Data Format
Home Authors Magazines Oddments

Main Record Types
Special Field Formats
Control Files
Support Files
Associated
Notes
Book ("A") Records Author Fields

Abbrev.cvt

00000.xxx

User Documentation Recent Changes
Book Note ("D") Records Title Fields

Covers.cvt

00config.xxx Index Structure First Editions
Item ("EA") Records Item Types Ft-Links.cvt 00xxx.mag Magazine Indexes First Appearance Notes
Item Qualifier ("EB/C/D/N/O/Q/T/X") Records Publication Details Pseud.cvt pseud.xxx Programs Discussions
Series.cvt valnames.xxx Style Guide Indexing Process
  Synchronising validate.xxx Trigraphs  

Introduction

Underlying the FictionMags Index Family is a formal data format that is used for coding up all the source records. To facilitate future development and to help clarify the format/usage of this data, this set of pages will attempt to describe, formally, what this format comprises.

The first point to stress is that, historically, there were two different formats in use:

While these two formats were very similar in practise, the latter contained a number of extensions (e.g. in the format of publication details). To facilitate the exchange of data there are many parts of the system which exclusively use the "lowest common denominator" (typically the US format), translating the data as needed. While this is no longer necessary the work involved to remove it is to extensive to consider at the moment.

Note that, when illustrating the format of particular fields, the symbol ␢ is used to indicate a space where appropriate.

Basic Data File Layout

Each data file consists of a number of groups of records typically (though not always) separated by a blank line, where each group of records represents a single item (e.g. a book or magazine) being indexed. By convention, files listing books present the groups in alphabetical order of author surname, and in alphabetical order of book title (excluding leading articles) within an author; and files listing magazines present them in chronological order of magazine issue date. For magazine indexes the order of the groups will determine the order of entries in the Issue Index - specifics of magazine indexes are discussed further here.

Each group of records contains up to three different record types, which must be in order:

These are all described in more detail on the specific pages. There are also separate pages devoted to the complexities of some of the more complicated fields:

Control Files

Associated with the data files are a number of control files which are used to expand abbreviations in the files and/or for formatting the files in a manner suitable for publication in the indexes. There are currently four of these:

Each of these (except Covers.cvt) has an associated xxx.new file which is used for holding changes since the data was last synchronised - see the section on Synchronising two sets of data.

Support Files

There are also a number of support files, typically specific to an individual index, that help control the way the index is formatted:

In the first three cases, the "xxx" is replaced by the acronym for the index (e.g. "CFI" for the Crime Fiction Index).

Associated

There are a number of associated pages that provide more detail on some aspects of the index(es):

Notes

Lastly there are a number of pages related to current (and past) discussions between multiple developers of the indexes: