Just a place to write down my ideas for AniDB before they reach oblivion.

Note: These are my individual ideas and may not necessarily reflect where AniDB is heading!

Ideas

Character Relations Graph (2. Approach)

Note: This model may not be project-able to the current model in use.

The idea presented here tries to represent character relations completely text based without the help of any images which contain graphs. Instead of trying to generate a simple view over the complete dataset, this approach will use many simple views. The basic idea is to take each type of relation (family, enemy of, ally of, etc.) and create one view for each for a global overall view. In addition a local view is provided to show relations in detail. The local view is simply a cursor which points to an entity for which information of itself will be shown and in addition to that the nearest neighbours. When the user clicks on one of the neighbours the cursor will move to that entity. For this to be user friendly mouse scrolling needs to minimized.

Views

  • Contains a list of selected entities
  • Each view has to highlight a selected entity
  • If graph simple enough, fallback to different simpler view?

Global View

  • Layered: Each relation type is displayed in one (separate) layer
  • Each layer has a (can) have a more specialized model/view
  • Prefer small graphs, i.e. A family view should only contain its immediate Members (Parents, Children, etc.)
    • Some entities have to shown more than once

Local View

  • Convert each relation model to a single graph
  • A cursor which moves upon that graph
  • Take the first selected entity for the cursor
  • Switching cursor position replaces the selected items and with the new cursor entity


Models

  • Each relation type has exactly one model
  • The model is used to describe the relationtype as concise as possible
  • Model also has to define how its data is (de)serialized
    • Relational Database as storage (Anime_EntityEntityRelation.RelationId as Primary Key)
  • Avoid complex structures
    • No reference to other models allowed


Prerequisites

(Assumed) Global DB Tables:

  • Anime(Id, ...)
  • Entity(Id, EntityType, GuiseId, Name, ...)
    • ⊇ Character(Id, Gender, DateOfBirth, DateOfDeath, Age, ...)
    • ⊇ Organisation(Id, ...)
    • ⊇ Vessel(Id, ...)
    • ⊇ Mecha(Id, ...)
  • EntityGuise(EgoId, GuiseOfId)
  • Anime_EntityEntityRelation(AId, RelationType, RelationId)
    • Anime_EntityEntityRelation.RelationId as Primary Key for Relation Models
    • Each model has its own tables
    • The usage is defined by each model/view pair


Presets

Social

Replacement for the "family of" relation. Currently there is no standardized way to specify blood relations. This makes it impossible to form small groups of information like a group with only directly related characters (i.e. Father, Mother, Children). But since this Character-Relations approach is based on displaying small groups of information a more fine grained representation is necessary.

Model

  • Additional Tables
    • FamilyRelations(RelationId, ChildId, ParentId, IsVirtualParent, IsAdopted)
    • SocialUnions(Id, TypeId)
    • SocialUnionTypes(Id, Label, Style)
    • SocialUnionMembers(RelationId, MemberId, UnionId)
FamilyRelations
Represents the bloodline of characters
For sibling relations where the parents do not exist a virtual parent is created and the fields are set accordingly
For more flexibility IsAdopted can be set to true for adopted children or other kinds of families (e.g. Patchwork families where no blood relations exist)
SocialUnions
Used to describe bonds of social status (i.e. Marriage, PoliticalMarriage, PatchworkFamily)
SocialUnionTypes
Used by views to define default style
SocialUnionMembers
Used to map characters to social unions
If necessary add a Type field to describe directional relations (i.e. (King, Mistress) vs (Queen, Lover or whatever the equivalent for Male Mistress is))
Example
Kyouran Kazoku Nikki (5580)

Views

Assisted Conversion

Add/Edit Form

Character Relations Graph (Abandoned)

Note: This model may not be projectable to the current model in use The idea presented here tries to represent character relations completely text based without the help of any images which contain graphs. Instead of trying to generate a simple view over the complete dataset, this approach will use many simple views. The basic idea is to take each type of relation (family, enemy of, ally of, etc.) and create one view for each for a global overall view. In addition a local view is provided to show relations in detail. The local view is simply a cursor which points to an entity for which information of itself will be shown and in addition to that the nearest neighbours. When the user clicks on one of the neighbours the cursor will move to that entity. For this to be user friendly mouse scrolling needs to minimized.


