Yikes! This has been a long time coming. I’ve had MarcEdit 5.1 ready for quite a while but responsiblitlies with LibraryFind and other projects has pushed this off my plate for a little bit. However, I’ve finally got this out. So what’s been done.
- Biggest change: MarcEdit now uses .NET 2.0. This was a big change that allowed me to take advantage of a much more robust XML parser in the .NET framework. It’s much faster on larger files, though is slightly slower on smaller files (given some of the additional overhead).
- New interface changes. I’ve been trying to find a way to make the menuing easier. Hopefully this will be the start of some of those changes.
- XML API Changes: This was an interesting change. The new .NET 2.0 framework utilizes a parser that takes an xslt file and compiles it to code. This means that some XSLT functions cannot be used given the necessity of the compiler to optimize the xslt code. The main element that cannot be used is the xsl:strip command. Fortunately, it’s not one that I seen made use of often within XSLT crosswalks.
- 64-bit windows support: There are some quirks in how the .NET framework handles api interactions between 64 and 32 bit systems. In previous versions of MarcEdit, the program would crash out openning files in the MarcEditor (differencies between the sendmessage api between the two systems) and the Z39.50 client (the yaz dll which MarcEdit uses is a 32 bit component so cannot be loaded by a 64-bit process).
- Regular expression support for more functions (Find for example)
- Lots of code changes to let MarcEdit run better with Mono. BTW, for those wanting to take a crack and running MarcEdit through Mono (understanding that there are lots of windowing issues) please find the post here.
- Looser licensing. I’ve always wanted MarcEdit to be used by pretty much anyone for development without restriction. The license reflects that.
Anyway, you can download the new version of MarcEdit from the following locations:
- Windows Exe: http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/software/development/MarcEdit51_20070905.exe
- Redistributable files (MARCEngine, sockets and Z39.50 Components): http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/software/development/MarcEdit51_Runtimes.exe
- Zipped file (MarcEdit doesn’t need to be installed save for working with it’s COM-based components — for users that cannot install programs or users wanting to try MarcEdit under Mono, use the following program and then run the bootloader.exe file to set application paths): http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit/software/development/MarcEdit51_20070905.zip
Anyway, now that I have some free time again, I’ll be spending some more time working on MarcEdit again adding requested items that didn’t make it into this build. One thing I’m considering is adding formalized support for UNIMARC conversions (i.e., the ability to move data seemlessly between UNIMARC and MARC21), though I’ll have to see if there’s any interest. So if you have any requests, let me know.
–TR