The Dastardly Missing Issues Report - Nemesis of Programmers throughout the ages

When I first decided to write the Missing Issues Report, I thought "well how hard can this be".  Unfortunately, the answer has turned out to be "pretty damn difficult".  It has now become an extremely complex report, so, here's an overview of how it is supposed to work.

In simple terms, the report goes through the issues you own, and figures out what issues are not there.  In theory, that's pretty easy to do.  If you sort the issues in ascending order, and check each one, all you have to do is find the gaps.  If you own issues 1, 2, 7 and 10, it's pretty easy to figure out that you don't own issues 3-6, 8-9, and anything greater than or equal to 11.

It gets complicated when we throw in non-numeric issues, trade paperbacks,   out of order numeric issues, and various other idiosyncrasies designed specifically to drive me into a failure to program properly induced coma.  Here are some questions that arise:

These are just a few of the complexities that arise.

With the most recent enhancements, I hope Realms now gives you the flexibility to have the Missing Issues Report handle all of these situations the way you'd like to see them handled.  The next release of Realms will change the way TPBs are handled, and that should resolve the only remaining MIR issues.

There are several important fields on the Title Maintenance Window related to the Missing Issues Report:

Starting Issue Number
This is the first issue of this title, usually "1", sometimes "0", and, thanks to Marvel, even "-1" may be a valid entry.  If "0", "-1", "1,000,000" issues are really "special", out of order issues, I recommend leaving the starting issue as 1, and putting the other issues in the Other Issues field.  The Missing Issues report uses this field in determining where to start looking for missing issues.
Final Issue Number
This is the final issue of the series. For example, the final issue of "The Sandman" is issue 75. Realms of Wonder defaults to "9999" for ongoing series', "4" for Mini-series', and "1" for Oneshots. The Missing Issues report uses this field to determine when to stop looking for missing issues.
Other Issues that are part of this title
This is a very important field, if you want the Missing Issues report to be accurate.   This field enables you to enter non-numeric and special issues that are part of a title.  This includes variant covers (1A, 1B, etc.), previews, out of order numeric issues (Witchblade 500, DC 1,000,000 issues, etc). 
 
If you don't own these type of issues, and want them to appear on the report, you must enter them in this field separated by semi-colons.
 
If you do own issues like this (and I'm sure everyone does), then you must make sure they are included here as well so that the report accurately reflects that you own them.   Otherwise, you can get some very unusual results.  This is especially true for out of order numeric issues, where the sequence number is different than the numeric part of the issue number.  For example, Witchblade 500 came out between issues 22 and 23, so I have the sequence number as 22.5.  If I don't put "500" in the Other Issues field, the report comes out completely wrong.
Restrict the Missing Issues report to these issues
There are times, especially with titles that have hundreds of issues, and have been around forever (Detective Comics comes to mind), where you know there are some issues you will never get, so you may not want to see them on the Missing Issues report all the time.  This allows you to restrict the Missing Issues report to a smaller range (or ranges) than the entire run of the title.   Separate the entries by semi-colons.

Right now, this field does not allow alpha-numeric entries, but I will be changing the report shortly to handle those as well.

Issues to Exclude from the Missing Issues report
This field allows you to specifically enter issues that should never show up on the report.  If a title is missing a specific issue, for example, when there are only variants, you would enter that issue here.  So, If there is no issue 1, only 1A, 1B, etc., enter "1" here (no quotes).
Just like the two fields above, you can enter individual issues or ranges of issues separated by semi-colons.
 
Exclude from Missing Issues Report
You can exclude any titles that you wish from the Missing Issues report simply by checking this box.  This makes it easier to limit the report to only titles that you really are interested in.

Don't get this mixed up with the field above.  If you choose to exclude the title from the Missing Issues report, by checking this box, this title will not appear on the report, and, obviously, none of the issues will show up.

TIP:  The previous four fields can all be entered or changed right on the Missing Issues Report window, so you don't have to keep flipping back and forth to the Title Maintenance window.  This makes it very easy to adjust these fields, run the report, see if it's right, and if not, correct the appropriate fields.

There are several key fields on the Missing Issues Print Window as well.

Use Variants as if they were the regular issue
This is a very important field, so it is important that you understand how it works.   Thanks to Quentin Bracken for the excellent explanation below, that I have stolen basically word for word.

In terms of completeness, there are at least types of collectors: an Avid Reader and a Completist.

An Avid Reader wants to collect the complete story line. They might buy variant covers, but it will usually be in lieu of the regular cover because they find the variant more attractive. When they say they have a complete X-Men collection, they actually mean they have the complete story line, not every single issue plus the variants plus the DFE editions and so on. An Avid Reader's complete X-Men collection takes the form of a mixture of regular issues, reprints, variants, trade paperbacks, and so on just as long as they have the storylines from X-Men #1 up.

A Completist is just the opposite. They get every single issue including every variant cover. If there was a small print run of an issue with an incorrect cover price, you can be sure the Completist will track it down and add it to their collection. When they say they have a complete X-Men collection, they literally mean it.

For the Completist, the Missing Issues Report should be run with the Use Variants option turned OFF.  That way, if issues 1A, 1B, and 1C are owned , but issue 1 is not, it will show up.

An Avid Reader should run the report with the Use Variants option turned ON.  Since all you want to know if you are missing part of the story, it doesn't matter if the story is in #1, #1A, or a trade
paperback. With the Use Variants option turned on, issue #1 will not show up in our example.

Include titles with no issues?
By default, you must have at least one issue record for a title to be included in the Missing Issues report. 
That seems to be logical, but there are times where you may want to include titles that have no issues. TPBs and titles that have not yet been released are good examples of this.

Turn this option on to include titles even if they have no issues.

TPBs - How are they handled?

TPBs are handled a lot like the Excluded Issues field.  Currently, you must enter the TPB contents in TPB window from the Issue Detail window, and then turn the Include in Missing Issues Report option on.  Realms then looks through all the TPB entries, builds the list of issues behind the scenes, and then adjusts the ranges of the issues you own (this was very difficult to do!).

A user recently suggested a much easier way to handle TPBs and I will be incorporating that into the next release.  Basically, you'll have the option to continue entering them as is done now, or you can enter a title and an issue record for the TPB itself, and then you can enter the contents just like any other issue - in detail.  There will be a TPB name field that will link all the contents together.

Why I didn't do it this way from the beginning is beyond me.

In closing, if you find situations that still don't work, please contact me.  Generally, I'll need you to send me your data since it is very difficult to recreate many of these problems.