It's a good idea, but I'm not sure how practical it is.  When lines wrap, the move to new lines so they are no longer easy to count unless you are constantly parsing the file (which is problematic for performance).  This seems more like the kind of thing that could be flagged in the validator -- so you could run the Validator from Reports and validate the structure, and then receive indicators related to fields that may be too long.

--tr

-----Original Message-----
From: MarcEdit support in technical and instructional matters <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Seth McQuale
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2020 2:31 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MARCEDIT-L] Column numbers in MarcEditor

Greetings,

Many editors show what column the cursor is in. I have noticed that certain MARC fields are common sites for abuse by catalogers who are willing to add more characters than the specified limit. (The 505 and 520 fields come to mind.) They seem to use these fields for promotional essays and perhaps to improve keyword searching for their own titles. I have seen indexing procedures choke on overly-long text fields and pause to repair the problem by chopping up the offending fields. It would be helpful to be able to make a quick check, while still in MarcEditor, for the character-count of longer fields to determine whether to delete the field outright or chop it up into manageable pieces. Is it possible to add a current-column number in the status bar?

--
----------------------------
Seth McQuale, MSLIS
Systems Librarian
New York Institute of Technology
Wisser Memorial Library, Room 112
Old Westbury, NY  11568-8000
[log in to unmask]
(516) 686-1164 [fax (516) 686-1320]
----------------------------

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