Character lists

GMAO tracks all the characters that appear in a translation based on the tags you input in the translation fields. It can create interesting lists like the one here: http://tjtg.mangatranslation.com/characters/tjtg_characters.html.

GMAO automatically generates the Character Name, the first volume and page the character appeared on, how many pages the character appeared on, and possibly picks up an image based on the character name in a directory that you specify. If you supply descriptions for a character, it can add those as well.

Creating the Character List

Use the "GMAO->Make Character List..." menu item to start a Wizard that will prompt you through the character list creation process. It should be fairly easy to understand, so I will not write about that too much here.

The easiest thing to do is to create a character list for the translation of a single volume. You do that by loading the XML file in the first pane, or tying in a web-accessible URL for the XML file.

Creating character list for multiple volumes

If you want to create a character list that spans several volumes, you need to access the XML files using a URL syntax. file:// URLs should work fine, although I've never tested them. You have to type in the URLs yourself; there is no way to browse for multiple input sources.

Separate each URL with a ; character. For example, something like: http://www.example.com/file1.xml;http://www.example.com/file2.xml;http://www.example.com/file3.xml would load three XML files.

Using Overlib in the page list

If you use the %PAGE_LIST% variable to insert a page list, the list can sometimes become very long, especially if you are creating character lists for multiple volumes. In those cases, I like to use %OVERLIB_PAGE_LIST%, which uses the excellent Overlib open source Javascript library for pop-ups.

If you use the %OVERLIB_PAGE_LIST% you must make sure that your header contains the proper HTML code to initialize Overlib. In particular, you should have

<div id="overDiv" style="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:1000;"></div>

Example HTML code for the character list

The following HTML code is what I use for the Tenjo Tenge character lists. I think this is a nice format. It uses the excellent open-source Overlib Javascript library to keep the list of pages a character appears on from being overly long.

HTML Header:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<html> <head>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>Characters from %SERIES_NAME% %SERIES_NUMBER%</title>

<STYLE TYPE="text/css">

  DIV.navigation { 
    // width: 150px;
    background-image: url(50transparent.png);
    background-repeat: repeat;
    // margin: 10;
    // float:left;
  }

  DIV.main {
  }

  DIV.footer {
    text-align: right;
  }

  BODY {
    color: black;
    background-color: white;
  }
</STYLE>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://mangatranslation.com/overlib.js"><!-- overLIB (c) Erik Bosrup --></script>

</head>

<body>
<div id="overDiv" style="position:absolute; visibility:hidden; z-index:1000;"></div>
<div class="main">
<div class="navigation">

<a href="index2.html">
<img alt="Tenjo Tenge Nagi Logo" width="90" border="0"
src="http://tjtg.mangatranslation.com/tjtg_nagi_logo.gif" align="center">
</a>
<a href="http://tjtg.mangatranslation.com/downloads.html">Downloads</a> |
<a href="http://tjtg.mangatranslation.com/extras.html">Extra stuff</a> |
<a href="http://tjtg.mangatranslation.com/characters.html">Charater list</a> |
<a href="http://mangatranslation.com/cgi-bin/phpbb2/">Discussion
board</a> <P>
</div>

HTML Footer:

<div class="footer">

<a href="http://MangaTranslation.com/"><img src="http://mangatranslation.com/mangatranslation_banner.gif" alt="MangaTranslation.com" border=0 align="left"></a>

Questions?  Comments?  Mail to
<address><a href=mailto:Fugu@FuguTabetai.com>Fugu@FuguTabetai.com</a></address>
</div>

</body></HTML>

HTML Content:

<h1>Character list for all characters from %SERIES_NAME% %SERIES_NUMBER% </h1>
This table lists all Characters from %SERIES_NAME% %SERIES_NUMBER%
<TABLE border=1><TR><TH>Image</TH><TH>Description</TH><TH>Pages</TH></TR>
%CHARACTER_LIST%
</TABLE>

HTML Character Entry:

<TR>
    <TD>
      %NAME%<br>
      %IMAGE%</TD>
    <TD>
      Total Pages: %NUM_PAGES%<br>
      First Appeared: %FIRST_PAGE%<br>
      %CHARACTER_DESCRIPTION%</TD>
    <TD>%OVERLIB_PAGE_LIST%</TD>
</TR>