Remind users not to add certain characters to Anime-Titles

Skywalka · Post by **Skywalka** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:21 am

I think it should be mentioned to users that problematic characters should be omitted as long as they are not actually part of the Anime title.

Anime titles with chars that aren't allowed in windows result in additional spaces.

Examples of titles I requested to be changed in the last few days included "Final Fantasy: Advent Children" and "Xenosaga: The Animation", which means AoM changes files of these Animes to "Final Fantasy(Space)(Space) Advent Children)"

In general, please make users add the title that is given by the Anime's graphical title artwork. Both Anime I mentioned don't feature a colon at all, and I think a dash is more appropriate for Subtitles - but that is just my opinion. But it is a good way to get rid of double spaces later.

A good idea would be to add a Subtitle field but since that requires a change in the DB and a lot of changes to already present data I refrained from requesting it.

Website · Post by **Rar** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:37 am

Oh, nice ides. Getting some kind of naming convention for subtitles has been and issue bothering me for a while, not thought of a new field. Then people could choose in their profile to display Anime :: *~*Subtitle*~* if they really must.
Romaji titles certainly aren't the place for graphical embelishments.

Rar

rowaasr13 · Post by **rowaasr13** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:40 am

Why, exactly? I've yet to hear reason why romaji should NOT be exact copy of kanji title (with exception of symbols that can't be represented in <128 ASCII). Romaji is transcription of japanese - so why anything except japanese itself should be changed on transcription? Why invent new punctuation when only correct variant is already defined by authors?

DonGato · Post by **DonGato** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:09 am

I do think we should respect the original name. If there weren't any special char then don't add them, if there were then keep them. Then add a feature to AoM to take care of them for file renaming.

Website · Post by **Rar** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:56 am

Turns plain text searches into guess-the-character game
Romaji is about representing the pronuciation of japanese in latin characters, not layout
Inacurately represents what's often only a graphical feature
Even real punctuation in titles is never constantly used by websites

Skywalka · Post by **Skywalka** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 1:08 pm

Hmm... I agreed to what DonGato thinks untill a minute ago, but the longer I think about it... what's the use?

If we would not have the option to add a picture to an Anime, then I'd understand the urge to display the Anime's title the same way the picture does - but what in fact do we need the romaji representation of the title for?

- searching for it both on the web as well via chii (at least once, then you usually find out the shortname).
- getting filenames by putting the name and CRC and [AniDB] as well as the groupname together and producing an ed2k link out of that

So I'd either suggest we add another value to the database for a "non-fancy" title representation, which would then be used for title searches as well as filenames, or we get rid of the fancy filenames. They really produce problems.

Yesterday it took me half an hour to rename .hack(Space)(Space)Twilight episodes because that filename is illegal under Windows. You cannot start a filename with a full stop. I know AoM can produce them, but once you have them and you use a different file manager (which I do) they are really a pain in the ass.

Oh and you can't use them in SFV programs also.

DonGato · Post by **DonGato** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 1:33 pm

What images have to do with all this?
It's ".hack//SIGN" and not "hack-sign"
As said the handling of that should be managed by AoM.
And since when you can't use . as first character of a file name?
In fact I have .hackSIGN as the name in my files.

Post by **nwa** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:18 pm

rar wrote:Oh, nice ides. Getting some kind of naming convention for subtitles has been and issue bothering me for a while, not thought of a new field.

this issue has been discussed long before and by the approval of the majority we started using colon, just like ANN does
please don't tell me you want to change that again, so that we have to replace : with whatever symbol is good
(I brought that issue up before for the same reason, eMule didn't support these symbols as well, but I'm now in favour of : instead of - )

*edit: typo

Website · Post by **Rar** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:40 pm

It's not always used is the thing, nwa. Theres a lot of Title - Subtitle and Title ~subtitle~ and worse kickin' around. If there was a single method of representing (on new line), and it worked, this wouldn't be an issue. As for 'programming around' so a variety of different formats are valid... I don't see that as practical.

