October 2002 - Koha-devel - lists.koha-community.org

New configuration/install script
by Andrew Arensburger 20 Nov '02

20 Nov '02

As I mentioned on IRC a while back, I've been working on a new configuration/installation script for Koha. Now I've uploaded a first draft to the CVS main branch, to give people a look at it. Just run "safe-installer". This is nowhere near complete, but it should be enough for people to tell whether I'm on the right track or not, and whether I should continue. Currently, this script only installs and/or upgrades the Koha database. Some features of note: - The current 'installer.pl' asks a question, makes a change to the system, asks the next question, makest the next change, and so forth. 'safe-installer', on the other hand, asks all of the questions up front, and only then installs everything. This way, if you interrupt it before it's done, you don't wind up with a half-completed installation. - 'safe-installer' doesn't actually do anything itself. There's a Makefile to do the real work of creating the database, installing the web files, etc. This way, you don't have to be root to do the configuration. You might not even have to be root to do the installation. - 'safe-installer' works by creating a "Make.conf" file that contains the configuration values that will be used by 'make'. The advantage of this is that if someone wants to write a Koha RPM/port/apt/package/whatever, they can simply create "Make.conf" and use 'make install', thereby bypassing the interactive installer. - I've thrown in "install-sh", because Koha really ought to be portable, but not every OS has a BSD-compatible 'install' tool, nor does every OS support 'mkdir -p'. 'install-sh' does all of this, and is in the public domain, which should be GPL-compatible. A note in passing: one fairly interesting aspect of this script is that it involves a completely different type of optimization than I'm used to. Normally, when you're trying to estimate the speed of a program, you assume that all atomic operations (integer addition and multiplication, if-then, comparisons, etc.) all take the same amount of time. Here, however, an 'if' statement could take tens of seconds, if it involves getting input from the user. So the trick is to optimize for user time by asking as few questions as possible (in the average case, at least), while at the same time keeping them clear enough to give Joe Average User an idea of what's going on. -- Andrew Arensburger This message *does* represent the arensb(a)ooblick.com views of ooblick.com Build a better mousetrap and the world will immediately get their fingers caught in it.

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Re: cataloging on the koha ils
by Rosalie Blake 06 Nov '02

06 Nov '02

Hello Michelle, I can only answer part of your question, but I'm sending both your question and my reply to the kohalist, where people with eperience in MARC will pick it up, and offer some more answers, I'm sure. Koha is easy for novice cataloguers. As a small public library, we don't need detailed cataloguing for most records, and we do need fast records - we like to get our books on the shelf without delay. So we don't import MARC records any longer. We used to, but gave it up some years back, when we realised it wasn't meeting our needs - too slow and too detailed, and sometimes not appropriate. But I am very well aware that other libraries' priorities are different, and a team of Koha developers has been working on the MARC interface - notably Paul Poulain. I will leave him to comment on your questions about auto-coding. We love Koha. But then it was written to meet our needs, so we would say that, wouldn't we? But I can also say that everyone else here also likes it - and I'm thinking especially of people like volunteers, borrowers, casual users, all of whom find it easy to use. We are particularly proud of Acquisitions, which gives us much better budget control that we ever had in the past. We are just in the process of re-developing our web page (www.library.org.nz) improving the integration with the OPACs and adding functionality for our members to access their own records and renew and reserve from home. Watch out for it towards the end of this month. Cheers, Rosalie Blake Head of Libraries, Horowhenua Library Trust On 31 Oct 2002, at 15:56, Michelle Swanson wrote: > Hi: Is koha easy to use for "novice" catalogers? Does it have a fill > in the blanks template with author, title, publisher, etc., which > auto-codes marc? Does the cataloger need to be very familiar, > somewhat familiar or unfamiliar with marc code? Please advise. Also, > please share your personal views on the koha system. I tried out the > Koha OPAC at Horowhenua Library Trust via the web and it looks > impressive. best regards from, > > > Michelle Swanson > Acquisitions Dept > University of Winnipeg Library > 515 Portage Avenue > Winnipeg, MB Canada R3B 2E9 > m.swanson(a)uwinnipeg.ca > (204)786-9806 > > >

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[Bug 113] "class" does not narrow search
by bugzilla-daemon＠wilbur.katipo.co.nz 31 Oct '02

31 Oct '02

http://bugs.koha.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=113 tonnesen(a)cmsd.bc.ca changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Status|NEW |RESOLVED Resolution| |FIXED ------- Additional Comments From tonnesen(a)cmsd.bc.ca 2002-11-01 16:54 ------- Search.pm was ignoring search strings less than 3 characters (ie class='JF' was ignored, but class='JNF' was okay) ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are the QA contact for the bug, or are watching the QA contact.

