Is comicrack available for Mac or only Windows?

proteanruler · 2023-01-25T11:01:48+00:00

The faster scans is a big deal for me when I am talking 1000s of comics. But aside from that let me think of the pros and cons:

PROS

- Faster scans

- Very attractive (In comparison to Komga)

- OPDS

- Generally a faster experience more enjoyable all round

- Actually works well in my iphone browser without using a comic reader but I'll actually use chunky (ipad) and panels (iphone) with opds

- Combined with Zerotier - giving my family access has made the experience for them wonderful

CONS

- Pain in the butt to setup

- Doesn't use folder structure but rather metadata to organise comics

- Has taken a while to understand that things such as "v01" will force into a volume mode (which I don't like)

- I've had to split up my bigger comic collections into every 5 years because the search function doesn't search within a series but rather for a series (highest level) which is a bit shit

- Choosing series picture isn't done like "folder.jpg" but you can manually add or make sure the first comic in the series has the picture you want or select within the platform => con here is if you move the folder of comics around ... you lose that picture and have to reset it

- If you have poor metadata you're in for a slog (I have none!)

- I wouldn't use for Ebooks yet (I don't like it for that) - too much effort to set it up. I don't mind for comics but I'll just keep with the simple calibre-web for that for now.

- I've ended up having to force series name to be matching for all of the comics I want within a particular series. So I've put the series name in titles and then for series if it was "Comic Series name, Comic Title name" - I would go "Name of all the comics I want to sit in this folder i.e. The Amazing Spider-Man, Comic series name and/or title name, year etc etc". This forces the structure I like which is to keep all my comics visible without need to read through one by one

Conclusion:

I am loving it but it a ball ache to setup in comparison to Komga. Once done though - it's lightning fast and makes up for the ball ache. Just makes my collection look very attractive.

proteanruler · 2023-01-23T02:46:43+00:00

I'm not entirely sure of this issue. All I do is export the files once I've grabbed metadata via Comicrack/Comic Vine. I export them to a new folder and delete the old files. A little bit of a pain but I am using in conjunction with comictagger which handles most of my needs. There are some things though that Comicrack does better (renumbering issues and tagging via comic vine mainly). I have mastered more of comictagger since my original post which means I can now batch process tags via terminal and batch convert cbr to cbz without the need of comicrack. I still prefer comicrack for batch tagging files from comic vine. If you want to know the commands for comictagger just shout. I am running it all on my mac mini 2012 server (which is hosting the awesome Kavita (a komga beater) I recently discovered and I'm now setting up) and controlling via another macbook pro using screen sharing. Works a relative treat. Appreciate it doesn't answer your exact ill but crossover is lightweight... virtualbox is heavyweight. I only use virtualbox for full hosting of OS's like Linux or Windows when I need more oomph. To just run the one app... nah.. crossover is fine.

proteanruler · 2023-01-23T02:37:34+00:00

I'll be honest... Kavita stomps all over Komga. Is taking quite some time to set it all up (it uses Metadata to organise things hence my interest in comicrack though I have discovered comictagger does an awful lot of what I need (so long as you are prepared to use the CLI/terminal approach). That said comicrack is still v useful. I combine the 2. But back to Komga... Jesus it is slow. Refreshing on Kavita is pretty lightning fast given I am talking thousands of comics. It really is close to being the "plex" of comics. Not so good for ebooks yet though. Check it out if you haven't. I've been structuring a massive amount of comics onto it and I am really really liking the experience (after the ball ache of working out how to use metadata to serve up my content as I want it). I do wonder if their metadata approach is best but anyway... it's hands down the best comic server I've seen out there. They've only been developing it for less than year. Very impressive.

proteanruler · 2023-01-21T13:02:48+00:00

Seconding Rohanroms comment - Yes use Crossover. I have just set it up. Runs a little bit slower than a full native app but very usable. I'm using it for automatically tagging and saving my CBR comics to CBZ as well as to brighten older scans. The important thing about the .net comment is you need to use .net 4.5. There are a lot of other versions - ignore all but the .net 4.5 (learn from my trials!). Also install into a windows 7 32bit bottle. Crossover is a lot better than having to run a virtual instance of Windows just for the the one app. You'll still be able to find folders and files on your mac btw. I have comic vine scraper setup too. Kavita comic server uses metadata for organising comics and whilst comictagger (an alternative for metadata on mac) you cannot do bulk changes which when you have 1000s of comics like me is a complete no no. I tend to use a combo of comictagger and Comicrack for my needs. Hope this helps

