Better Support for Regular Manga

[SophtwhereDev]

As you yourself have mentioned, HappyPanda X is currently geared towards H-Manga and it is not at all usable with regular manga in my opinion. However, I see the potential for HappyPanda X to become the manga management/reading software to beat, for manga and comics in general with the right features implemented. I have just a few ideas in mind that I think will need to be augmented eventually.

For starters, metadata support. I think (correct me if I'm wrong) the current metadata support is a mirror of the metadata fields that are made available through E(x)-hentai which are (mostly) ideal for h-manga but not sufficient for regular manga. I think a different set of metadata fields that are more fitting for regular manga would be ideal, such as Series instead of Parody, and additional Volume and Chapter tags; I also think some people might appreciate expanded Artist metadata such as Author/Writer, Inker, Colorist, and so-on. Please feel-free to add in any other fields that might be useful.

I feel that even some H-manga that are released in the form of volumes/chapters and are original works can benefit from this regular manga metadata scheme so maybe so segregating regular manga metadata fields and h-manga metadata fields might not be the best idea, so I'm not sure on how to go about it long-term though.

The other changes to facilitate regular manga would be stacking manga by series/volume for easier access, as a manga with a large number of chapters would clutter the UI. A feature to allow creating "playlists" of sort would be convenient too, I guess it would basically be a way to save a set of custom filters by a name for easy access.

I'm sure there must be more things that can be done so that HPX can facilitate regular manga so I hope others can add to what I've already said, or suggest alternatives to what I've already requested. Many thanks to @twiddli for developing this software!

[twiddli]

Hi, I would like to work this out with you (and others) if possible.
For starters, a table of all the relevant fields would be nice, like this:

Field:	Notes:
Artist
⤷ Writer
⤷ Inker
⤷ Colorist
Volume

These fields I think I can agree with would be nice to have.

Series instead of Parody

HPX already has the concept of grouping together galleries in forms of chapters to form a series.

A feature to allow creating "playlists" of sort would be convenient too

I think collections should solve this issue. If not then there are also gallery filters that can be used for this purpose. Maybe you had something else in mind?

One other thing I see is an issue is the representation of things on the UI side, which is many times the most troublesome part when implementing something. Ideally it would be cool if a mock-up of how things should look could be made. Like where to place which button where, how to indicate if something is a series.. and so on.

These things would have to be figured out before I can start adding.

[SophtwhereDev]

Very sorry for the huge delay in response.

I just realised that this issue I opened a while ago might prove useful as I created a ComicInfo.xml file there filling out all the possible fields available in ComicRack, which I believe people looking to organise Western comics might appreciate.

HPX already has the concept of grouping together galleries in forms of chapters to form a series.

I think collections should solve this issue. If not then there are also gallery filters that can be used for this purpose. Maybe you had something else in mind?

My apologies I wasn't aware of this, I'll test these features out soon and get back to you.

How can I help with the UI side of things? Do you have existing diagrams of some sort to represent the current UI layout and take that as a starting point to build up on?

[twiddli]

Sorry, I have no such thing, but this is the UI library HPX is using.
I don't really care how it looks as long as it looks good.

[rwchunk]

Have you seen this?
https://github.com/Difegue/LANraragi

[twiddli]

No I hadn't seen it. This looks pretty good. Looks very much like e-hentai.

[rwchunk]

I don't really think HPX can be suited for regular comics/manga, which are solely focused on a volume/chapter structure. I don't think you'd want to mix up hentai and non-hentai tags into a giant mixing pot either.