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templates
by Tonnesen Steve 30 Oct '02

30 Oct '02

I'd like to propose moving the templates directories out of htdocs and into INTRANETDIR/templates/ and OPACDDIR/templates/ I have a couple of reasons for requesting this change: 1. Template files should never be served up by the web server. I don't anticipate any sensitive data being stored in the templates, but they don't _need_ to be served up by the web server, so they should _not_ be in the document root. Configuring Apache to not serve .tmpl files is an unnecessary hack. 2. During upgrades, it is necessary to preserve custom template directories. If the templates are together and alone in one directory this will be much easier. The htdocs directory is getting pretty empty with all the templating work, but it might contain some on-line documentation at some point. Steve Tonnesen.

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Credits Check
by Nicholas S. Rosasco 30 Oct '02

30 Oct '02

Unless you are Steve@CMSD, or you work for HLT or Katipo, you should to make sure you are on this list as a contributor. I have _not_ been proactive (sorry, but that is the way the cookie crumbles :) ) about making sure I get every new contributing head that pops up. Tip: since there has been only one major release of the manual (with Koha 1.2), if your contributions came after that, you're probably not on the list. PLEASE check this, and get back to me .... this is really the only way we have to make sure everyone's effort gets acknowledged, which we like to do --really! [People who sit on the french, german and devel lists, I'd appreciate it if you could handle making sure those who don't speak english get this, thank you.] Your Documeister, Nick ...who has sent out this sort of request before. --------------------------------------- Koha Credits Horowhenua Library Trust Rosalie Blake, Head of Libraries Jo Ransom Katipo Communications Rachel Hamilton-Williams, General Manager (Webmistress) Simon Blake, Technical Manager, Server Administrator Amanda Atkins, Operations Manager Chris Cormack, 1.2 release guru Olwen Williams Finlay Thompson Gynn Lomax Richard Anderson Jeremy Blake, Katipo Koha Project Manager Rebecca Holden, New Koha.org page Olive T. Canine, Crate Testing & Kiwi Stress Relief Steve Tonnesen, early MARC work, Virtual Bookshelves concept, KohaCD Pawel Skuza, Polish Language porter Glen Stewart Paul Poulain, 1.4 release manager Pat Eyler, Kaitiaki Roger Buck Adam Thick Florian Bischof Sebastiaan Durand Andrew Hooper Mike Mylonas Mike Johnson Mike Hansen Nicolas Morin, French Translation/Traduction Française of the Documentation Nicholas Rosasco, Documentation Editor/Compiler

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Upgrading Koha
by Tonnesen Steve 30 Oct '02

30 Oct '02

As 1.2.3 nears we need to start thinking about how Koha gets upgraded. I have two areas of concern for myself: 1. Preserving custom templates Is 'default' always going to be the only template distributed with Koha? What happens if we start to distribute a template that has the same name as somebody's custom template? Should we have a naming convention for templates distributed with Koha? Other than default, all distributed templates start with koha-, like koha-braillereader, koha-glitzy, etc? Then recommend that custom templates _not_ have the koha- prefix? 2. Preserving custom report scripts I propose that we create a subdirectory called "localreports" in INTRANETDIR/cgi-bin/ that is preserved across upgrades. We also need some convention for generating a list of local (and koha distributed) reports in reports-home.pl. Steve.

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1.2.3RC21
by Tonnesen Steve 29 Oct '02

29 Oct '02

I think that 1.2.3RC21 is getting pretty close to release ready. If anybody can spare some time to install this release candidate and let me know of any bugs they find, it would sure help get it out the door faster. I'm also uploading a new kohacd image based on 1.2.3RC21. It should be available within the next 20 minutes or so... Steve Tonnesen

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Re: [Koha-devel] RC20
by vthuhtala＠netscape.net 29 Oct '02

29 Oct '02

Tonnesen Steve <tonnesen(a)cmsd.bc.ca> wrote: >> after deleting a biblio record next displayed page is catalogue search >> without header and footer > >I could not confirm this. Can you give examples of what you deleted from >the sample data? > delbiblio.pl: redirect("/catalogue/") should probably be /cgi-bin/koha/catalogue-home.pl __________________________________________________________________ The NEW Netscape 7.0 browser is now available. Upgrade now! http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/

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[Bug 106] finlay's address in opac-userupdate.pl
by bugzilla-daemon＠wilbur.katipo.co.nz 28 Oct '02

28 Oct '02

http://bugs.koha.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=106 tonnesen(a)cmsd.bc.ca changed: What |Removed |Added ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Status|NEW |RESOLVED Resolution| |FIXED ------- Additional Comments From tonnesen(a)cmsd.bc.ca 2002-10-29 10:05 ------- I added a new system preference variable: KohaAdminEmailAddress. ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are the QA contact for the bug, or are watching the QA contact.

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RC20
by vthuhtala＠netscape.net 28 Oct '02

28 Oct '02

what happened to printing? I have added to systempreferences printcirculationslips = '1' and 'yes' but it has no effect after deleting a biblio record next displayed page is catalogue search without header and footer is illustrator search working? What tools I need to produce documentation from kohadoc.sgml? (validation with nsgmls chokes to <bookheader> which is not a valid docbook 3.1 element) --- Ville __________________________________________________________________ The NEW Netscape 7.0 browser is now available. Upgrade now! http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at http://webmail.netscape.com/

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