New Yorker DVD: DjVu Files!

So then you think one would have some problems viewing them with a linux-compatible viewer? I want to buy this, but only if I can view it (obviously). And I’m not an expert in this stuff.

I wonder if the DVD disks can be copied or mounted to a hard drive, to avoid disk swapping while browsing issues? If so, anyone have any link showing how it’s done?

I was so happy to have the DVD at home, but it is not fun swapping the DVD all the time. and the I thought I could host my dvds on a hardisk somewhere, since the dvd is copy-right protected, there is nothing much i can do about it. IF anyone knows how to overcome this problem, give us a shout. cheers.

Yes, you can install the New Yorker DVD magazine collection to your
hard drive or external drive or firewire drive without need to swap
DVDs or use mounted virtual drives. Here’s how:

With the original New Yorker magazine DVD installation, the program
requires you to swap DVDs everytime you want to see an issue.
That is annoying. Instead, you may want to install all the
New Yorker magazine directly to your hard drive and read off
the hard drive without having to swap DVDs. Since the install
program does not let you do this, you have to slightly “hack”
the New Yorker installation. You could attempt to mount virtual
hard drives, one for each DVD, and switch between them through
the virtual hard drive control panel. But this is tedious. In
Windows XP, follow these directions, and you will be able to
copy the New Yorker to an external or firewire drive so that
you just need to connect the drive to any computer and just
install the New Yorker from the hard drive to that computer and
read off the hard drive:

1) Install the New Yorker to your external hard drive, using
the installation DVD. Let’s say your base directory for the
New Yorker installation is:

e:\newyorkr

where e: is your external hard drive.

It will have this directory structure:

e:\newyorkr
\help
\Issues
\Uninstall

2) Make a new subdirectory in your newyorkr base directory
called “Install.” Then, copy the entire contents of the
DVD 1 installation directory to the Install sub-directory.
Use a program like Karen’s Replicator to do this, since
Windows sometimes has trouble copying huge multi-gigabytes
amounts of data in one shot. The Karen’s Replicator program
is available at:

http://www.karenware.com/power…

The new base directory and sub-directories now are:

e:\newyorkr
\help
\Install
\Issues
\Uninstall

3) Go to the Install directory, and find the Issues
sub-directory. Move all the issues files (the .djvu
files) to the Issues sub-directory of the newyorkr
main directory.

4) Also, copy all the issues files from the other 7
New Yorker DVDs to the Issues sub-directory of the
newyorkr base directory. This may take a few hours
because this is maybe 55 gigs of issues! Use the
Karen’s Replicator program for a smoother copying
experience.

5) Now, edit the database file. Go to the newyorkr
base directory and find the database file, which is
ny-sqlite-3.db. This is an sqlite database file,
which you must edit slightly using an sqlite editor.
One such editor is VisualSQLite, available at:

http://www.download.com/Visual……

Open up the ny-sqlite-3.db database in the Visual-SQLite
program. When you first load up the Visual-SQLite program,
you see a window at the bottom left, where you can execute
commands. Type the following command in the window and
execute it:

update Issues set DiskID = 9 where DiskID <> 9;

Save the database, if it does not automatically save.
This command will change references to DVDs in the
database so that it makes the program look for issues
files in the Issues sub-directory of the New Yorker
directory on the hard drive.

6) Find the ny-sqlite-3.db file in the base directory.
Make sure it has today’s date on it, showing that
it was edited.

7) Now, install the New Yorker from your external hard drive
to the hard drive of whatever computer you want to install
it to. Go to the Install directory and click on WindowsSetup
to do so.

8) To make it so that the installation reads the Issues off
your external hard drive, make a change in Regedit.
Run Regedit (You can find Regedit
by going to the C:\Windows directory and finding Regedit
there, or left-clicking on the Start button, going to Run,
and in the Run command box typing Regedit). In Regedit,
search for Yorker. This will find several references to
the New Yorker Installation. After pressing F3 a few times
to repeat the search, you will see the word InstallPath.
double-click on InstallPath, and change the Install path
directory to the base directory on your external hard drive,
that is, the base directory containing the Issues sub-directory
that contains all 55 gigs of New Yorker issues. In this case,
change it to e:\newyorkr.

You can now run the New Yorker such that it will read the
issues directly off your external hard drive. With whatever
Windows XP computer you want to install New Yorker to, just
hook up your external hard drive to that computer and
repeat steps 7 and 8. No annoying DVD swapping required!
Once you change the InstallPath to your external drive base
directory that contains the edited database, you don’t need
the database in the installation directory where you installed
the New Yorker on your computer. So you can just delete that
database file, which is useful because the database file is
a massive 587 megabytes. So if you install the New Yorker
to C:\Program Files\New Yorker Viewer just go there and
delete the ny-sqlite-3.db file. When you run the New Yorker,
it will just read the edited database file off the base
directory of your external hard drive.

This page dedicated to trying to view the outdated 2005 'The Complete New Yorker''s 8 DVDs dates back 16 years ago. Has anything been done since then to end the frustration? Either by The New Yorker IT crew themselves or by a computer whiz anywhere?

Here to report I was able to install TCNY on my PC on Windows 11 and follow gendalf's instructions above to read all the issues from the 8 discs through my external hard drive.

***on instruction 5), use "DB Browser for SQLite":
https://sqlitebrowser.org/dl/
...and this bit of tutorial helped me understand to edit the db file:
https://www.codecademy.com/article/running-sql-commands-in-db-browser