Comcs! (was: An initial proposal for bib.schema.org)

Hi Sean:

Thanks for the Comics feedback! It's heartening to have relatively positive
feedback from the CBO author! I've split this out into a separate thread so
we can focus on comics.

You're right in that this effectively supersedes the proposal at
http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/wiki/Periodicals_and_Comics_synthesis
- Richard asked me for a high-value proposal that would hopefully not be
very controversial, and comics leapt to mind. I also had a very short (e.g.
day and a half) timeframe to get the bits together :)

My initial intention was to simply implement exactly what was in the
"synthesis" proposal, but as I started working through the guts of that,
iterated rather quickly on some of those design decisions that, two years
on, don't make quite as much sense. If there's a desire, I can certainly go
back and create a new wiki document that draws all of that out. The raw
commits are in a branch called "bibex_comics_coverart" at
https://github.com/dbs/schemaorg/commits/bibex_comics_coverart

Responses to specific questions inline below--although I'll note that most
of the text of the definitions I had used go all the way back to Peter
Olson's original comics proposal at http://www.w3.org/wiki/PeriodicalsComics

On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 11:20 PM, Sean Petiya <spetiya1@kent.edu> wrote:

> Very nice! It will be great to have comics-specific bibliographic types
> and properties to make use of and map to. Just for clarification, this
> supersedes the current Comics proposal, with the potential for these
> elements to be incorporated in the main branch of schema.org at some
> point?
>
> A few suggestions/comments for comics:
>
> 1. inker --- suggestion for definition: *"individual who finalizes (or
> embellishes, finishes, retraces) the pencil drawings in ink after pencils
> are complete"*, to call out the artistic role and remove the negative
> connotation with the term "tracing" in relationship to inking comics.
>

Sounds good!


> 2. ComicIssue --- suggestion for definition: *"All comic issues can be
> uniquely identified by: the combination of the name and volume number of
> the series to which the issue belongs; the issue number; and the variant
> description of the issue"*, may also want to add publisher name here as
> well. Many licenses pass from publisher to publisher, all having the same
> name and possibly volume number (e.g. Godzilla [1]), making it hard to
> identify titles without the publisher or imprint name.
>

Sure. I bet there will still be exceptions even with the addition of
publisher and/or imprint, but those will help bring the assertion closer to
truth :)


> 3. Volumes --- is there a reason ComicVolume is not included? For example,
> PublicationVolume -> ComicVolume would seem to fit. I know that the Grand
> Comics Database and other sites do not incorporate a volume number, but
> other resources, like ComicVine and Overstreet do group issues within a
> series by volume and designate a volume number (either officially or
> unofficially), in addition to the start year [2].
>

My thinking was that ComicVolume wouldn't add any properties that weren't
already in PublicationVolume, thus there wouldn't be a strong reason to add
a new ComicVolume class. However, there's a need for examples that show how
to use PublicationVolume appropriately (and help guide data publishers
towards a standard pattern).


> 4. Manga --- has Manga been addressed previously? Perhaps not in this
> exact version of the extension, but I do think there would be some benefit
> to having a specific subtype for Manga as a distinctive format of comics
> material, especially with regard to library materials.
>

I think Peter and Henry were trying to start by offering a vocabulary for
describing traditional Western/North American comics, andintended to move
on to address more formats thereafter. Sound good?


> 5. Would it be possible to add a reprints/reprintedIn (or collects)
> property pair to ComicIssue? Or perhaps there is an existing equivalent
> that can be suggested. This is a pretty helpful property for describing
> relationships between and linking together comics material, and is often
> used to describe the contents of collected editions [2] [3].
>

My knee-jerk reaction would be to use the CreativeWork schema:hasPart /
schema:isPartOf properties for that purpose.


> 6. variantCover ---- While I think most variances of note between issues
> will be the cover art, there are others such as newsstand editions, direct
> editions, price variants, etc., and while these all relate to the cover
> (and are clarified in the example), perhaps modify the definition slightly
> to read *"A description of the variance of the issue, if the issue is a
> variant edition or printing". *
>

Right, this was one of those changes I made on the fly; the property had
previously been named "variantDescription" in the existing proposals, but
the comments and examples always focused on the cover, so I thought it
would make more sense to reflect that intention in the property name. I'm
happy to go back to "variantDescription" if those comments and examples
made it seem more restricted than it actually is in practice. After all,
with ComicCoverArt, consumers will be able to tell the difference between
variant issues based on their covers.


