Comicman Overview

Setup

Before using Comicman your data folders must be made and which comics you want to download must be chosen. This can be done from the command line by executing ``comicman.pl -setup'', which will list the available comic choices one by one and ask you 'y' or 'n' on each. A graphical setup tool called ``qcmsetup.pl'' allows you to select your desired comics in a point-and-click fashion.

Usage

To have Comicman download your comics, first connect to the Internet then simply run ``comicman.pl'' and it will download all the comics you have selected to the current directory. After each successfull download Comicman maintains a record of the most recently downloaded file, so you can run Comicman repeatedly without getting duplicate files.

Command Line Options

qcmsetup.pl

This is a graphical tool for both initial setup and to edit an existing comic download list. Both the currently chosen and remaining available comics are listed and may be selected and moved from one list to the other.

qcminfedit.pl

A graphical tool for creating and editing inf files. The data Comicman needs to download a comic is stored in a seperate inf file for each comic.

inf Files

The fields in the inf files and their purposes are as follows.

REQUIRED: These will be checked for.

OPTIONAL

SPECIAL CODES: Global Special codes between percent signs will be replaced in all fields.

OTHER SPECIAL CODES

User Files and Directories

In the user's HOME directory the setup tools will create a directory called ``.comicman'' with two subdirectories: ``dat'' and ``inf''.

The ``dat'' directory is where Comicman stores the data on the most recently downloaded files.

The ``inf'' directory is where to put user-made inf files so that the setup tools can find them.

After initial setup, in the ``.comicman'' directory there will be two files: ``comicman.conf'' and ``comics''.

The ``comics'' file is simply the list of user selected comics.

The ``comicman.conf'' file holds several options for Comicman that match some of the command line options.

System Files and Directories

In the system config files directory (usually ``/etc'') there is a file called ``comicman.sysconf''. It holds several settings for Comicman, some of which can be over-ruled by the user's config file.

The files comicman.pl, qcmsetup.pl and qcminfedit.pl should all be in the executable path (usually ``/usr/bin'').

The file ``Comiclib.pm'' should be somewhere in Perl's lib path.

The system inf files will normally be in ``/usr/share/comicman''.