Re: arsclist Cataloging

[Premise Checker <checker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steve,
Do you have good old DOS-Shell, which was eliminated after DOS version
5? It lets you peek, but not alter, any file on your computer, both as
ASCII and the raw hexadecimals. It still works, even in Windows XP. I'll
ship it to you, and anyone else who wants it, along with a bunch of other
antique utilities and very useful programs, next week when I get back to
work. The Byte Bloat (my term) of many programs is incredible. It takes MS
Word 19KB to record a single sentence. By contrast, good old WordPerfect
5.1 for DOS, just gives a few characters, basically saying here comes a
WordPerfect file, beyond the raw text. Databases also contain front
information and specify the names and lengths of fields. Each record
consists of a string of characters for the records, which will splice in
the requisite blanks to fill up the length of the record. I forget now
what the blank consists of. It may be a space, which is 20 in
hexadecimal. You'll be spending a great deal of time fooling around with
this wonderful old program.

Frank

On 2002-12-13, stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx opined [message unchanged below]:

> Ponts here:
> 1) What is the file structure of the MARC system? I won't go into the
> technical
> details, but if I can look at the actual file as a digital entity I can
> possibly figure
> out how to access the information (doesn't work with MS Access, though).
> If the fields are saved as ASCII text, and if there is a coherent file
> structure
> (what does it put in the file for empty fields?) the contents can be
> retreived.
> 2) The problem with the "bibliographic databases" cited is that these,
> again,
> are proprietary data formats...meaning you need a copy of the cited programs
> to see the data, and eithir you can't get them, or you can get them for a
> GREAT
> big sack of money! Thise creates problems for individual (and poor) users
> like
> myself! In other words, if MARC can export to xxx, and I don't have and
> can't
> get xxx, I'm no better off!
> Steven C. Barr

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