Rar

Unwritten rules aren't worth the paper they aren't written on

rowaasr13 · Post by **rowaasr13** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 3:17 pm

Well for me "single method" is absolutely worser than "what author said". Let's call all anime "Anime 1", "Anime 2", "Anime 3" - that would be single method as well. Right?

Speaking of hack... how the hell average user supposed to find out that . and // were removed when searching? You favor users who search for "hack sign", but put to disadvantage anyone who searches for ".hack//SIGN" - only correct name of this series. Why he needs to figure what symbols were choosen to be preserved and what didn't at all?

I don't understand why difference Title - Subtitle and Title ~subtitle~ is important to you at all or for what reason all subtitles in DB should formatted with only one symbol. And considering that romaji is used for filenames, I want my filenames to copy japanese conventions, not someone else's ideas.

Website · Post by **Rar** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 4:13 pm

.hack//SIGN is the official japanese (slightly misleading to say kanji) name, and sound be in the db as such. But unless I'm supposed to know how to pronouce // then that's not romaji. If this is a 'pretty' titles issue, perhaps romaji isn't the best default for your filenames.

You still fail to see the problem with 'what the author said' - which is not only is it often impossible to represent, even with Unicode, but that how it does end up being written in completely inconsistant, even on 'official websites'.

Rar

rowaasr13 · Post by **rowaasr13** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 4:38 pm

It is not inconsistent enough to be a problem - normally >50% of big/official sites agree on single variant - same as on title screen - and that's enough for me. "Cannot be represented in unicode" is applicable to 1% of titles I guess - well, I don't mind stripping chars that really can't be preserved.

Skywalka · Post by **Skywalka** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 5:24 pm

Braaaa... people, what are you doing here?

I simply asked for a way to have filenames that don't produce massive amounts of spaces when replaced under OSes that don't support unicode filenames nor excessive use of dashes.

For instance ".hack//sign" currently results in a file that has no real filename whatsoever, but a file extension of enourmous length with multiple spaces after one another -> ".hack(space)(space)sign" and if you have a special for this series then you use a colon or what, and receive another double space later on.

I don't need AniDB to switch to renaming the oficial titles, I want a way to get FILENAMES consistant. Go and discuss kanji->romaji translations someplace else, and don't tell me that "we agreed on colon", that still leaves me with double spaces.

I don't really need any title changes - what I could also live with is EXP simply filtering all the garbage and handing over valid filenames ot my ed2k client. I won't discuss that further here for it is FUBAR. If the clients who take over ed2k links from AniDB would be able to get files renamed in a good way, then I would not ask here for a change. I could've simply gone to PetriW and ask him to change his client but the problem is the links given on AniDB so I thought I'd go to the source.

And of course you can hand over Kanji to eMule, no problem, you just end up with a totally fucked up filename later in your filesystem and anyone who has ever tried to get rid of those files later knows what I mean. You can end up spending hours getting a file with such a name out of your recycle bin.

DonGato · Post by **DonGato** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:18 pm

Spaces!? Which spaces?!

It seems you have to bug other people (like PetriW).

This is the link added to eMule (Plus):

.hack--SIGN_-_01_-_Role_Play_-_[aX](f0fafec5)(dub.sub_jap.eng.eng)[AniDB].ogm

There are no spaces, and If you don't like the -- I might not like your other options.

I don't think exp has to do anything for this as he already did a minor change long time ago. The extended behavior you request should be handled by the client receiving/using the link.

Post by **PetriW** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:27 pm

As the author of AoM I must say I do NOT want AoM limits to somehow affect how romaji titles are written in AniDB. If you have a problem with how AoM 0.5 handles these kind of file names either a) use the special character replace to spaces, b) use special character replaced with unicode character (which is buggy in non unicode programs), c) wait for AoM 0.6 and better file renaming (where specifying your own anime title is one of the options).

And seriously, AoM not being able to give you perfect filenames is NOT a valid argument for changing the romaji titles on AniDB.

As for .hack// sign, if a leading period is a problem then you're using a buggy file manager. File extensions are based on the the text after the LAST period, not the first. Yes, windows explorer don't allow file names to start with a period but this is to help newbies, not to somehow reflect a limit in the file system.
The title should be .hack//whatever like the originals, end of story.