MarcEdit 5.0 update

New updates to the MarcEdit 5.0 program.  The updates are as follows:

1. Script Wizard:  The script wizard is back in MarcEdit.  Currently the script wizard only produces VBscripts (i.e., has the same functionality as the 4.6 version) — but the internal framework is such that new script language should be easy to add.  I’ll be working on adding a PERL output next — followed by a python output.  After that, I’ll see if there are additional languages that I should support.
2. MarcValidator changes:  I’ve added a new field to the marcrules.txt file.  The new field is valid and is used to denote valid characters within a field.  Where might this be useful.  Well, the 020 for example — in testing valid data in the subfield.  If you want to use this new feature — and have downloaded MarcEdit 5.0 in the past, you will need to modify your marcrules.txt file after doing the update.  The installer will not modify this file because its a config file that the user may modify.  Here’s a sample of the new format:

020 R INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BOOK NUMBER
valid [^0-9x] Valid Characters
ind1 blank Undefined
ind2 blank Undefined
a NR International Standard Book Number
c NR Terms of availability
z R Canceled/invalid ISBN
6 NR Linkage
8 R Field link and sequence number

Notice the valid statement.  Here, Valid must be a regular expression that can evaluate as true or false.  Here, the expression is noting that any character that is not 0-9x is invalid.  So if a character is not one of these values — it evaluates as true and an error message is shown.    At some point in the future, I’ll likely create a special holder for ISBN so the tool could also validate digits (checkdigits, etc).  Right now, the tool simply doesn’t know that its dealing with an ISBN — its just looking at the rules file to see how the field should be constructed.

Anyway, those are the two big updates.  You can download the file from: MarcEdit50_Setup.exe

–TR