100% True? (Volume 1) originally had a "Winter 1996" start and "Summer 1996" end but this rendered as "December 1996" for the start date and "June 1996" for the end. Any idea how to reconcile this?
100% True? (Volume 1) originally had a "Winter 1996" start and "Summer 1996" end but this rendered as "December 1996" for the start date and "June 1996" for the end. Any idea how to reconcile this?
This was a bit of an awkward work-around for a general formatting and categorization problem - which is, in simple terms, that seasons don't mesh well with the math being used in our back-end.
We compromised on Winter/Summer corresponding to Dec/June - even though that's not always the case. Ideally, we'd have a way to show "Winter" and "Summer", but categorize as the actual pull-month. But, obviously, that date isn't always readily available - especially with older series/issues, nor is it consistent.
Based on the information they have at comics.org, the first issue came out on June 12th - which according to our standard would technically give it a start-month of August, while the second came out on November 20th - which corresponds to a start month of January.
I've just stumbled across this very issue with Batman Chronicles Vol 1 (1995) which is is published as winter, spring, summer, fall. But the assumption that winter = December causes the publication dates to seem very erratic when you page through them in the DC database as winter often ought to mean January. This is pretty unfortunate as this is exactly the sort of circumstance when you are going to go to the database to get a better publication date - namely when there isn't a proper month on the comic. I was putting a box in order and this caused me quite a bit of puzzlement till I figured out what was going on.
Lua doesn't like pipes. Every time you think you've solved a problem, you've created two more.
Then may be to use templates like {winter} that output some value. Or have a new field that just has a display date and a second for a categorization date.
Because there's also math attached to it to calculate the street date, -2 months. Which relies on there being a number, or a name-to-number.