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:

Figure 1: Start Screen on Linux

Figure 2: MarcEditor

Figure 3: Delimited Text Translator

Figure 4: RDA Helper

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