Text tables and MARC Report

Introduction

There are several text-based tables in MARC Report (in the program folder) that are not currently available under the options menu. All of these tables are simple tab-delimited text files that might be customized by the user.

The tables that fall into this category are:

Filename        Description

language.txt    The MARC Codelist for Languages
country.txt     The MARC Codelist for Countries
geogcode.txt    The MARC Codelist for Geographic Areas 
relator.txt     The Codelist for Relators
codelist.txt    A merged version of the Source Code lists

Although these tables could be modified by the end user, they will always be replaced with updated versions the next time the program is updated (this includes beta versions). So, for all intents and purposes, the only reason to update one of these files would be to add an entry for a new code that has not yet been added to the table distributed with the program.

Customizable tables

There are a few tables, however, where user customizations might persist through an update:

Filename        Description

ctryplace.txt   Country Code/Placename table
fexcepts.txt    Non-Filing Article Exception Table
keycodes.txt    Character codes used by Diacritics menu
keycodes_utf8   UTF8 Diacritics (an extended version of the previous file)

If you wish to modify one of these tables¹⁾, and want your customizations preserved across program updates, please follow these steps:

Copy the table you want to customize to your MARC Report 'Options' folder²⁾
Always make your customization to the file in the 'Options' folder
Do not change the file located in the Program Files area
Backup your options folder appropriately
To stop the program from using the customized version, simply delete the copy you made in the Options folder³⁾, and the program will revert back to the default copy in the Program Files area.

Note: the above has been true for the 'fexcepts.txt' table since about version 230; the same steps may now be applied to the 'ctryplace.txt' and 'keycodes.txt' tables.

For more specific details

¹⁾

the steps for customizing these files are included within the files themselves

²⁾

the directory \MARC Report\Options is a subdirectory in your My Documents area

³⁾

when the program is not running