Re: arsclist Raw Marc Record, Orecords.mrc

[Premise Checker <checker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There are lots of 256 (8 bit) character sets out there. The first 128 are
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange), the old  7-bit
code (2^7 = 128), but the second 128 characters can vary. I use ISO-8859-1
(Latin 1 = West European). ISO = International Standards
Organization. These sets range from 0 to 255. 127 is the last of ASCII and
is DEL (delete). 128 is the first of the upper half and is C cedila. If
you are seeing that character now, Ç, you are using 8859-1, or perhaps
8859-2 (Latin 2 = East European). I got it by holding down the alt key and
typing 128 from the keypad, NOT from the top row. (You can't do this on a
laptop, which has no keypad.) Google 8859-1 and you can get the whole 256
character set. (8859-8 is Arabic, by the way, in its upper half.) For some
reason, I often don't see on my screen what I should be getting, according
to the table and instead just get ¦ (broken vertical bar, when I typed
alt-176. Alt-200, +, gives the plus sign, alt-202, -, the minus sign. I
can get alt-145, æ, the lower case ae, and alt-146, Æ, the upper case AE,
but none of the other four Icelandic characters.

What's really funny is alt-152,  , which is a space but takes two manual
insertions of the space bar to get moving again!

In a moment, I'll send the whole list of what happens at my keyboard,
again which is not according to the table you can google to get. I came
along too late to have learned what a lot of the commands mean.

Frank

On 2002-12-16, stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx opined [message unchanged below]:

> Saw all this in Infoview (an old shareware program which also allows
> byte editing to an extent). Since it uses all the separators, and has an
> odd record length (and no blanks) I assume it uses "packed" storage
> rather than fixed-length (random access) fields (MS Access does this
> somehow, but without separators that I can see).
> What I'm still curious about is the 264 (I think) numeric bytes that
> open the record...what do they do?
> ...stevenc
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Premise Checker" <checker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: "ARSC List" <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Sunday, December 15, 2002 1:37 PM
> Subject: arsclist Raw Marc Record, Orecords.mrc
> 
> 
> > Frank Forman here:
> >
> > Ralph,
> > many thanks for sending this, and here's feeding it back for those who
> > can't open it. Each character is a byte, or eight 0s and 1s. Good old
> > DOS-Shell lets me look at each one, represented as two hexademical
> > numbers. A hexadecimal number ranges from 0 to 9 and then A to F, or
> > sixteen characters, instead of ten decimal characters. The very first
> > character in the file is 30 in hexadecimal (48 in decimal) and is the
> > ASCII character for 0. You will see this zero below. The second is hd 31
> > or 1 in ASCII, and so on. The n you see is hd 6E (decimal 110). The spaces
> > between m and 2 are hd 20.
> >
> > On the 7th line (which begins 000.0), you may or may not see a question
> > mark after N/A<space>><space>. It is really hd 1E (decimal 30) and is a
> > non-typewriter key that means record separator. (Whether it shows up as a
> > question mark depends on the software you are using that converts a Byte
> > to a character on your screen.) There are lots of these record separators
> > in the MARC record.
> >
> > What I can't seem to be able to do is show that the ? also represents
> > hexademical 1F, which is for unit separator, though I can see it clearly
> > in DOS-Shell. So let me just say what the last several characters are:
> >
> > 874-1951<period><unit separator>4cnd<record separator>2
> > <space><unit separator>aBoston<space>Sympho
> > ny<space>Orchestra<period><unitseparator>4p
> > rf<record separator><group separator>
> >
> > The group separator is hd 1D and, I suspect, allows the next recording to
> > follow immediately.
> >
> > I do not understand all the characters that precede the information and
> > what they accomplish, but it seems clear that unit, record, and group
> > separators delimit fields, which are set up in advance. I don't know what
> > happens when a field is blank. Someone who has actually made a MARC record
> > can clue us in.
> >
> > I don't know whether MARC is a format everyone on the Planet must use or
> > whether it is a program that you can fit in fields to suit yourself (which
> > raises compatibility programs). So I don't know what happens when you want
> > to add matrices, recording dates, and so on, which of course discographers
> > want to do.
> >
> > Anyhow, here's what your MARC record looks like under the hood.
> >
> > 01140njm 22003614a
> > 45000010012000000030006000120050017000180070015001290080041000350100017000
> > 76035002300093040001300116028001900144028001700163028001700180028001700197
> > 02800170021402800170023104200080024805000200025610000340027624501020031024
> > 60027004122600037004393000046004764400031005225110062005535000023006155000
> > 04100638650002100679700004200700710003600742>ocm49737131>OCoLC>20021214000
> > 000.0>020405s1935 njuspn i N/A > ?a 02567649 > ?a(OCoLC)ocm49737131>
> > ?aDLC?cDLC>sd|dmsennmslub>02?aAM
> > 257?bVictor>00?a8624?bVictor>00?a8625?bVictor>00?a8626?bVictor>00?a8627?bV
> > ictor>00?a8628?bVictor> ?apcc>00?aRDA 09833_09837>1 ?aStrauss,
> > Richard,?d1864_1949.>10?aAlso sprach Zarathustra?h[sound recording]
> > =?bThus spake Zarathustra : op. 30 /?cRichard Strauss.>31?aThus spake
> > Zarathustra> ?aCamden, N.J. :?bVictor,?c[1935?]> ?a5 sound discs
> > :?banalog, 78 rpm ;?c12 in.> 0?aMusical masterpiece series>0 ?aBoston
> > Symphony Orchestra; Serge Koussevitzky, conductor.> ?a"Red seal record.">
> > ?aProgram notes inserted in container.> 0?aSymphonic poems.>1
> > ?aKoussevitzky, Serge,?d1874_1951.?4cnd>2 ?aBoston Symphony
> > Orchestra.?4prf>:


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