I am catalog a number of multilingual books. Some books are in the Roman alphabet but quite a few books are in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Russian, that is a non-Roman alphabet.
Under the old standard, a title might look like this.
Record 1
100 a ??, ??.
242 a Handbook of modern Japanese grammar : including lists of words and expressions with English equivalents for reading aid / Shusei Sato. eng
245 a ???????? : ???????????????????? / ????.
260 a ?? : ???, 1999.
700 a Sato, Shusei.
740 a Kogo Nihon bumpo beran : Nihongo tokushu hyogen to sono Eigo soto yaku oyobi reidai tsuki / Sato Shusei.
About fifteen years or so ago, a new standard emerged. The cataloging record above is supposed to be composed as below.
Record 2
100 6 880-01 a Sato, Shusei.
242 a Handbook of modern Japanese grammar : including lists of words and expressions with English equivalents for reading aid / Shusei Sato.eng
245 6 880-02 a Kogo Nihon bumpo beran : Nihongo tokushu hyogen to sono Eigo soto yaku oyobi reidai tsuki / Sato Shusei.
264 6 880-03 a Tokyo : Hokuseido [Press], 1999.
880 6 100-01/$1 a ??, ??.
880 6 245-02/$1 a ???????? : ???????????????????? / ????.
880 6 264-03/$1 ?? : ???, 1999.
Only the Roman alphabet is supposed to appear in the 1XX through 7XX fields and 9XX, that is the fields prefixed with a number between 000 and 999, and only non-Roman writing systems are supposed to appear in 880. In fact the 880 field is the only field in which non-Roman writing systems are supposed to appear.
It's somewhat a mechanical process to move and copy the fields and subfields, and to add in the 6 subfields so that the Roman counterparts end up corresponding with their non-Roman counterparts. That is not my question.
My question is this: Is it possible in Xojo to detect a non-Roman character (or string) from a Roman character (or string)? I am familiar with the ASC function, but I don't know whether ASC fails when a character whose code point falls outside 0-127 or maybe 0-255 to allow for letters with diacritical marks. If ASC handles characters outside the Roman alphabet, then it greatly reduces the complexity of the larger task.
Thanks for your help in this matter.
Footnote on MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloging) cataloging
100 signals the main author.
242 signals the title in translation.
245 signals the full title as it appears on the title page.
260 and 264 signal the publisher, distributor, etc.
700 signals an additional contributor (author, compiler, editor, etc.) or a variation in the spelling of the contributor's name.
740 signals an additional title or the title of a part within the work. (246 fields do this, too, but the criteria for a 740 field vs. 246 field are different.)
880 signals that one of the above or another field that will appear in a non-Roman writing system. 880 is the only field in which non-Roman characters are supposed to appear. The 6 points to the corresponding 0XX - 9XX field in the Roman alphabet.
I recognize MARC cataloging is cumbersome and it's even been called outdated, but it's what I have to work with at present.
P. S. The encoding is not a problem.
P. P. S. Sorry for the long-windedness.
Thanks again.