Collector
• Bugs/Todo
• Help Wanted
• Mailing lists
• Developers
• Thanks

compliancy

• 
• 
• 
• 

About Webcomics Collector

Webcomics Collector is a GPL'ed python script for downloading webcomics.

Webcomics Collector is neither the only of it's kind, nor the first. Similar programs include:

• Dailystrips. Perl script which is based around dates. Knows how to download LOTS of different webcomics. Creates static HTML pages for viewing strips, making it mostly suitable for singleuser usage.
• Netcomics. Also made in Perl.
• Komics. KDE Kicker applet to download and view webcomics.
• GrabCartoons. Doesn't download comics, only makes HTML pages with links to the images.
• Comic Collection. Written in Java. Uses a MySQL backend.
• Comic Collection in C. Written in C with a GTK frontend.
• rComics. Written in Ruby. Seems to be in alpha state.
• Dosage. Written in Python. Probably the closest competitor to Webcomics Collector.

Webcomics Collector can start from the frontpage and work it's way back through the archive of a webcomic, downloading the entire archive independently of dates or naming of strip-images.

The order in which the strips should appear is recorded in a file which the webinterface and possible frontends can use. FYI: Alot of webcomics don't name their strip-images in a way that allows you to just fire up an imageviewer and start reading, so it is recommended that you use the webinterface.

Requirements

To use Webcomics Collector 0.7.2 and newer, you just need Python 2.3.

Please note that Webcomics Collector was developed on a Linux platform, and while work has been done to try to ensure that it works on both Posix platforms and Windows, the developers have neither the time nor the stomache to test it on Windows. You are encouraged to submit experiences with running Collector on Windows platforms, both successes and problems to the mailinglist such that problems may be adressed and successes be enjoyed.

To use earlier versions, you need the following things:

• Python 2.3 (earlier might work if you install Optik and replace all occurrences of "optparse" with "optik" in the script.
• Posix compliant OS (sorry, Webcomics Collector uses GDBM which isn't available for Windows. Mac OSX should work though).

To use Collectorweb 0.7.0 and newer you need:

• Webserver with PHP 4.3 or newer (PHP5 is supported and recommended)
• Smarty 2.6.0 or newer

Earlier versions of Collectorweb has these requirements:

• Webserver with PHP 4.2.0 or newer (must have GDBM support)
• The Config module from PEAR (use "pear install XML_Util && pear install Config")
• Smarty 2.6.0 or newer

Download

• DEVEL: Webcomics Collector version 0.7.3 (released 2004-11-16) (Gentoo Ebuild)
• STABLE: Webcomics Collector version 0.5.3 (released 2004-07-28) (Gentoo Ebuild)
• DEVEL: Collectorweb version 0.7.0 (released 2004-11-06)
• STABLE: Collectorweb version 0.3.4 (released 2004-07-21)

Older releases (no longer supported):

• Webcomics Collector version 0.7.2 (released 2004-11-06) (Gentoo Ebuild)
• Webcomics Collector version 0.7.1 (released 2004-09-07) (Gentoo Ebuild)
• Webcomics Collector version 0.7.0 (released 2004-08-08) (Gentoo Ebuild)
• Webcomics Collector version 0.5.2 (released 2004-07-19) (Gentoo Ebuild)
• Webcomics Collector version 0.5.1 (released 2004-07-18) (Gentoo Ebuild)
• Webcomics Collector version 0.5.0 (released 2004-07-10) (Gentoo Ebuild)
• Webcomics Collector version 0.4.0 (released 2004-06-18)
• Webcomics Collector version 0.3.0 (released 2004-06-13)
• Collectorweb version 0.3.3 (released 2004-07-03)
• Collectorweb version 0.2.0 (released 2004-06-15)
• Collectorweb version 0.1.0 (released 2004-06-13)
• Comics.cfg 2004-06-22

The newest dev-version is also available in our Subversion repository. To check it out do: "svn co http://svn.skumleren.net/repos/collector/trunk".