Prerequisites

Needs to be reworked: One model/view for all either too simple to represent all cases or too complex to display => One model/view for each relation type

class Anime_CharacterCharacter_Relations {
	int AId;
	Anime_CharacterCharacter_Relation[] Relations;
}
class Anime_CharacterCharacter_Relation {
	Anime_CharacterCharacter_Relation_Type Type;
	ConnectedGraph[] Graphs;
}
class Anime_CharacterCharacter_Relation_Type {
	Label Name;
	EdgeInfoControl[] AllowedEdges;
}
class ConnectedGraph {
	Label Name; //For something like clubs/organisations/etc.
	Entity[] Entities; //Graph Structure Info
	Tuple<EdgeInfoControl, Relation>[] Relations; //Graph Structure Info
}
class Relation { //Edge
	EdgeInfo Info; //Informational purposes only!
	Entity A, B; //A is Start and B is end Vertex if graph is directed
}
class EdgeInfo {
	Label Start, Middle, End;	
}
class EdgeInfoControl : EdgeInfo {
	bool IsWeakLink, IsDirected;	
}
class Entity {//Vertex
	//Informational Data
} 
class Label {
	string Text;
	Bitmap Image;
}

Text needs to be updated to sync with the classes above

  • Anime_CharacterCharacter_Relations holds all information necessary for Character-Character of an Anime.
  • Each Character-Character Relation Type (family of, enemy of, etc.) is represented by Anime_CharacterCharacter_Relation, where Anime_CharacterCharacter_Relation_Type sets restrictions.
  • Anime_CharacterCharacter_Relation_Type contains the info whether the graphs are directed or undirected, a label (e.g. Family) and specifies the allowed edges for the graphs.
  • Anime_CharacterCharacter_Relation contains in addition to the type, a list of graphs (ConnectedGraph) which are required to be connected (i.e. every vertex is reachable from every vertex).
    If a Character-Character Relation cannot represented by a single Connected Graph it is split into several ConnectedGraphs until the condition is satisfied.
  • ConnectedGraph contains the graph structure (vertices, edges) and a label which serves as a header for the graph (i.e. Organisation).
    The Relations field contains all edges in addition to its type which must be contained in the associated Anime_CharacterCharacter_Relation_Type.AllowedEdges
  • Relation simply defines an edge in the graph which can contain additional information which only serves informational purposes.

Add abstraction, i.e. allow subclasses for each Relationtype to allow special behaviours for views.

Presets

Family Relation Preset

Definition
Label: (Family, FamilyIcon)
IsDirected: Yes
Edges (IsWeakLink, IsDirected, StartLabel, MiddleLabel, EndLabel)
Undefined: (Yes, No, false, "", "", "")
Parents: (Husband, Wife) //Samesex Parents?
View

Aim: Each connected graph shows to each other unrelated families Possibility1: Special Relation, Container with Parents as Header and Children as Content => Recursive display Possibility2: Simple edges describing Parent-Child Relations => May result in a lot of edges Adoption:

Mentor Relation Preset

e.g. Marimite

Posession Relation Preset

e.g. Pokemon


Views

  • Contains a list of selected entities
  • Each view has to highlight a selected entity
  • If graph simple enough, fallback to different simpler view?

Global View

  • Layered: Each relation type is displayed in one (separate) layer
  • Each layer has a (can) have a more specialized model/view

Local View

  • Convert each relation model to a single graph
  • A cursor which moves upon that graph
  • Take the first selected entity for the cursor
  • Switching cursor position replaces the selected items and with the new cursor entity

Character Relations based on episode range

User - Object Set - Analysis (Snippets of Wisdom)

AniDB Event: Anime of the Month Clean-up

New API: Based on TCP and EBML

AVDump2: Module for adding file entries (streamlining the adding process)

Tool for adding any kind of data to AniDB

MangaDB File/Chapter/Volume Hashing

Remove/Change "hostile" judgemental anime/character tags? (Abandoned)

  • Meh, just me overreacting a bit
    • Approval rating seems to take care of it
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