September 2005 - Koha-devel - lists.koha-community.org

Barcode Printing Problems
by Joshua Ferraro 13 Sep '05

13 Sep '05

Hi all, Is anyone using barcode printing on a production system? I recently tried to get them working and although I can get it to produce barcodes there are two problems: 1. The file that's exported has an extension of .pl ... this means that most OSes can't determine that it's a PDF by default. What's the best way to export it as a useful filename and extension? 2. The barcodes that are generated have leading zeros and one zero after the barcode. So they're almost right, but in their current form aren't really useful (don't scan correctly). Anyone else experiencing the same problems? Any solutions out there? Cheers, -- Joshua Ferraro VENDOR SERVICES FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE President, Technology migration, training, maintenance, support LibLime Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS jmf(a)liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS

6 5

Koha Statuses and MARC?
by Joshua Ferraro 13 Sep '05

13 Sep '05

Paul et al, In Paul's proposed scheme for item statuses, the items.notforloan field is linked to MARC field 942$k and then an authorized value is set for that field (defined by the library). Before we invest too much development energy on this idea I'd like to question whether it's even a good idea to store status information in the MARC record, especially we we move toward using Zebra to store our textual (MARC) database. Stephen and I spoke earlier today and he's got me thinking that maybe it's not such a good idea to store statuses in MARC. MARC wasn't really designed for anything but the static record information. It's ill-suited for transactional based data such as statuses. I propose that for Koha 3.0 we create a new field in the Koha tables called 'items.status'. items.status can be a numeric value and have a set of library-defined authorized values. We can then add a framework for setting those values that a library must setup when they install the system. For instance, it should be possible to set Koha to automatically set an items status to 'in transit' when an item is on reserve to a patron in a branch other than the holdingbranch (when the item is returned) and 'waiting' when it arrives and is scanned. But the goal would be to make this a setting that the library could define when setting Koha up, a set of 'status rules'. Comments, suggestions, volunteers? Cheers, -- Joshua Ferraro VENDOR SERVICES FOR OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE President, Technology migration, training, maintenance, support LibLime Featuring Koha Open-Source ILS jmf(a)liblime.com |Full Demos at http://liblime.com/koha |1(888)KohaILS

2 1

The future of Koha (some ideas and thoughts) [IMPORTANT] (I hope) and [LONG] (not so)
by Paul POULAIN 13 Sep '05

13 Sep '05

Hello all, I was in Paris yesterday (what does not justify a mail on koha-devel, I agree ;-) ), and was thinking to the future of Koha in the TGV (3hours to do 850km !) I suddenly realized that, with the architecture we are working on for Koha 3.0, we were on the way to develop what I call "Koha-Suite". I mean in Koha 3.0, we will have : * a web portal. (Our actual OPAC) * a tool to store large datas (Zebra) * all ILS features. We spoke once to have RSS feeds in OPAC, I'm sure that's a great idea that could be implemented quite easily in Koha and highly improve OPAC use & utility. Once rss feeds will be availabe in OPAC, we could consider Koha interfaced with any CMS, as most actual CMS are providing rss feeds. We could imagine "rss boxes" in main page as well as in opac-user page. Just a suggestion for instance, it's not done (except in some argentinian code, iirc) So we have a software in 4 parts. All of them can be modularized to consider we have 4 differents bricks that can be foundation of a complete document-oriented-suite. What we could add later is : * a brick to manage electronic document (like thesis & internal production of the user-company) Internal docs as well as OpenArchive harvester. * a brick to index external sources, that could be sorted & analyzed to do a knowledge DB (in french, it's "veille technologique", that I don't know how to translate. I mean : a tool that automatically check some databases daily, compute summaries on accurate documents, and send them to users) Of course, the 2 later bricks won't be written in a day or 2. Not even in this month. And probably not for 3.0 But I'm sure (& hope you will confirm) that it's the way to go. If confirmed, then Koha developpers will have to write all 3.0 stuff with this goal in mind, on the long term. It means having a code structure modular enough to be able to install a brick without all the others. Just one technical proposal, about code organization : We could have, under koha-cvs, one directory for each brick : * /opac/ for web portal (yes, we already have it !!!) * /core/ for the common and core scripts (I think actual modules : parameters, reports and members) * /ils/ for ils part of Koha suite (I think actual acquisition, cataloguing, circulation, authorities) * /XXX/ for electronic docs management (new brick, does not exist yet) * /YYY/ for external source (KB) (new brick too) * The /C4/ directory contains every core Perl packages and will be a common tool, used by every brick, so it can stay on top level of CVS org. With such an architecture it would be easy to release specific packages, for "Koha ILS-only", "Koha KB-only", "Koha ILS and electronic doc management" ... I have created a little scheme to explain my idea (maybe a basis for a future marketing document ;-) ) You can find it on : http://___www___.paulpoulain.com/Koha_futur.pdf (remove the trailing ___ before and after www, I just want this link not to be indexed by google) Don't distribute this doc outside from this list for instance pls, it's my idea, not the Koha team decision ;-) -- Paul POULAIN Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)

