display missing books in a series

[Compere]

Hello. Is there a way, where i can find out what books from a series are missing? Please assume, that i have some series in my librarie. Maybe there is one series from book 1 to book 22. the books 3, 17 and 21 are missing. In a other series the books 2 and 5 are missed. Now i want a way (via search or plugin) to display exactly the numbers of this missing books and the name of the series. Can anyone help with this task?

Background is: I have massimportet around 5000 entrys in my database and manualy retagged and corrected them in the last days. It was a horrible job. Now i found out, that some books in the series are missing, but i havent the time to check them all manualy.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by bilbo_b

Hello. Is there a way, where i can find out what books from a series are missing? Please assume, that i have some series in my librarie. Maybe there is one series from book 1 to book 22. the books 3, 17 and 21 are missing. In a other series the books 2 and 5 are missed. Now i want a way (via search or plugin) to display exactly the numbers of this missing books and the name of the series. Can anyone help with this task?

Background is: I have massimportet around 5000 entrys in my database and manualy retagged and corrected them in the last days. It was a horrible job. Now i found out, that some books in the series are missing, but i havent the time to check them all manualy.

@Bilbo_b
IMHO This post belongs in the Plug_in (section) request Thread

Neat PI idea
Should it work only on Integer items?
Or does it need 'smarts' to decide what to do if fractional series are encountered
ex: 3.5 is a short story that fits between 3 and 4, but is not a regular occurrence.
6.78 (my convention) is a Omnibus of the former: 6, 7, and 8

Then there is the series in a series that some use.. these are 2 different series (names) with their own index points.

[Compere]

Hmmm maybe a moderator can move this thread to the right location? but back to the plugin.

for my personal use, i need this plugin only for integers. yes, i have some series with 2.1 or 2.3 series. but these are only 1 series. but the plugin should take care about custom series fields. in my series there are some books with a series in the series. i have made a custom series field for this task, but there are also only integers there. if there is a missing number in such a subseries, the plugin should list this book (number) also.

[theducks]

Moderator Notice
Moved to the Plugins section

[pchrist7]

Just added this to my watch list
Like your thinking.
Let's see if any plugin programmers bite.
In my mind this would fit nicely within the quality Check Plugin.

Cheers, Per

[drMerry]

You can take a look at the quality tread.

I did mention this option there.
Kiwidude had some substantiated reasons why not to implement this function.

[kiwidude]

If you don't want to trawl through all the pages trying to find the discussion, the posts can be found starting here from drMerry with my responses immediately afterwards. To summarise the main issues were:

1. Would not show where there are books missing at the end of a series
2. Handling various numbering schemes
3. Presenting the results

Of those issues above, the first cannot be helped - the onus is on the person managing the library to "find" that there are new books for a series manually using external sources.

The second issue can be worked around by putting in place a limitation that the check would only handle missing integer values. Won't please everyone's requirements such as those listed by drMerry for magazines etc, but will help out others like the OP.

The third issue is presenting the results. How can you display usefully to the user information about the books that they have missing in a series? Obviously I could write messages to the log file, and leave it to the user to copy to the clipboard for displaying somewhere while they work through them. From a search perspective, what else should it do? Should it display all the books in those series that are missing books? Or something else?

As I mentioned in post #123 this specific feature was one I was willing to revisit at some point for inclusion - provided people can agree that it is useful enough and how best to display the "results".

[Pinecone]

1) One way to deal with the missing books at the end, is for the report to print the last book of the series. So it would report books 3, 5, 9, 10 missing with the last book as number 22, titled "XXXXXX." Makes is easy to check a bibliography for the actual end.

2) To start, just support integer numbering.

3) A stepped report. Left Justified - Author, series name, last Book (number and title), the order should be customizable. Indented under that is each missing number. I don't thing the forum will allow, but I will try:

David Hagberg - Series Kirk McGarvey - Last # 14 "The Cabal
........ Missing - 1, 3, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13

or

David Hagberg - Series Kirk McGarvey - Last # 14 "The Cabal
........1
........3
........7
etc

Just thoughts

[theducks]

Using Pinecone's criteria.
How about a simple message box like we get for errors and the button to copy to clipboard

Series: "Greatest series ever Sold" Index check increment used: 1

First found: 1 (3 occurrences) The occurrences message happens if multiple of the lowest index # are found
Missing: 4,6,9,23
Last found: 25 (2 occurrences) The occurrences message happens if multiple of the highest index # are found


OK ..... Copy to Clipboard

[kiwidude]

I've added a simplified implementation into the latest Quality Check v1.6.1 here. Any issues/problems please report on that thread.

[pchrist7]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

I've added a simplified implementation into the latest Quality Check v1.6.1 here. Any issues/problems please report on that thread.

Will check it out right away.
Thank you !
Cheers, Per

[Compere]

Wow thats great! i love it. thats what i want! Many thanks