On Sat, 26 Apr 1997, John C Klensin wrote:
> (ii) For MARC records, I suspect the situation is much
> like some of what we've found for EDI. The important thing
> may be to distinguish things that are MARC records from
> things that aren't, then to pass the former off to
> processors --processors that will rarely be conventional
> email engines-- that know what to do about them. It is
> possible that such processors might reject some subtypes as
> uninteresting or incomprehensible, but they are probably
> the right level at which to make those decisions.
Unfortunately I know from bitter experience that its sometimes impossible
to deduce what sort of MARC record you've got just from its syntax;
because all the MARC formats have a common heritage they all have a
similar <leader><directory><fixed fields><variable fields> structure but
sometimes the semantics of the fields is slightly different. I've knocked
up a Perl module that can distinguish between some instances of USMARC,
UniMARC and BLCMPMARC (the latter being the one that our OPAC vendor
produces) but it can't do it 100% and adding in other MARCs would make the
heuristics even worse. Personally I'd say that we should go for different
MIME types for each MARC format, starting with application/usmarc as its
the most popular.
Tatty bye,
Jim'll
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon "Jim'll" Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Dept. Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND. LE11 3TU.
* I've found I now dream in Perl. More worryingly, I enjoy those dreams. *
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