DCDisplay- Why were the NANY applications coded? (I mean why decide to code this particular app)
I like CDisplay, it is easy to use but it has not been updated for a few years. I suggested a few improvements years ago to the author, but they were never implemented. I decided to write a replacement, that would add the things I wanted plus a database and some other features that are still in the pipeline.
- What IDE did you use, if any?
Visual Studio Express.
- What language(s) is the application written in?
C#
- Does it rely on any 3rd party libraries / code / graphics?
Yes, I am using a few 3rd party libraries, Nunrar to extract files from rar files, ZipStorer to extract files from zip files, 7ZipSharp to handle a problem with Nunrar on certain archives. Speech Balloon code, and a BTree database implementation.
- Were any clever design principles used?
No, I wanted to learn C# so I wanted a reasonably complex project to get used to the language.
- Or any really hairy algorithms that you'd like to boast about?
The file sort took a few months to get working, since it does English language sorting. So A Tale of Two Cities sorts as Tale,2,Cities. It also extracts dates in a variety of formats, so Mar 2001 and 2001-03 are the same, when comparing it works on word by word basis, but some can be ignored. So Computer & Video Games (2001-11) 12.cbr and C&VG 13.cbr would sort correctly (it has abbreviations expansion before it generates the tokens for the name sort).
- What was the trickiest part?
Handling all the possible naming of files I came across. Since I can't rely on names being a standard format it makes extracting the name and issue number awkward especially with a title like Babylon 5, I added a list of numeric titles that it uses to get the actual issue number.
- Would you like to make a mention of any other DC members who helped out?
Mouser for some comments and a small donation
Neil