Comics

Lets you publish web comics in different languages with a single command.

The Comic Perl module generates static web pages for web comics in multiple languages from comics made in Inkscape. I use it for beercomics.com and biercomics.de.

Please note that it's just suited to my current needs. It evolved from a Perl script, and still has a bunch of hard-coded names and assumptions. I'm slowly cleaning those up as I'm splitting the code into multiple modules, and then I'll also add more features. That said, it's a bit slow as the code works for me (no urgent need), so don't be surprised to see months without commits. The interfaces are also not stable, in particular configuration file entries may change.

Dependencies

Install the libraries using the operating system's package manager (e.g., apt on Ubuntu or brew on MacOS) before installing Perl modules; in particular Text::Aspell will bail out if the aspell libraries are not installed.

Operating system libraries

MacOS

If you are using brew, just run brew bundle to install the dependencies.

Text::Aspell may not install on MacOS; use Text::Hunspell instead.

To do that, switch the dependency in Makefile.PL:

perl -p -e 's/Text::Aspell/Text::Hunspell/mg' -i Makefile.PL

Linux

For spell checking, you need Text::ASpell or Text::Hunspell with the corresponding development libraries. I had a hard time with Hunspell and UTF8, so I prefer ASpell and its libraries libaspell-dev plus dictionaries for the languages you want to use (e.g., aspell-de, aspell-en, or aspell-es).

For uploading via rsync, you need to install the rsync command.

You also need Imager::File::PNG, which in turn depends on libpng-dev.

optipng is recommended to shrink exported png files.

You'll need Inkscape in the $PATH to actually export your comics to png.

Ubuntu example:

sudo apt-get install inkscape perl
sudo apt-get install -y rsync optipng libpng-dev aspell libaspell-dev aspell-en aspell-de

Perl modules

Use e.g., cpanminus and run cpanm --installdeps --notest . to install all dependencies. Or see the list of dependencies in the makefile and install them manually with e.g., cpan.

Installation

This requires make, which most Perl modules need anyway.

perl Makefile.PL
make
make test       # optional, needs Perl test modules
sudo make install   # optional, you can also refer to the lib/ folder here

Documentation

See the comic author / artist documentation or the Perl developer documentation.

Copyright & License

Copyright Robert Wenner

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.