What _ought_ to be easiest of all is getting our ILS's to NEVER export
Marc8 _ever_ again. UTF8 only.
Sadly, that only ought to be easiest.
But IMO there's no reason any of us should be dealing with Marc8 ever
again. The only thing that should deal in Marc8 is an ILS, and should
only input it, NEVER output it, UTF8 only, please!
But this is not the world we live in.
I tried to figure out how to custom add a new encoding to ruby 1.9 with
the idea of adding Marc8 as an actuall ruby 1.9 character encoding
supported same as any other built in char encoding, but I couldn't
figure out if that was possible or how to do it. If it was possible to
do at that low level in ruby 1.9, it might justify the time to do it.
On 10/24/2011 2:55 PM, Doran, Michael D wrote:
Eric,
Sometimes for grandpa Perl stuff -- especially as concerns charsets and/or
internationalization -- it's worth pinging these lists:
perl4...@perl.org (yes, still alive and kicking)
perl-i...@perl.org (very low traffic list, but some knowledgeable
subscribers)
-- Michael
-----Original Message-----
From: Doran, Michael D
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2011 1:48 PM
To: 'Code for Libraries'
Subject: RE: [CODE4LIB] marc-8
Okay. How do I go about converting MARC-8 encoded records into UTF-8?
In Perl... using the handy MARC::Charset module (tip 'o the hat to Ed
Summers, and now maintained by Galen Charlton).
-- Michael
-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of
Eric
Lease Morgan
Sent: Monday, October 24, 2011 1:39 PM
To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] marc-8
On Oct 24, 2011, at 2:34 PM, Doran, Michael D wrote:
In Perl, how do I specify MARC-8 when reading (decoding) and writing
(encoding) data?
You can't. MARC-8 is a character set that is unknown to the operating
system. Your best bet is to convert MARC-8-encoded records into UTF-8.
/me throws his hands up in the air and screams!
Okay. How do I go about converting MARC-8 encoded records into UTF-8? I
know
yaz-marcdump changes the encoding bit in MARC leaders. Does it also
convert
MARC-8 characters to UTF-8? (I guess I could simply try it and see what
happens.)
--
Eric Morgan
