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Frequently Asked Question

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Blackbird edited this page Dec 20, 2024 · 5 revisions

Tips

  • I would suggest everyone read the Changes.txt. it contains a lot of explication about changes. It also contains features you probably didn't know about.
  • For example, say you want a folder to be excluded from the book scan. Like if you are using YACReader and its covers folder slows down you scan needlessly? Just create a file named comicrackscanner.ini with inside the text options = IgnoreFolder, IgnoreSubFolders. Put that file in a folder and the scanner will skip that folder (and its subfolders). You can modify the options by changing the terms after options, the possible values are IgnoreFolder, IgnoreSubFolders, IgnoreFile. That was introduced in v0.9.123.
  • Another tip from the Changes.txt. If you take a book and drag and drop it on a folder while pushing the ALT button, it will auto create a smart list for that Series & Volume. This was in v0.9.173.
  • While grouping or stacking you can hold CTRL to select a second field. So you could group by Series & Volume. The new Virtual TAGS feature is also useful in that regard.

Portable Mode

There are 2 ways to enable Portable Mode:

  1. Edit the ComicRack.ini, one of the first line is UseLocalSettings = true. Just remove the ; in the front to enable it.
  2. Open the program by adding the -local after the executable path in the shortcut.

When starting in Portable mode the program will store all it's information inside a folder named Data in a directory where the program is located. So you will need to have write permission to that directory. That means that it doesn't work if you used the installer and installed it in the Program Files directory. This folder is write protected (yes even if you are the admin).

Also the zip version of the program isn't portable by default, it is a starting point. You will need to also update the ComicRack.ini (or use -local).

ComicRack.ini

The ComicRack.ini file contains a lot of extra settings not found anywhere else. Like if you want to use a MySQL server instead of the XML database, want to change the Caption below Thumbnails or change the PDF Engine. Don't forget to remove the ; before or your changes will not be taken into account.

The easiest way of using the .ini file is to edit it directly inside the program directory, change some value and save the file where it is currently. The problem with this way of doing things, is that the moment you update to a new version, that file is overridden. Forcing you to redo your changes, nobody wants that, it's annoying.

So an alternative is to store that file into your data folder where the program will look for it. So copy it inside your %APPDATA%\cYo\ComicRack Community Edition or your Data folder (when using Portable Mode). Here is a page that lists all the different path where a ComicRack.ini can be located, depending on which option is chosen.

Note about Portable Mode:

There is an exception to the above and that is Portable Mode. Say you have a folder where you keep a portable version of ComicRack. You put a custom version of your ComicRack.ini in the Data folder. The one in the executable folder is also modified with you enabling UseLocalSettings. But then you update your program and it is overridden. Since you read this page you are confident it doesn't matter since you copied a second copy in your Data folder.

But here we have a chicken or egg situation, since the ComicRack.ini isn't modified to allow portable use, how will it know where your data folder is? It could be either in %APPDATA%, the Data folder next to the executable or using an Alternate Configuration (-ac) inside one of these folders. So without changes it will open from the default location (%APPDATA%). You can workaround that problem by just opening the portable version with -local, and it will read the .ini in your portable data folder or copy it in the %ProgramData% folder (or modify it again & again). This is why in the INI Search Path wiki page when using the LOCAL (From INI) option you have a #1 and #2 search path, the #1 is the initial location that will tell it where the data location is and the #2 will be loaded after that.

Others

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