MarcEdit 6 Status Update

Thought I’d give the folks that are interested an idea of where I am with the MarcEdit update.  In terms of new features, that is pretty much set at this point.  I have one feature request regarding conditional field editing by field position that I’m still mulling over, but otherwise, I’m pretty much finished.  The last things todo right now is to finish the installers for Linux and Mac systems, and then make sure that the installs work exactly as I want them to.  One thing that I have found with the Linux and Mac systems — the Z39.50 dependencies are one of the biggest dependency hurdles (I can’t really automate their install well) — so I’m working on a method of creating a Z39.50 web service at marcedit.reeset.net that I can then call via non-Windows systems.  This will be functionally equivalent with the locally loaded Z39.50 libraries, though there will likely be a performance hit (small one, you shouldn’t notice too much) — but will remove a major dependency making the program much easier to install.  Also, I’m just not sure how often the Z39.50 client actually gets used at this point (when can we finally phase that out) — so I’m hoping this will be a good enough compromise. 

MarcEdit on Linux:

At this point, I’m testing MarcEdit on Suse and it looks to be going well.  The installer is now a single .sh file, that will expand creating the directory, run the bootloader, and create a shortcut on the desktop.  What it doesn’t do yet is make sure Mono is installed — not certain if that will be part of the first installer, but this should get you to the point that if you have mono installed, you will just run the installer and an icon will be on the desktop ready to be activated. 

Couple of the current screenshots:

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Figure 1: Start Screen on Linux

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Figure 2: MarcEditor

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Figure 3: Delimited Text Translator

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Figure 4: RDA Helper

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Figure 5: MARC Tools Window

At this point, on Linux, the version looks and feels pretty much like you’d expect the Windows version to work.  I’m testing performance, especially with larger files in the Editor (for rendering) and it looks like all UI issues should be dealt with in MarcEdit 6.  I’m starting the process of doing the same type of testing using the current version of OS X with Mono 3.4 — hopefully I’ll see the same UI smoothness.

Some Stats on the Update

Some stats — refactoring, I’ve removed close to 15,000 lines of code streamlining older processes (these are things you likely won’t see, outside of maybe a few things being faster).  New code — I’ve written close to 27,000 lines of code developing new features or enhancements for this update.  Much of this has been around multiple platform support, new functions in the editing tools, etc.  Once MARCCompare has been completed, that number will jump to around 37,000 lines — so this will be a significant update in which a number of tools and functions have had significant revisions made too improve code maintenance, performance, add new features or correct bugs, or all three. 

Below you will find a list of topics the represent some of the areas where changes are being made.  This is a subset of a report from the internal issue tracker I use for tracking issues/enhancement requests.  At this point, it still looks like this update will be scheduled for Mid-July.

–tr

 

Tracking Report

Summary

Category

Sharing Tasks which refer to other tasks

Bug

Add/Delete Field — Find What Field

Bug

Refresh the Delimited Text Translator

Enhancement

MARC Tools window refresh

Performance

Changing Capital Letters with Diacritics to lower case

Bug

RDA Helper

Bug

Script Wizard — add/delete field with modifier

Bug

Adding multiple fields in the Add/Delete Function

Enhancement

UI Issue — Validation

Bug

Task List — Swap Field not saving Process one per field

Bug

Allow tasks to have comments

Enhancement

Edit Subfield and Swap Field Edits

Enhancement

Task Manager & Task List tool

Enhancement

Task List: Allowing Description to show in Task Manager and Task Editor

Enhancement

Plugin Updates — make it easier to track plugin updates

Enhancement

Ability to import RIS format

Enhancement

Mac Fonts

Bug

Prompt for confirmation of task deletion

Enhancement

Koha Integration – unable to authenticate when using self-signed certificates

Enhancement

merge records tool — customizing match points causes merges to not occur

Bug

Validate Temp File Path Before Generating files

Bug


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4 responses to “MarcEdit 6 Status Update”

  1. Daniel Rothenberg Avatar
    Daniel Rothenberg

    Perhaps the via-web method might be the solution to Hebrew problems

    1. Daniel Rothenberg Avatar
      Daniel Rothenberg

      I meant for z39.50

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