> Again nice work, I'm looking forward to seeing this published. I'm
> particularly fond of the Containers/Collections group for use with comics,
> especially Shelf.
>

Thanks so much! It will be interesting to see how these other parts play
out :)


> [1] IDW - http://www.comics.org/series/72969/, Dark Horse -
> http://www.comics.org/series/16216/, Marvel -
> http://www.comics.org/series/2392/
> [2]
> http://marvel.com/comics/issue/23040/guardians_of_the_galaxy_vol_1_legacy_premiere_hardcover
> [3] http://www.worldcat.org/title/guardians-of-the-galaxy-legacy (see
> Notes)
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 5:26 PM, Wallis,Richard <Richard.Wallis@oclc.org>
> wrote:
>
>>  Hi all,
>>
>>  A few weeks back we discussed how this group or some of its members
>> could participate as a bibliographic domain group to propose and review a
>> bibliographic extension to schema.org with the current working name of
>> bib.schema.org.
>>
>>  Since then I have been liaising with Dan Brickley and others in the
>> main Schema.org group who have been working to establish the hosting
>> software that enables the extension capability.  This work is now close to
>> being ready for release.  Dan has indicated that this provides an excellent
>> opportunity for a bibliographic extension to be one of, if not the first,
>> enabled and released in this way.  In preparation for this, Dan Scott and I
>> have put together a candidate set of types and properties that could
>> constitute an initial bib extension release, which this email introduces.
>>
>>  There are many potential candidates for new/enhanced types and
>> properties which the finessing and accepting of which would need to be the
>> subject of some in depth discussion within this group.  To take advantage
>> of the opportunity to release along with the capability release, however,
>> we need to agree a starting subset fairly quickly.  To that end Dan and I
>> have drawn up this initial (1.0) proposal consisting of what we believe to
>> be things that are fairly noncontroversial.
>>
>>  I list the proposed types and properties below with links to their
>> representation in a development version of the Schema.org site.  They
>> are in three independent groups of proposals, for general bibliographic
>> markup; some helpful things for the physical structure of archives & basic
>> collections; and for comics.
>>
>>  We can accept/reject either individual types and properties, or a whole
>> group, because we need to explore things in more depth and defer things to
>> a later release.  I would hope though that fairly quickly we could come to
>> at least a subset of these as an initial release.
>>
>>  A reminder that Dan Brickley is still working on the software capable
>> of handling extensions so please view the content more than how it
>> currently displays.
>>
>>  General Bibliographic Types & Properties
>>
>>    - Agent <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/Agent>
>>    - Atlas <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/Atlas>
>>    - Chapter <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/Chapter>
>>    - Globe <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/Globe>
>>    - Kit <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/Kit>
>>    - Meeting <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/Meeting>
>>    - Newspaper <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/Newspaper>
>>    - MusicScore <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/MusicScore>
>>    - PublicationSeries <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/PublicationSeries>
>>    - Thesis <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/Thesis>
>>    - Toy <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/Toy>
>>    - BookFormatType:AudioBook <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/AudioBook>
>>    - BookFormatType:LargePrintBook
>>    <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/LargePrintBook>
>>    - BookFormatType:PrintBook <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/PrintBook>
>>    - MapCategoryType:CartographicMap
>>    <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/CartographicMap>
>>    - inSupportOf <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/inSupportOf>
>>    - translationOfWork <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/translationOfWork>
>>    - translator <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/translator>
>>    - workTranslation <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/workTranslation>
>>
>>
>>  Archive Containers/Collection
>>
>>    - BoxContainer <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/BoxContainer>
>>    - Collection <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/Collection>
>>    - Container <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/Container>
>>    - FolderContainer <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/FolderContainer>
>>    - Shelf <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/Shelf>
>>    - contains <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/contains>
>>    - containedIn <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/containedIn>
>>
>>
>>  Comics
>>
>>    - ComicIssue <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/ComicIssue>
>>    - ComicSeries <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/ComicSeries>
>>    - ComicStory <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/ComicStory>
>>    - CoverArt <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/CoverArt>
>>    - ComicCoverArt <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/ComicCoverArt>
>>    - BookFormatType:GraphicNovel
>>    <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/GraphicNovel>
>>    - artist <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/artist>
>>    - colorist <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/colorist>
>>    - inker <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/inker>
>>    - letterer <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/letterer>
>>    - penciler <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/penciler>
>>    - publisherImprint <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/publisherImprint>
>>    - variantCover <http://sdo-bib.appspot.com/variantCover>
>>
>>
>>  I look forward to comments.
>>
>>  ~Richard.
>>
>
>