Sherman Clarke wrote:
The caption for section 2.1 is "use of nonfiling control character
technique as a replacement for the nonfiling indicator values"; the
examples then show the coded indicator value of zero plus the nonfiling
control characters. I think it would be better to define blank for non-
relevance of nonfiling considerations. It's not really "no information
provided" or "no attempt to code" but I'm sure we have some standard
language that can be adopted here.
My response:
From a systems point of view, the use of the value zero in the non-filing
indicator is greatly preferred. It's likely that our systems will need to
deal with mixed files, where some records use non-filing indicators and some
use non-filing control characters. The consistent use of zero in the
indicator when the control characters are used will simplify the development
of indexing software.
Furthermore, the use of value blank here would have a bad effect on OCLC's
system, which takes blank to mean that it must attempt to determine the
count of initial non-filing characters for itself. We couldn't change that
until all records with non-filing indicators had been converted.
Sherman Clarke wrote:
We've had the discussion before but this discussion paper brings it home
again. The nonfiling control character is very helpful in a number of
situations, but the explicit space within the controlled area following
an initial article is really silly looking. Presumably, a title starting
"Les ecoles ..." would have the control character after the acute accent.
My response:
Including the space *is* silly looking, but it is consistent with the way
non-filing indicators have been used. Is there a system in existence today
that would index the space if it were left outside the controlled area?
Leaving it outside would certainly make a better display in situations where
the control characters are visible.
I assume that "Les ecoles ..." was intended to be "Les [acute]ecoles ..."
(diacritic rendered as text in brackets in order to get around the
limitations of email). The appropriate control character placement would be
"{[Les }[acute]ecoles ..." or "{Les} [acute]ecoles ..." but definitely NOT
"{Les [acute]}ecoles ...". The accent is not associated with the initial
article, so there is no justification for including it in the controlled
region.
Sherman Clarke wrote:
The third example in section 2.2.5 is probably supposed to have an
ellipsis (and space) inside its nonfiling control characters.
My response:
The examples in 2.2.5 certainly need discussing. I would not use non-filing
control characters in the first three examples (assuming an ellipsis in the
third), nor in the tenth. The characters being excluded are all
punctuation, which should automatically be excluded without being marked.
Some of the others, particularly the 260 and 100 fields, are questionable.
Gary L. Smith
Senior Consulting Analyst
Database & Offline Products Development
OCLC
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