HIT--> Diacritics + Winnebago Mac, etc.

[SHELLEY LOCHHEAD <s_lochhead@MENTOR.UNH.EDU>]

Can you believe it?!  Here is hit number two - also two months in
arrears....

Last November I posted a TARGET about diacritical marks, marc records,
and opacs (particularly Winnebago for the Mac).  It is hard to condense
the responses I got, but here is a try:

 -- at least one other Mac opac is unable to display diacritics properly
 -- as are other dos systems
 -- companies are working on the problem
 -- people are editing records, encouraging truncated searches, and
       generally putting up with things, hoping for the fix

So, I soldier on.  It is time to remind Winnebago that the problem still
concerns me, and I will do so this week.

Meanwhile, if any of you have been able to "put the dieresis back in
Bronte", I'd like to hear about it.

And for the folks who want the whole story, here is my original posting,
followed by last summer's correspondence with Winnebago Tech Support,
followed by your responses.  I have removed all names but mine, since we
live in a funny world....


--> Original
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Date: Tue, 29 Nov 1994 21:49:15 EST
Subject: Help - opacs and accent marks query

This is a tale - if you want the short version, cut to the last 2
paragraphs!

Since the recon (done famously by WLN - what a great outfit!) I've run
into a problem with diacritics.  More to the point, into a problem with
how the opac displays them!

Whenever a word contains an accent mark, Winnebago/Mac displays that
accent as a little open box (this is the Macintosh symbol for any
undefined character in a particular font).  Now, I could live with this
for a while, but it is screwing up all the searches.  A kid puts in a
keyword search on Quebec and comes up empty, despite our several books and
videos on the topic.  Only if said kid does the search on
Que(little-open-box)bec, do the holdings display.

So I emailed Winnebago, and told them all my troubles, and after a few
exchanges and WLN's provision of more sample records, I was connected with
a Winnebago programmer who was prepared to work on the problem as soon as
I sent examples of the most commonly-occurring problem diacritics.  Said
records to be in the original dos format.  (Me with a Mac version,
remember....)

Well, I just hadn't the time to go through, one-by-one, and choose a
representative sample.  I was also loathe to prevail on WLN to send me a
disk of just those records, in the original dos format.  So I emailed the
programmer at Winnebago last summer inquiring whether or not the Mac
version supports the ALA extended ascii character set, or planned to in
the future.  No word back, so far.  And I have put off jogging their
memories on the situation, what with the typical fall workload at my end.
But my brain is clearing, and I am ready to tackle the problem again.

And I thought that with a little information from you guys, I might make
more sense!

Now, the questions:

(1)  Do those of you with Macintosh-based opacs, whose recons were done
by a bibliographic utility like OCLC, WLN, etc., have problems with the
display of diacritics?  If not, do you know why not?  (If so, please
commisserate.)

(2)  How about those of you with Winnebago dos versions?


Hoping to learn something,

Shelley

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--> From Winnebago
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 94 17:42:38 -0400
To: "Shelley Lochhead" <s_lochhead@mentor.unh.edu>
Subject: Re:  Diacritics, redux

Shelley,

We did encounter the same trouble with the diacritical marks when loading
the disk from [WLN] into the program.  Programmers are currently looking
into this and will get back to you with further information.

Mac/Apple Team Manager

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--> From Winnebago
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 94 09:24:32 -0400
To: "Shelley Lochhead" <s_lochhead@mentor.unh.edu>
Subject: Re:Diacritics, redux

Shelley,

I have been studying the problem you are having with foreign
characters/diacritical marks for a couple of weeks now.

The best way to handle this situation is on a case by case basis at this
time.  Different languages will have different needs, and there is no
standard way to translate to ASCII for all languages (some characters have
no ASCII representation, which makes for some guess work when translating
items).  With microcomputers we are limited to ASCII representations of
characters (without using graphics, which would hurt some customers with
older machines).  We are going to have to look into the graphical
representations as options to accommodate situations like yours.

Apple File Exchange is also part of the problem.  This program does not
know of the existence of USMARC standards for diacritical character
representations.  This means the characters would have to be translated
before or after Apple File Exchange handled the data, and then translation
would not be guaranteed.

We are still looking for a solution to this problem.  Other vendors are
having the same types of difficulties.  When asking the Library of
Congress about these issues, they stated that they are working with a
partial solutionDtrying to determine the ultimate solution.

I think we can find some ways around this, with your help.  If you had
some specific examples of titles (barcode, if the original data had
barcodes) that have diacritical marks, along with comments on which type
of letters are causing problems and what the correct representation should
be.  We would also need a copy of the original files (before Apple File
Exchange, so they are not changed in any way).  Then we will be able to
find the records with the diacritical marks, and determine what we will
need to look for when we create a program to correct your data.

Please send these items to:
        Programming Manager
        Winnebago Software Company
        457 East South Street
        Caledonia, MN  55921

These items are probably too large to send on the Internet, but if you
choose to do so, send them to programming@winnebago.com.

If you have any problems or questions, please call me at 800-654-3002.

Programming Manager

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--> from LM_Net member
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 1994 21:25:51 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: Help - opacs and accent marks query

Shelley, you need to encourage your kids to do truncated searches.  I
tell my kids to NEVER type in a full word, and they get much more
information.  This isn't to discourage you from getting the Winnebago
snafu straightened out, though.  (This is why I don't recommend those
folks!  The cataloging that comes from their catalog production software
bites the big one, too!)

