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October 2009

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Subject:
From:
Steven C Shadle <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
MarcEdit support in technical and instructional matters <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:17:34 -0700
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TEXT/PLAIN (229 lines)
Terry -- As a regular user, thanks very much for providing this kind of background on product development.  TBH, depending on the nature of the change (simple find/replace vs. edits requiring identification tags/subfields), I'll sometimes just use a standard text editor rather than MarcEdit.  What you've proposed in terms of paging works fine as long as no functionality is lost in global editing (it sounds like you're suggesting would be an improvement on the UI in terms of 'Find' results).  imo, whatever is easiest for you to develop that maintains important functionality and it sound like you've got the covered with the paging concept.  good luck.

Steve Shadle/Serials Access Librarian  *****  [log in to unmask]
University of Washington Libraries      ***     Phone: (206) 685-3983
Seattle, WA 98195-2900                   *        Fax: (206) 543-0854

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009, Reese, Terry wrote:

> I have a question and I'm hoping that the collective wisdom of the list
> can help me solve it.  I've got an update for MarcEdit that I've been
> sitting on for about a month because I have a specific issue (usability
> mostly) that I'm trying to solve, and I have an idea how to do it, but
> it will change the way that you edit MARC records in the editor (at
> least, how they are displayed) and before I go forward, I wanted to
> quickly take the communities pulse on this.
>
>
>
> The problem
>
>
>
> So let's start with an explanation of the problem.  As folks that have
> worked with both MarcEdit 4.x and MarcEdit 5.x know, the ability for the
> Editor to load a lot of data into is much different.  In MarcEdit 4.x,
> the application utilized a custom edit control written in assembly for
> loading and editing records in the MarcEditor.  This allowed users to
> load very large files (150 MB or so) into the editor without a
> noticeable change in speed when adding new data to the editor, resizing
> windows, etc.  In MarcEdit 5.x, I made a conscious decision to utilize
> all .NET components to preserve the ability to port MarcEdit to the
> Linux and Mac platforms (Linux will be officially completed at the next
> release btw) - however, this had some implications with the editor in
> two ways.  1) Loading rich content into the editor has a much higher
> memory cost and 2) this higher memory cost has a definite effect on
> performance (loading and editing).  This is why I introduced the preview
> mode - a read-only mode that allowed users to load a snippet of the file
> and then make their global edits.  For my usage of MarcEdit, this worked
> beautifully - but I'm finding that a number of users have workflows that
> require them to load the entire file and perform single record edits
> which is, I'll admit, painful when files start to get close to 8-10 mbs
> in size - as changes in the editing window often times are made, but are
> made with a delay (i.e., you type a word - a pause, then the data
> catches up).  This also affects screen resizing, etc.  Tied to this
> problem is the various character encodings that MarcEdit supports (it's
> beyond MARC8 and UTF8).  This as well causes an issue with memory usage
> depending on the encoding in use - and honestly, is one of the big
> reasons for the change away from the assembly components in MarcEdit 4.x
> - that component simply didn't do Unicode well and that's the future of
> MARC.  The current component in MarcEdit does Unicode very well, but
> certain scripts give Windows some fits rendering (performance wise) - so
> it's a problem - one that I'd like to solve.
>
>
>
>
>
> Solutions
>
>
>
> Anyway, that's the problem I'm looking to solve.  I'm looking for a
> solution that will allow users that want to make individual record
> changes on large dataset within the MarcEditor, and do so in a way that
> allows the editor to gracefully handle memory management and
> performance.  The present solution, the one that is completely
> untenable, is to load all the data into an edit control.  On my test
> machines, I can load files up to ~150 MB in size into the control (your
> mileage will vary due to virtual memory restrictions and available ram)
> but it comes at a huge cost.  In Windows (and virtual languages like
> .NET especially), rendering content virtually is expensive.  Memory
> consumed is roughly 4x the source - so, rendering 150 MB of data costs
> my system ~600 MB of virtual ram.  Painful, and performance shows.  This
> is why the preview mode is there.  But let's say you are dealing with a
> smaller dataset, something in the 8-10 MB range.  You are still
> consuming close to 40 MB to render the data - and performance can suffer
> depending on hardware and memory available.  If you need to make
> individual record changes on a batch in that size range, making these
> changes may be frustrating as you may indeed have to deal with a delay
> in entering data as the system re-buffered available memory to handle
> the work.  I'm pretty sure that everyone that's had this happen agrees
> that this needs to change (I've heard from 3 people recently that have
> been experience this problem and are trying to figure out how to make it
> work within existing workflows) and I'm sure there are others that have
> not spoken up or may still use MarcEdit 4.x for very specific tasks
> simply because the handling of larger files for individual record
> editing was better (which is fair, but becomes less and less of a
> reliable solution as more data becomes available in UTF8).
>
>
>
> So I've been thinking about this a lot over the past month, writing some
> test code, developing some wireframes and I want to present some options
