On Thursday, December 22, 2005 2:24 PM, David Christensen wrote: >... I've put together a (simple) free-form, text-based MARC editor for >Perl/Tk, which takes advantage of MARC::Record, MARC::Lint, >MARC::Errorcheck[s], and MARC::Descriptions.
This is a very interesting project. I haven't done much with non-command line/non-text-only Perl programs (being a Mac Classic user without access to Tk), but running on Windows XP, this seems to work ok. I don't know how other catalogers feel, but based on experience using other programs (Bibliofile--DOS-based (a.k.a. BFC); ITS for Windows; OCLC; RLIN), I prefer having the subfields of a field in a line, rather than one subfield per line as done by as_formatted. Would having a format similar to MARC::MARCMaker's (or LC's tagged display as seen at <http://www.loc.gov/cgi-bin/zgstart?ACTION=INIT&FORM_HOST_PORT=/prod/www/dat a/z3950/locils.html,z3950.loc.gov,7090>) be difficult to implement? For the leader, is it possible to shield the non-modifiable positions from the user, since catalogers will only be interested in those bytes? In BFC and ITS, at least, the leader is presented with bytes 5, 6, 7, 17, 18, 8, 9, and 19, (and 22, 23 as 00) editable--one can just position the cursor at the start of the leader and type "nam a" to get the desired bytes (new language material monograph full-level under AACR2). I am having trouble editing the leader in the current version of the program. At times I can change bytes, but once one is changed, it changes colors and doesn't seem to want to be modified again. An editor or description of the 008 (and 006 and 007) bytes would be welcome, however. BFC had a display: Fixed Data 008 030729s2003 caua 001 0 eng d Entrd: 030729 Dat tp: s Dates: 2003, Ctry: cau Illus: a Int lvl: Repr: Cont: Govt pub: Conf pub: 0 Festschr: 0 Indx: 1 M/E: Fict: 0 Bio: Lang: eng Mod rec: Source: d So, the 008 appeared as it does in the MARC, but beneath it was a brief description of each position. As one moves the cursor along the 008 field string, the appropriate position highlights in the description lines. Are the shift and control keys supposed to act as forward delete keys, or is that a problem with my system? Is it possible to have the tab move one among fields, subfields, and byte positions, rather than having it enter a tab/space character? Buttons for saving the record to a file (is this the purpose of Dump MARC and reload?) (and ability to specify what file) might be useful (though that is sort of covered by the Dump button, with output to the command line). A button to scrap changes and revert to the original version of the record might be useful (at least until some of the problems mentioned above are fixed). Please keep up the good work. Thank you, Bryan Baldus [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.inwave.com/eija
