I’ve refreshed the MarcEdit 5.0 (beta) update. This corrects the few remaining issues in the Z39.50 client, adds a list of Z39.50 clients to choose from (see note below on this change), hardens the MARCengine a bit more, completes the UTF-8=>MARC8 conversion in respect to superscript characters and adds few pieces of functionality to the MarcEditor. See the list below for things yet todo before the program comes out of beta. The updated URL is: MarcEdit50_Setup.exe. Also, in regards to the setup — as with all the beta builds, I recommend uninstalling the previous versions of the beta and re-installing, however, I’ve been testing the installer more this week, and am definitely sold on the NullSoft Installer over the Win Installer — its just more straightforward to use I think.
Updates:
Z39.50 Client
1) Batch Search — ISSN/ISBN correction. In the last update, I’d broken this when I stopped normalizing the data. Its been fixed now.
2) Keyword search updated: In the previous versions, I justed attribute 1035 for keyword searching since I wanted something that did an all encompassing search. However, this isn’t supported by many servers, so I changed it to the more traditional 1016 attribute.
3) About box: Wanted to give credit where it was due. This component makes use of two open source projects to handle the Z39.50 searching — for which, I’m very thankful.
4) Z39.50 Target List: I’ve included the target list from the previous MarcEdit Z39.50 client. However, the structure of the program has changed a bit. In the last version of MarcEdit, the application used a single Z39.50 client target list. This meant that if you added resources to the list, they would be lost on update. To fix this, the new client has two lists. The first is the master list that includes all targets…the second is a local list that includes just the targets that you’ve added or imported from the master list. This means that you have 3 options for adding elements to the Z39.50 Client — Adding a Z39.50 Target yourself, Adding an SRU client (still finishing) or importing an existing target from the master list. Now when users want a target added to the Z39.50 client, I can augment the master list and allow users to retain their customized lists. It also lets users select just the clients that they use most often.
MARCEngine
1) AlphaNumeric Tag support: In the previous versions of the beta, the MARCEngine only supported numeric tags — however, per the spec, alphanumeric tags are allowed, so I added the functionality to this version of the beta.
2) Superscript UTF-8=>MARC8 support: When translating from a MARC-8 Record to UTF-8, the program would correctly allow the translation of superscript/subscript characters both ways. However, if typed from the keyboard, the 123 superscripts were in the lower 128-255 character sequences. I’ve added code to the MARCEngine so that if these sequences are encountered during the UTF-8=>MARC-8 translation that they are correctly interpreted as superscripts and converted correctly.
MarcEdit Main Program/MarcEditor
1) Select Selected MARC Records: If a file path is now in the Find area — and the file exists — it will open the file and use the criteria in the file to do a batch lookup. This is good for doing 001 selection. The format of the file is field to search in the first line and then criteria in each additional line. The below is an 001 example:
001
02211323
1230120
2) Z39.50 Client link added to main page
3) Special undo added to the Subfield editing function
4) Few bug fixes
Ok — so what’s left to do before the program comes out of beta. A couple of things.
1) Completion of the SRU client — should have a first version included this week.
2) OpenSearch client — I’m considering it — this would let folks download records from places like Amazon
3) COM component integration — I’ve held off on adding this till the end, but I’ll include it in the next version for those wanting to try it
4) Updating translations
5) RobertCompare inclusion
6) MARCValidator updates — I’ve been testing a few to bring it back in line with the MARC::Lint component since I like maintaining compatibility
7) I have some ideas for a few more global editing tools in the MarcEditor — but I’ll probably take the program out of beta before they are added
Updated: I noted one small problem right off the bat with the Z39.50 client. In the Modify Databases, if you click on delete a database or modify a database without selecting one — it will cause an error. You can break out of it and continue working as normal — but these are the types of things I need to do one last check for before I take the program out of beta.
Updated 2: I corrected the above mentioned problem. It wasn’t a big deal but it was bugging me.