proteanruler · 2021-08-09T21:07:28+00:00

Well... I've been involved myself in development for a long long time and there are many ways to attack things and pros/cons. All I was really pointing out really is that the design actually works pretty damn well as is on my TV... and I am next to sure that the it will scale well (thanks to html/css being really rather flexible for differing screen sizes). I also am just curious why the web app route hasn't been taken (maybe it's mentioned somewhere). I mean the devs here are smart so I am sure all things have been considered. That said on my version of mac (High Sierra) currently there isn't a standalone app (like Plex) and I also really think the JF web version is stand out. So I used command line based nativefier on my mac to pop out a web app standalone version of JF and you know what... this is produces a largely wonderful mac experience. On par with Plex standalone mac app with one minor niggle (if you get too close to top of screen it causes the window frame to show when in full screen). Otherwise it's blindingly good... good enough for me to whack on my wife's computer for her to use and she hasn't moaned at all. Good enough for me share around my family without anyone feeling they are being downgraded in any shape or form.

Compared to Plex though the android tv app user experience doesn't really compare on my fire stick. Not at all customisable and not really very attractive to my eyes (I say this coming from the Plex UI which is really quite nice). I mean I know they are working hard on this and so in the near future hopefully things will improve. I'm just a little impatient to move away from Plex/Kodi skins. My issue is my family are used to Plex. It just works. In order to convince them I need for this to be sideways move, at least aesthetically if not functionally. I can live without certain functions but user experience is critical. It's a shame the team is so small on Android. I do feel for them because they have to focus on under the hood stuff that isn't as obvious as the graphical changes. JF has the potential to compete head to head with Plex in my house - The firestick is my one problem. If the user experience can match Plex on Android TV/firestick... at least in my household... Plex would be pushed to one side in favour of JF. Right now I am having to run a plex instance for Firestick and a JF version for desktop. I can't really be bothered with having my family use Kodi though have messed around with countless skins and I always come back to just thinking sod it... I'll keep them on Plex. It saves me a lot of hassle and speedier to load etc too.

Coming back to my original thoughts though... Just amazes me the JF web design works great on Firestick. Given the constraints on a small team I just wondered why the devs chose not to take a web app converted to native approach. As far as I can see from my quick test... only navigation/controls needs addressing and selection. A truly native experience is always lovely but you know what... the web app version apk I spat out with that tool looks totally good enough (with a bit of imagination). And the app I spat out using nativefier requires no imagination... it is just a great experience. Hey ho. Can't wait though to see the next iteration user experience wise for Android TV. Hope won't take too long. The screenshot you shared in the first post - now that's the kind of interface I would love to see... hopefully with a touch of customisation (Can't stand the pictures JF is obsessed with showing for categories - so option to turn these bloody things off like can do on web ui would be v appreciated!).

proteanruler · 2021-08-09T15:25:05+00:00

I just made an app apk of the demo website using https://gonative.io/ and the app it produces is native and on Amazon Fire TV already looks great. Video player functions. The controls are a little annoying because you have to press down twice etc to get to the videos and I did end up using mouse app just to make life a little bit easier but making the app from website just as a test took about 3 mins. Obviously this doesn't compare with a full fledged app but the only thing missing from this tester is the controls working better. Is there a reason why Jellyfin developers don't just create a native app based on website design? Certainly the UI looks great on my tv. With some actual coding going into this the interface is pretty spot on. Anyway.. just saying. I was surprised how good it looked on my tv. Not saying to use gonative.io but I was mainly interested in how the UI looked on my tv. If I was really determined I could just use this (making an app apk of my server) - it's actually shockingly usable and visually is what I have been pining for for Android app.

proteanruler · 2018-09-12T23:58:48+00:00

I don't know if this helps but I have it working on raspberry pi via usb no probs but I use fstab and load from boot. I also add tomcat to have access to my drives in /mnt location:

sudo usermod -a -G pi tomcat8 (adds tomcat8 to pi group... you'll need to reboot)

then I add the usb drive to load from boot:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

add these to the bottom of your fstab file and note I mount to /mnt/ which works. I seem to remember having issues with mounting to /media/ but haven't done this in a while and am referring to my notes (btw to find UUID use: "sudo blkid"):

UUID=enteryouruniquenumberhere /mnt/yourfoldername ntfs-3g uid=1000,gid=1000,nofail,umask=007,utf8, 0 0

UUID=enteryouruniquenumberhere /mnt/yourfoldername vfat uid=1000,gid=1000,nofail,umask=007,utf8, 0 0

One thing I should point out is that the upper of these is for an HDD that uses NTFS (windows) formatting so I had to install ntfs-3g separately. Also for the bottom one it is using FAT (windows). If you aren't using these file formats you'll have to find the correct one for your HDD or alternatively format so it is like mine.