News

• 2005-08-03: Mikkel Høgh has joined the development team and has started updating comics.def. Furthermore development of Collector is going to start moving forward again by soon moving to an 0.9-branch that features much better organized code that should be easier to expand.
• 2004-11-16: Webcomics Collector 0.7.3 (Changelog) released. Just a quick bugfix release since 0.7.2 was rather buggy (sorry about that, I'll test it better in the future before releasing!).
• 2004-11-06: Webcomics Collector 0.7.2 (Changelog) and Collectorweb 0.7.0 (Changelog) released. Please note that Collectorweb 0.7.0 requires Collector 0.7.2+ and Collector 0.7.2+ no longer works with Collectorweb versions before 0.7.0. Significant changes in Collector include 665 new supported comics (937 in total), lots of fixes and changes, new archive format, removal of dependencies such that both Collector and Collectorweb should work on Windows now (untested). Also, Collectorweb has a bunch of new features to explore.
• 2004-11-06: The website has been slightly revised. The Supported Comics section has been updated to be able to show counts and lists of older versions and the current subversion version.
• 2004-09-13: Collector has now not only crossed the 400 comics barrier, but is now the webcomics download script with the most supported comics at 431 supported comics! Take that Dailystrips and Netstrips! :) (Oh, and it is all thanks to Shane Brandon who has done a terrific job of making defs)
• 2004-09-12: Collector has now crossed the 300 comics line and now supports 306 different comics thanks to a huge contribution by Shane Brandon.
• 2004-09-07: Webcomics Collector 0.7.1 released (Changelog). Preliminary support for date-generated archiveurl, 14 new defs, i18n support (only danish translation so far) and a bunch of bugfixes.
• 2004-09-04: Internationalization code for Collector is now in SVN, anybody up for making German, French, Spanish and soforth translations?

Older news entries can be seen here.

RSS Feeds

If you want to follow the development of Webcomics Collector, you can use these RSS feeds to follow our Subversion commits.

• Webcomics Collector
• Collectorweb

Questions and Answers

• Q: What's the difference between Dailystrips and Webcomics Collector?
  A: Dailystrips works from the idea that either you can search a page for the newest strip (meaning no archive download is possible) or you can generate a URL to the image (often using the date). Webcomics Collector does away with dates, since timezones makes it really screwed up using dates for this purpose. Webcomics collector also has the "search" type, but makes it possible to download the archive for comics of this type.
• Q: Is it possible to avoid authentication in the webinterface?
  A: No. This is because the webinterface was made as a multiuser interface, thus needing a username to operate by. Also, it is illegal to redistribute the webcomics you have downloaded, which is what you would be doing if you setup the webinterface on a publicly available server with no authentication to protect it. It is however quite simple to change the interface to using the same username for all trafic, just remember to make sure the interface isn't publicly available.
• Q: What is needed for Collector to reach version 1.0.0?
  A: Threading and Psyco along with lots of testing to ensure stability :)
• Q: Could Collector be used to take over the world?
  A: I am honestly hoping so, why else would I have made it?

Disclaimer

This script may go completely Rambo(tm) on you, looting and pillaging as it runs amok in your tiny village looking for young maidens to slay and brave warriors to make sweet love to. The author can in no way be held responsible for anything this script does! (Unless you like whatever the script has done, in that case the author stands by his work).

Bugs / Todo

Webcomics Collector uses the bugtracker Flyspray at bugs.skumleren.net to track bugs and feature requests. If you would like to report a bug, make a feature request, submit a patch or new comic definition, please go there.

Help Wanted

Want to contribute to the project? There are a number of things that need doing:

• Packagers! Since we have a distutils setup.py script made, it should be easy to make RPMs, DEBs and so forth, but since I only run Gentoo and really don't want to start fiddling with RPM/DEB then some packagers are needed.
• Fix bugs or implement some new features or if you have ideas for enhancements please post them. Go to bugs.skumleren.net to see and post new bugentries.
• Make more comics definitions.
• Translate Collector to a different language (gettext is used, write me if you want to do this but don't know how).

Mailing lists

There is currently one mailing list, used for both user questions and development for both Webcomics Collector and Collectorweb.

• collector@skumleren.net (archive)

Developers

• Anders Bruun Olsen: Main developer and original creator.
• Mikkel Høgh: Developer.
• Christian Sonne: XHTML/CSS guru and template developer on Collectorweb.
• Kasper Kristoffersen: I18n developer on Collectorweb.

Thanks

The following people deserve thanks:

• Michael Greve - Has made a nice bunch of comics definitions and helped test the script.
• Michael Gloegl - Contributed the "Ctrl+Alt+Del" definition.
• Remco Brink - Contributed the "Chopping Block" definition.
• Zachary Bedell - patch and the following definitions: "Ghastlys Ghastly Comic", "Sex and Violence", "Sexy Losers", "Sinfest"
• Shane Brandon - Contributed more definitions than can easily be counted.
• Leikeze Ajnin - Contributed the "Dracula" definition.
• Tobias Minich - patches and defs.