Editing in Text View

You may find it easier to use Text View for certain edit functions, such as: 1) working with huge fields 2) quickly deleting large numbers of fields (eg holdings tags) 3) copy and paste of large chunks of data (or portions of a record that exetend beyound a single tag)

That being said, there are a few quirks about using any text editor with MARC data that must be understood, so please read through these brief instructions before using it for the first time.

HOW THE TEXT EDITOR WORKS

Each tag must be entered as three digits: '008' and not '8'

There must be one blank space (and not a TAB) after each tag: '008 '

For control fields (tags 000 to 009), the field data starts immediately after the blank space that follows the tag:

000 01637cam 2200397 a 4500 001 1577 003 PPLC 005 20041120123015.0 008 881108s1988 dcu 000 0aeng u

We do not recomment editing fixed fields using a text editor. For instance, if you edit a fixed-length field like the leader or 008, and enter an extra blank space, or delete a required blank space, the conversion program will reject the whole record, and you will have to start again.

For variable fields, the indicators start immediately after the blank space that follows the tag. There is no spacing between the indicators, and by default, the first subfield delimiter follows the second indicator:

100 1 $aLevchenko, Stan. 245 00$aOn the wrong side :$bmy life in the KGB /$cStanislav Levchenko. 300 $axi, 244 p. ;$c24 cm. 650 0$aSpies$zSoviet Union$xBiography.

If you prefer a blank space after the second indicator, you can change the above behavior by going to Record Display page of the program options, and selecting 'Add blank after indicators in text format', which is turned off by default. If you do this, the above example would look like:

100 1 $aLevchenko, Stan. 245 00 $aOn the wrong side :$bmy life in the KGB /$cStanislav Levchenko. 300 $axi, 244 p. ;$c24 cm. 650 0 $aSpies$zSoviet Union$xBiography.

INDICATORS

The example above covers all possible formats of the indicators:

Both indicators blank: 300
First indicator blank, second coded: 650
Second indicator blank, first coded: 100
Both indicators coded: 245

SUBFIELDS

To enter a subfield delimiter, use whatever the Record Display option named 'Text subfield delimiter' is set to (the default is '$'). Do not use <Ctrl>-D in the text editor.

OTHER FORMATTING

There should not be any blank lines between the tags. A blank line is the signal to the text-to-MARC conversion program that it has reached the end of the record. The program will try to automatically deal with blank lines, but please try to avoid creating them in the first place.

SAVE

Press Save to save any changes made in Text View to the underlying record.

Changes made in Text View are automatically applied to the underlying record as soon as you change to another view. Therefore, you can switch to Text View, edit something, switch back to MARC View (w/o pressing Save) and view the changes you made in Text View.

If you navigate to another record, and haven't pressed 'Save', you will be prompted to do so.

FIND AND REPLACE

Multiple-level “Undo” was added to Find and Replace in version 256. Each press of the “Undo” button undoes the last replacement that was made. Note that this undo buffer is not active during normal editing.

PRINT FORMAT

The 'Print Format' button toggles the text view into a mode that may be more suitable for printing.

Press this button once to reformat the text for printing. Press the button a second time to return to normal text view.

Note that while this view is in 'print mode', the text itself is in the read-only state. The button label font color will change as a reminder that the state of the text has changed. Do not worry if you forget to press the 'Print format' button a second time–any navigation event (i.e., advancing to the next record in the file) will return Text view to its default state.

The actual printing of the record is invoked from the File|Print menu. The shortcut for printing the text view window is <Ctrl>+<Alt>+V

If you want to append the brief messages for the current record to the print-out, use the shortcut <Ctrl>+<Alt>+W instead.

PRINT FORMAT OPTIONS

The following options may be used to customize the print format view.

Add Rec#/File Header: If checked, this will add the current record number and filename to the top of the page, followed by a blank line.

Break Lines At: Select this option to change the length at which the program tries to break the lines. By default this is set to 72.

Diacritics to Hex: If checked, the program will convert all diacritic characters to hexadecimal notation.

Blank substitute (FF): Select this option to replace all blank spaces in fixed fields with another character (e.g., replace blank spaces with '#'). This may make it easier to count positions. By default, no substitution takes place.

Add Blanks Around Subfs: Select this to add a blank space before and after each Subfield delimiter and code. For example, with this option selected, a 260 field might look like this:

  260    $a Valencia, CA : $b Black Belt Communications LLC, $c 2008.

Use MARCBreaker format: If selected, the print format button will render the record in LC's MARCBreaker format. This format represents blank spaces as a '\', and diacritics using a special mnemonic notation. For more info, visit this link: http://www.loc.gov/marc/makrbrkr.html

PRINT FORMAT NOTES

Pressing the 'Print format' button will turn off Word Wrap in the default text view. It will be restored to your previous setting when you navigate to another record, or press the Word Wrap button again.

The options above remain in force for the duration of the session, or until they are changed. At present, they are not saved (from one session to another).

If MARCBreaker formatting is selected, the Diacritics to Hex and Blank substitute (FF) options are ignored.

MARCBreaker diacritic formatting supports MARC-8 data; thus, the result of using this format on a record with unicode diacritics may be strange. However, MARC Report does fully support the MARCBreaker character conversion table, which in this case is called 'TEXT21.txt' (located in My Documents\MarcReport\Templates). This table can be customized by the user.

TEXT VIEW NOTES

By design, this text editor does not possess much (if any) MARC intelligence. For instance, if the record contains a string like “110 dalmatians” and you use the 'Find & Replace' feature to replace all “110 ” occurrences with “101 ”, you will also end up changing any 110 tag to 101.

If you are copying and pasting a record (from a web browser) you may run into these problems:

The 008 is not the correct length. Unfortunately, there's not much we can do about this, as the program cannot tell which blank spaces have been removed. The problem is caused by the HTML format, which compresses all consecutive blank spaces to a single blank, unless it is explicitly told not to. (Why some library systems will display a 'MARC' record without handling this issue correctly remains a mystery). You are best off deleting the 008 and re-entering it. (You could change the tag to 908 or something, so that you can at least refer to it when you making the new one).

The first subfield delimiter in each field is missing. Check your 'blank after indicators' setting (see note above). If this symptom arises, try turning it off.

If you really mess up a record using the text editor, go back to the MARC View for the record and press 'Undo'. This will restore the record.

WRAP (Word-Wrap)

By default word-wrap is turned off in the text editor. If you are dealing with a very long field, we recommend that you first maximize the text editor window. If that still doesn't help, try pressing the WRAP button.

WARNING: Watch out for embedded carriage returns in the data of a field. In MARC View, MARC Report will indicate this problem with an error message like '520: Cannot display (x0D)', where 'x0D' is the ASCII code for a carriage return. If you edit such a record in this editor without also fixing the problem, the field in which the carriage return occurs will probably be truncated at the position of the carriage return. This truncation may be difficult to notice if the record in question has a long 505 or 520 field. One way to check for this problem is to toggle the Wrap option on and then off again. When Wrap is off, the first three characters of each line should be a MARC tag. If this is not the case, then there is a problem.