Documentation on the TXT2ISO Program

The TXT2ISO.EXE program is meant for conversion of ASCII
text files to ISO-2709 formatted files. The ISO-2709 files 
can be imported into pre-defined CDS/ISIS databases.

In order to use TXT2ISO, ASCII input text files must be
structured as follows.

1. CDS/ISIS tags must begin in the same character positions
(columns) in each record/line of the input file.

2. The program assumes that all CDS/ISIS tags are of three
digits. Thus single or two-digit tags should be expanded to
three digits, e.g., 001, 020, etc.

3. The data for all tags also should begin from the same
character position (column) in each record/line of the
input file.  For instance, tags could always be in columns
1-3, and data for each tag could begin in column 5.

4. Data for a tag could be continued in more than one line.
However, continuation lines for data begin also from the
same column position. Thus for instance if data begins in
column 5 of each line, all continuation lines of data will
also begin in column 5.  

5. Each logical record of the input file ends with a ##
line in the first two positions.

Running TXT2ISO

1. This is being provided as an EXE File. Simply type
txt2iso and press the Enter key.

2. You will now be prompted to enter the column position
where the CDS/ISIS tag begins in records of the input file.

3. Next you will be prompted to enter the column position
where data fields begin in records of the input file. 

4. Next you will be asked to enter the name of the input
ASCII text file.

5. The program then begins converting records in the input
file into a file called ISO.MST which is the ISO file that
can later be imported into a pre-defined CDS/ISIS database
using the same tagging structure as given in the input file.

6. TXT2ISO displays the number of records output to the ISO
file.

Example

1. An example of a valid input file record follows:

001 ^lHaravu^fL.J.%^lVenkatesan^fV.
100 A time-series numeric database for ICRISAT
200 International Association for Agricultural Librarians and
     Documentalists (IAALD) Quarterly Bulletin
220 ^v24^i1^p23-34
260 1992
270 Describes the project to create a time-series database
     on crops and resources of interest to ICRISAT. The application
     uses published sources to capture useful numeric data. 
##

As can be seen from the above, tags in records begin in the
same character position, i.e., 1 to 3. Also data fields
always begin in the character position in each line, viz.,
at position 5. Continuation lines also begin in character
position 5 and the last line of the logical input record is
##. There could of be several such logical records in the
input file.

Any queries about TXT2ISO may be made to:

L.J Haravu
Manager,
Library & Documentation Services
ICRISAT
Patancheru P.O.
Andhra Pradesh 502 324
India.