Newsgroups: bit.listserv.pacs-l
Date:         Wed, 22 Jul 1992 08:00:21 CDT
From:         Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <LIBPACS@UHUPVM1.BITNET>
Subject:      OPACs and Unreadable Searches

2 Messages, 109 Lines
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Please respond directly to the author, not PACS-L.  Thanks, Dana

From:    junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu (Peter D. Junger)
Subject: Electronic library catalogues and unreadable searches

        Here at Case Western Reserve University they have just put a new
electronic library catalogue on line, which is known as Euclid Plus,
that uses the Innopac (as I believe it is called) software.  Although
the new catalogue is not fully operational (and certainly has not been
debugged) the University has gotten rid of its old electronic catalogue,
which was called Euclid, that used Geac (or something like that)
machines and was pretty useless, since it had no authority control and
did not allow any Boolean searching.

        So far my opinion is that the new catalogue is a great
improvement, except for one little detail that makes it almost unusable.

        The problem is that if one records (or, as Procomm Plus puts it,
logs) one's search to a file on one's computer--whether one accesses the
new catalogue directly through telnet or indirectly over telephone lines
using a modem--the resulting record will be filled with VT102 (ANSI)
escape codes, which are used to draw boxes and control the appearance of
the screen, and will have hardly any carriage returns or line feeds.

        The result is that the record is to all intents and purposes
unreadable and uneditable by non-mechanical means.  (On an MSDOS machine
_with ANSI.SYS loaded in the CONFIG.SYS file_ the file looks all right
if it is output to the screen with the TYPE command.)  I am now writing
a filter which I hope will interpret and remove the escape sequences, so
that the resulting file will be readable and contain nothing but
printable ASCII characters, spaces, carriage returns, and line feeds.

        Our library has told me that in thirty days--they later
changed that to three days, but the three days are up--they will have a
solution to this problem.  The solution is to make something called
Procite available as part of the electronic catalogue.  As they describe
Procite it allows one to download information to one's local PC  in
selected bibliographical formats.  That would be a very nice option and
would certainly make the system more usable, but I do not believe that
it will allow a user to keep a readable record of the wild goose chases
one makes while searching through a library catalogue.  (What one
records is, after all, the flow of characters that are being sent to
one's PC, and that includes the escape codes that cause the problem.)

        So I have a couple of questions:

        1.)  Have others had this trouble with other Innopac machines?

        2.)  If so, is there a solution to the problem?

                a.)  If so, is the solution Procite?

                b.)  Or is it a filter program like the one I am
                writing?

                c.)  Or what?


Peter D. Junger

Case Western Reserve University Law School, Cleveland, OH
Internet:  JUNGER@SAMSARA.LAW.CWRU.Edu -- Bitnet:  JUNGER@CWRU
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From:    junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu (Peter D. Junger)
Subject: Re: 6.0142  Q: E-library Catalogues

        Shortly after I sent my original posting on this subject--and
just before I left the office for the weekend--I received a telephone
call telling me that the fix to the Innopac library catalogue program
had been installed here at CWRU.  So they did do it within three days!

        It turned out that the fix to the downloading problem had
nothing to do with Procite.

        The fix is the addition of an `export function' to the Innopac
software so that the user may mark any bibliographic record for future
export and, at the end of the session, download all of the saved records
to the user's PC using whatever ASCII downloading (i.e., recording)
capability is built into the PC's communications program.

        This is a great feature, and goes a long way toward solving my
problem.  It does not, however, assist one in recording a search through
the catalogue; it only allows one to download the bibliographic records
that the search discovers.

        So I am probably going to go on writing my filter that is
supposed to filter out VT100 escape sequences from a data stream that
has been recorded on a PC.  The result should be that the filtered file
will contain nothing but readable ASCII characters, spaces, line feeds,
and carriage returns, and its contents will look, when examined in an
editor, pretty much the way they did when they first appeared on the
screen of the PC.

        So now my questions are:

        1.)  Has anyone written such a filter already?  And

        2.)  Are there any other cases where it would be useful to have
a filter to interpret and remove VT100 (ANSI) escape codes?


Peter D. Junger

Case Western Reserve University Law School, Cleveland, OH
Internet:  JUNGER@SAMSARA.LAW.CWRU.Edu -- Bitnet:  JUNGER@CWRU
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