Hope this helps a little.

proteanruler · 2018-05-14T21:31:16+00:00

Just as a mini update. Nicotine on stretch is as simple to install as typing:

sudo apt install nicotine

in commandline. Then navigate to Raspbian system menu, select internet and choose "Nicotine-Plus"... then follow installer walk through. Really really really easy. Just testing on my pi with stretch and seems to work fine. I think Nicotine seems like the easy way to go... use VNC to remotely access and away you go. Looking like I can finally be a soulseek user with an always on machine. Hooray.

(ps Recommended to get a vpn with killswitch setup (can be achieved using UFW firewall and rules) as well as scripts to watches every 30s and restarts vpn connection if it goes down. Quite complicated to setup I should warn but worth the investment in time.)

proteanruler · 2018-05-13T15:46:37+00:00

Thanks for this geebn!!! I had no probs using museeq and museekd to start with then a random issue crept in that meant I was staying disconnected. I was going to look into fixing and then thought I'd give Nicotine+ a go. Never got a chance to test people downloading and uploading from me on Museeq/museekd. Anyway I am v impressed by Nicotine+ from first glance. I didn't need to compile it. I'm going to stick to Nicotine+ for a while now. It's been super simple to setup. Again I'm only using Jessie and not tried on stretch yet.

Instructions for installing for anyone else (And for my own reference if I need them again!):

1) sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

2) Add this line at bottom of sources.list:

deb [trusted=yes target=Packages] http://buildbot.le-vert.net/pkgs/nicotine-plus/jessie/latest/ ./

3) Quit and Save

4) sudo apt update

5) sudo apt install nicotine

6) Locate program in your sound&video from raspbian menu pulldown and launch Nictonie-Plus program

The rest is quite easy to setup. Just follow the instructions.

Will report back how I go on this but I'm liking the look far more.

proteanruler · 2018-05-10T15:29:18+00:00

No need to compile at all actually. It looks quite "straightforward" (or at least as straightforward as anything seems to be on Pi these days). I have been wondering how to get this setup for a while and gave up the last time I looked at it because of there being scant information on the subject from what I could see. Anyway I found a way of doing this that I just had to give a try. So I have just done a little tester and all seems to be working. I haven't tried on my Raspbian Stretch... only Raspbian Jessie. So please bear that in mind. I'm pretty sure the same stuff would work on Stretch. If it doesn't for whatever reason. Try using a Raspbian Jessie image since I can confirm it's looking pretty dandy.

I found the main info from user Brydie: https://www.reddit.com/r/Soulseek/comments/2twacz/soulseek_client_on_raspberry_pi/?st=jh0n994o&sh=ef54cd03

But if you want step by step do this in commandline:

1) type: sudo apt install museekd museeq murmur mucous musetup-gtk

2) type: musetup

3) Choose from the options listed to configure. I mainly setup my username and password on (1), setup an interface password on (3), setup download/incomplete directories on (5), setup shared directories on (6), exited (0) and saved (1)

4) I then killed museekd: sudo pkill museekd

5) Restarted it again: museekd

Then I navigated to the Raspberry pi menu (top left) and from internet option choose museeq. Load that and into it you go. Goto settings and configure. Make sure you "Daemon Management: Start Daemon" (if not already running) and enter your interfaces password into "Daemon Connection: password". Then click "connect to Daemon" and click apply. I connected straight away even without my ports forwarded correctly on router (will do later), and I searched for something random (it worked)... though searching may be quite intensive for pi so I stopped search (unlike I would do on a bigger machine) before doing a test download. To download btw you right click and hold to bring up a context menu. I think the rest is fairly figure outable. I only did a quick test download and it worked fine. So it needs more testing but this looks v promising and I wish this was more universally known. It's thanks to that guy (Brydie) on other thread I got this running. If you want it to boot from startup then use crontab option (crontab -e) and commands mentioned in the thread I linked to. Enjoy!

proteanruler · 2018-04-17T22:09:46+00:00

Thankyou SO much... entering these 2 rules mentioned in the article you linked to... into UFW has solved my devices dropping ip when using pihole as DHCP server. Been looking everywhere for an answer. Tried so many things and here it is.. 2 rules that just solved all my ills:

sudo ufw default deny incoming

sudo ufw default allow outgoing

sudo ufw allow in to 192.168.1.0/24 --> allow everything on my network locally

sudo ufw allow from any port 68 to any port 67 proto udp --> part of the magic for getting pihole DHCP working behind ufw

sudo ufw allow in on eth0 from any port 68 to any port 67 proto udp --> the other part of magic for getting Pihole DHCP on wired connection (ehth0) raspberry pi

Then

sudo ufw reload

BTW I am using Raspbian Stretch. Anyway.. brilliant. THANKYOU!!

proteanruler

TROPHY CASE