On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 07:52:04PM -0500, Morbus Iff wrote:
> my $author = MARC::Field->new;
> $author->author_name('Logan, Robert K.');
> $author->author_data('1939-');
>
> my $title = MARC::Field->new;
> $title->something("The alphabet effect /';
> $title->authority( $author->author_name );
>
> Is that something anyone would be interested in? I suspect there are a huge
> amount of problems with the approach (most prominently that the idea of
> using
> tag numbers was to reduce typing in the first place), but has anyone ever
> had some non-MARC-expert intern try to modify some code and screw it up?
> Would "English"'d methods like this be helpful?
Personally, I don't like the idea of adding this methods to MARC::Field.
MARC::Field is a generic class for representing a MARC field, and shouldn't
have methods in it that are specific for a particular flavor of field. Also,
we've taken pains to keep the MARC::Record class as simple as possible, and
this would add a fair amount of complexity for little gain.
It might however be worthwhile pursuing the addition of MARC::Record::Simple
which subclasses MARC::Record, and MARC::Field::Author, MARC::Field::Title,
... which subclass MARC::Field. Just a thought.
//Ed