> and get some feedback.  Essentially, there are two ways that I think I
> can deal with this issue.  One is to essentially provide real-time
> random access to large files [not preferred], so that the only data
> loaded into the editor will be available within the memory buffer.  This
> would likely be the ideal solution, but it also is the most difficult to
> write simply because all data would need to be mapped to temporary
> buffers, tracked, etc.  Also, when dealing with really large files, the
> random access will not be immediate, meaning that as you move further
> down the file, the ability to page down may become more labored.  The
> benefits however, is that the memory footprint would be much, much lower
> so performance for general, individual record editing, should improve
> greatly.  It also would most closely resemble the current way that
> MarcEdit provided editing within the MarcEditor.  All data would appear
> to be loaded in a Notepad-like interface - you'd page down, scroll down
> just as you do now.  I'm not sure how this would affect Find and Replace
> - but I'm sure we could make it work.
>
>
>
> And while the above may be the more ideal, it's not the one that I'm
> leaning towards (hence this message).  I've been thinking a lot about
> how MARC records are represented in MarcEdit, how they are edited, etc.
> and I'm beginning to believe that when working with a large set of MARC
> records, the best solution wouldn't be to provide simply a complete
> picture of all loaded records, but would be to display groups of
> records, with the ability to page through a recordset.  I've attached
> some wireframes to illustrate this point in the attached PowerPoint.  In
> slide 1, I've provided a demo of how I think the editing may look
> (ignore the menus, icons - these are just part of my test code).
> Essentially, users would define how many records they want to display
> per "page".  I'm thinking that the sweet spot would likely be about 500
> - but I'd make this user defined.  MarcEdit can then, very quickly,
> determine how many records are in the file and then break up the record
> set as pages.  MarcEdit then would only load one page of records at a
> time.  This allows users the ability to quickly do individual edits of
> records, reduces memory footprint and greatly improves the overall
> experience of using large data files.  It also takes system memory
> limitations completely out of the equation, as only a small block of
> records will be displayed at any given time.
>
>
>
> Using this system also would let me rethink how we do finds within a
> Recordset.  At present, when you use the find tool, MarcEdit has to
> enumerate over the entire record set and this is, for all intensive
> purposes, a very memory intensive operation.  Slow too if you have a lot
> of records.  In this new model, I'd add a new button to the Find dialog
> - Find All (see slide 2).  When Find All was used, what would be
> generated is a report of all occurrences of the needle found within the
> record set.  The report would show the criteria in context, with the
> ability to jump to the specific page where the text was found.
> Personally, I think that this could be a big improvement over current
> find, as users would immediately be able to see all the cases in which a
> criteria exists without having to jump through the entire file.
> Additionally, this type of a design would allow me to start thinking
> about the MarcEditor itself, so that record set editing could be done
> with pages (so you could for example, span a new page within a new
> MarcEditor tab so pages could be compared [see slide 3]).  I think that
> this type of design could eventually lead to some fairly interesting
> enhancements - but I also recognize that it will be different.  It
> represents a different way to view and edit records in MarcEdit -
> though, this change really only affect how you edit records individually
> (since global editing is done differently).
>
>
>
> Finally, implementation - if I move down the above path - I can
> integrate the current test code into the existing MarcEdit application
> with little work.  I could wrap up my update and not have to really
> worry about introducing regression errors.  If I try to implement the
> first solution, all bets are off in terms of when it would be done.  It
> would represent a major change to how data is handled within the program
> and I'd have to step back, re-write a lot of code and then find some
> willing users to try  it because there would be a significant chance for
> regression errors.
>
>
>
> Anyway, that's my idea.  I think it addresses a known weakness in the
> program and makes individual record editing better, and does so without
> causing too much interruption to the user.  And, if successful, may
> allow me to slowly remove the preview mode from the MarcEditor, as it
> would no longer be needed.
>
>
>
> How can you help
>
>
>
> If you stayed with me this long and looked at the wireframes, you are
> probably wondering how you can help.  Well, I'm looking for comments and
> ideas on this.  MarcEdit is a very community oriented project.  I'd say
> that over 90% of the work that goes into the program, is done at the
> community's request.  This is an issue that I know has been raised by
> members of the user community, and I'm really waiting to make the
> community involved in the decision.  I'm definitely open to other
> suggestions and suggestions for how to tweak the wireframes (since I
> recognize that there are many places where usability could be improved)
> - but that's kind of where I'm at right now.
>
>
>
> Thanks everyone who made it this far,
>
>
>
> --TR
>
>
>
>
>
> ********************************
> Terry Reese
> Gray Family Chair
> for Innovative Library Services
> 121 Valley Libraries
> Corvallis, Or 97331
> tel: 541.737.6384
> ********************************
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
>
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>

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