Matching Titles between FWIW and ROW

The Match Window is where you link the titles as they appear on the FWIW database, to the titles as they appear in your ROW database.  This process is a bit of a pain the first time, but once you get through it, each additional month you need only link new titles, which are usually only a handful per month.

In the list box on the right, all the titles that are not yet linked, as they appear in your ROW database, are listed. When you double-click one of those titles (or single-click and then click the Search button), the listbox on the right fills with any titles on the FWIW database that match based on the keywords in each title.

Below  these two lists, in the Linked Titles table, are all the titles that are have been linked to each other already.

The first time you run the update application, it will scan your collection and link all titles that have the exact same name. At any point, you can click the Exact button to repeat this process.

Beyond that, you will have to manually link the rest. To do that, double-click on a title on the left (in the example shown, Amazing Spiderman (note the incorrect spelling) is selected). The list on the right will then fill with any titles that match the title you selected, based on the keywords in the title, in the case "amazing", and "spiderman".  The match is NOT case sensitive, and it ignores some characters, like the dash.  You can see that in this example because the list on the left, the FWIW titles, all show "spider-man".   Because the dash is ignored,  "spiderman" and "spider-man" match.  You can manually change the selection criteria by editing the entry in the keywords field directly.  See more about that in the keywords description below.

Once you've found the correct titles, select the title in the left list that is the same as the selected title on the right (in the example, Amazing Spider-man is how the title appears in the FWIW database).

When two titles are selected, the Match button will be enabled. Click it to link the two titles. They will appear in the table below, and will be removed from the two lists.

You can scroll down for more info, or click on the image above to bring info related to the specific button/field to the top of this frame.

Title information for the FWIW and ROW selected titles
When matching titles, I strongly suggest that you turn on the Show Title Details option (on the parent window toolbar).  In fact, I don't think you can do it without this option turned on.  Each time you select a title in the FWIW list (on the left) or the ROW list (on the right), the details of the selected title will display in the appropriate pop-up window

This should make it easy, or at least easier, to insure that you are linking the correct titles.  In this example, you'll see that I did a poor job with the title info in my data.  If I had entered the years published, and updated the end issue, it would be a much clearer match - just a word as to why entering this info can be useful.

IMPORTANT:  Because of the volume of titles and issues added to the FWIW database, it it impossible to avoid errors.   As you notice them, whether it be as simple as mis-spellings, or something like incorrect start/end issues, please jot them down in an email, and send them to me so I can update the master database.  If you look at this example, you'll see that I should update the years published to "1963 - 1998" and the end issue to 441 for Amazing Spider-man on the FWIW database.

Keywords
This is new as of version 5.3.0, and a result of a very good suggestion from Andrew Wilson (thanks Andrew!).  IMHO, it makes the match process much easier.
 
Whenever you select a title from the ROW title list, FWIW determines the key words in the title, and displays them here.  Small, common words like "the", "of", "a", etc. are ignored, as are some characters like "/", "-", and parenthesis.  Individual words are separated by the tilde character ("~").  If you click the Search button, or double-click the entry in the ROW list, FWIW will display all the titles that match these keywords.  You have several options as to how strict to make the match in displaying similar titles.
 
Entire Word vs Any part of word match
 
Select this option if you want the keywords to match entire words only.   For example, if you select the title "The Red Star", FWIW will only display titles that have the full words "red" and "star", of which there is only one.
 

If you select the any part of word option, then FWIW will display all titles where the letters "red" and "star" appear anywhere in the title.  They don't have to be separate words.  So, "Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country" will display, because "star" appears at the beginning, and "red" appears at the end of "undiscovered" (took me a while to figure out why that one was showing up <g>).

By default, use the entire word match, but if you can't find a title, use the partial word match to bring in other titles. 

All keywords vs Any keywords

By default, FWIW displays only titles where all the keywords match.   In our above example, both the word "red" and the word "star" would have to be in the title.

If you select the any keywords option, then FWIW will display all the titles where either the word "red" or the word "star" appears, so you'll get "Starman", all the Star Wars and Star Trek titles, 'Superman Red / Superman Blue", etc.

This can be very helpful if you are having trouble finding a title, especially if it has at least one somewhat distinctive word.

Manually changing the keywords

One of the nice, and fairly powerful options with the keywords is that you can change them manually.  Hear is a simple example.  I had Judge Dredd spelled as "Judge Dread" on my data.  So, when I selected the All keywords option, nothing was coming up.  I manually changed "Dread" to Dredd" and then all the titles I expected, appeared.  Separate words, or groups of words, by the tilde character.  Once you've made your changes, click the Search button.

It worked pretty much like all the search functions you sue on the web, with the exception of using the tilde as a separating character.

Search button
Click the Search button to fill the FWIW title list with all titles that match based on the displayed keywords, and the selection options.  If you double-click a title in the ROW list, it does the exact same thing (behind the scenes, it just clicks the Search button).
Titles as they appear on the FWIW database
This list displays all the titles that match the selected title from the ROW list, and have not yet been linked to a ROW title.  As described above, you have various options as to how tight to make the selection criteria.
Titles as they appear on your Realms of Wonder database
This list displays all the titles that have not yet been linked as they appear in your Realms of Wonder database
 
Exact Match button
When you click this button, FWIW will scan your ROW data and the FWIW data and link any titles whose names match EXACTLY.   I suggest that you do this when you first start using FWIW.   In fact, FWIW will ask you if you'd like this process run, the first time it starts up.  You should review the matches to some degree to make sure no incorrect matches where made.
Match / link button
When you select a title from each list, this button will be enabled.   If you click his button, FWIW will link the two titles, add them to the matched title table, and remove them from each of the lists above.
Close button
When you click this button, prior to closing the window, FWIW checks to see if any changes have been made to the title matches.  If so, it will begin updating the FWIW issue records that are matched, so that if you choose to Show Issues for Matched Titles Only on the Options window, FWIW will be able to tell which issues are matched.

You can cancel that update, but I strongly suggest that you allow it to run to completion before running the actual update.  It can also be run from the Options / Utilities menu.

When you run the update, this will SIGNIFICANTLY speeds up the process. 
 
Delete Link button
If you find titles that have been linked incorrectly, select the appropriate row in the Matched Title list, and then click the Delete Link button.  FWIW will "de-link" the titles, and they will appear in the appropriate list boxes above.
 
Delete All Links button
If you decide to start over with FWIW, click this button to remove all the matched titles.  This will clear the Matched Title list, and put all the titles back into the lists above.
Confirm link button
If this option is turned on, each time you link titles, FWIW will pop-up a confirmation message to insure you really want to link them.  If this is turned on, it gets tedious pretty fast, so I suggest turning it off.
 
Matched Titles
This list displays all the titles that have been matched between the FWIW database, and you ROW database.  The FWIW titles are on the left, and the ROW titles on the right.  Clicking on a row in the table will refresh the Title detail windows, so you can verify that the match is correct.  If you find an error, you can select the appropriate row, and click the Delete Link button.  If you want to start over from scratch, you can click the Delete All Links button