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--> from LM_Net member
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 10:08:32 -0600 (CST)
Subject: opacs and accent marks query

You are definately ahead of me on conversion but we do see a problem with
being able to sort by copyright date.  Because they have (c) (1987) etc.
cataloged into the record it can not be sorted by that catagory.  Other
programs such as Datatrak can do this type of sort.

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--> from LM_Net member
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 19:20:33 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: Help - opacs and accent marks query

Well, Winnebago's cataloging generation software is VERY restrictive
about things like barcodes.  The MARC standard for 852 doesn't say that
barcodes can only have 7 or fewer characters like Winnebago cataloging
software does.  It is also case restrictive.  We wanted call numbers
(author names) in upper and lower case, but it can only produce upper.
Maybe I'm picky, but with a few vendors sticking with the Winnebago
"standard" we have a hodge-podge of infomation and we aren't anxious to
edit EVERY record just to accomodate their prejudices.

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--> from LM_Net member
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 20:26:27 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: Help - opacs and accent marks query

We have not recognized this as a problem in our DOS use of Winnie.
However,Winnie does have a real problem with the way it displays lists
ofauthors and subjects.  Somehow, because their programmers have
preparedthe lists to be read as straight ASCII files, the files give
alpha-numeric qualities to punctuation and spaces, so the user does notget
a straight list of letter by letter, word by word entires.  Theremay be
three entries for Hemingway, for example, depending on whetherErnest is
followed by a period, a comma, or nothing.  In subjectlistings you will
find (to use a commonly researched topic) abortion followedby a period
after abortion-[pick a subheading].  What is even nicer isthat in
corporate names, (United States.  Supreme Court, for example),the program
adds commas as follows:  United States., Supreme Court...They really need
to clean this up.  I have written them and sentmassive print screens to
show them what I mean but so far, no luck.I will say that after having
read all the Unison comments, I am stillawfully glad I picked Winnie.  And
after having looked at a number ofother programs at AASL, Winnie is still
the only one with a screenthat allows a user to search right away - no
cutsy icons or othergarbage on the screen to wade through before figuring
out what you need to do.  I hope they keep it that clean!

Good luck.  Maybe someone is watching your posting and maybe it will lead
to faster action on your behalf.

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--> from LM_Net member
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 1994 21:51:40 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Problems with characters in Winnebago

        Hi again!  I've been having the same problem with the funny
characters in Winnebago. The first time I noticed it was with Bronte.  If
I search Bronte, we have no books...  I'm also running the Mac version of
Winnebago and just got the retro done this summer.  I've been so busy
trying to deal with the error messages I get when accessing the server I
haven't had time to even worry about this problem.
        They're now claiming my data is corrupted.  I sent them a backup
tape which they say they can't find any data on.  I've just done a second
tape and made sure it worked.  We'll see if they can read it this time.
        I've found that the system is down about a quarter of the time,
so you can see why I have no time for characters in the catalog.
        I'm still waiting to see the fantastic support people rave about
on LM_Net.  Maybe I'll feel differently when this problem is resolved.
I'm not too hopeful when I think about this character problem.  I think I
was hoping if I ignored it, it would quietly go away.

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--> from LM_Net member
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 09:50:38 -0700 (MST)
Subject: Diacritics and Winnebago

Hi Shelley!

We are the technical services department for a large Colorado school
district (132 schools, each with a media specialist and media center).
Currently, 78 of our schools run Winnebago (either DOS or MAC).  We
catalog for them using Bibliofile which supports diacriticical (sp?)
marks.  Winnebago, however, sees these marks as either punctuation or
garbage in some cases.  Both the DOS (IBM) and MAC version do not
currently support diacritics as far as we can tell.

Solution?  We edit out the diacritics.  This caused a real hoot last
month when we cataloged a book which had the Spanish word for year.  With
the diacritic, the word is "year", without, the word means... um...
well... "fanny" is as close as I'm willing to say on the net.  You can
edit the marks out by using Material Records Management and editing the
MARC record.

Maybe your inquiry to Winnebago will help.  Keep us posted, the change
would help us as well.

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--> from LM_Net member
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 16:28:16 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: Help - opacs and accent mar

We use CASPR's Library Works and Library Browser and have the same
problem.  The DOS system we used previously did not have a problem with
diacritics.  All letters were indexed as if they did not have an accent so
a search brought up all items with Quebec whether or not they had an
accent.  When this problem was brought to CASPR's attention a complicated
tale of why this is not so it the MAC environment was given, followed by
the information that they were going to solve the problem and do it
properly!  Progess has been made.  The accents show up on screen, however
we have the same problem as you do with searching.  Unless you use the box
or the subject/keyword index browse feature you do not get hits on words
containing accents.  We are hoping that CASPR's next major update will
solve the problem, but are not placing any bets on it.  They have a
Windows version now, but I do not know how it handles diacritics.  I'm
sorry to hear this problem also occurs in other systems.  You have my
sympathy in having to handle the fustration this causes.

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And that's all they wrote,

Shelley



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shelley Lochhead, Librarian       ____/|              603-746-4167  x230
Hopkinton High School             \ o.O|       S_Lochhead@mentor.unh.edu
297 Park Avenue                    =(_)=       htbo@lilac.nhsl.lib.nh.us
Contoocook, NH   03229               U                   AOL:  SLochhead
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