6 12

some informations on item status
by Paul POULAIN 13 Sep '05

13 Sep '05

Hello, Following some IRC chat & joshua commits, here are some explanations about item status : "item status" covers 2 things : - what is automatically set - what is manually set what is automatically set => the position of the book regarding issuing. It means wether the book is on issue, waiting, or "available". There is no field the DB to store this : the issues table is searched everytime it's needed => the "on order" flag, that can be set only when there is no item for a given book, but an order placed on it (remember a book is immediatly created when you place an order, in MARC as well as in non-MARC DB) what is manually set => it's 3 different fields in items table : - notforloan - itemlost - wthdrawn Since Koha 1.x, all those fields have the following meaning : 0 means "no", and 1 means "yes". So notforloan=1 basically means item is not for loan and notforloan=0 means its not not for loan (= can be issued) In Koha 2.0, i've added a feature that works at least for notforloan and MARC=ON : you can define a list of authorized values that are integers and used in the MARC subfield that is mapped to items.notforloan. the rule being : 0 means "no" >1 means "yes". Thus, you can define why an item is "notforloan". Can be, for example "being repaired", or whatever you want. The consequence is that you can have notforloan meaning : 0 : available 1 : not for loan 2 : lost 3 : withdrawn 4 : being repaired 5 : ... and thus lost & wthdrawn fields are useless for me. HTH -- Paul POULAIN Consultant indépendant en logiciels libres responsable francophone de koha (SIGB libre http://www.koha-fr.org)

2 2

Independed branch functions
by Owen Leonard 13 Sep '05

13 Sep '05

HDL, Can you give us all a summary of the new independent branch functions you've added recently? What kind of things does it allow and restrict? Thanks, Owen

2 1

Boolean operators in koha opac search
by Partha Mukhopadhyay 13 Sep '05

13 Sep '05

Dear friends, Does KOHA support Boolean (AND, OR, NOT), relational (>, >=,<,=<,=) and positional (NEAR and PROXIMITY) operators in OPAC search? I tried to combine two keywords with simple AND, OR and NOT operator. But it is not working. Is there any symble to indicate these operator such as & for AND, | for OR and ^ for NOT? These symbols (&, | , ^) are also not working for combined search. Help me.... Parthasarathi Mukhopadahyay VU, DLISc, India -- India.com free e-mail - www.india.com. Check out our value-added Premium features, such as an extra 20MB for mail storage, POP3, e-mail forwarding, and ads-free mailboxes!

2 1

z3950import.pl?
by Owen Leonard 13 Sep '05

13 Sep '05

Is z3950import.pl currently used by Koha? I was curious about the templates it calls, which look very out of date (only some cosmetic changes for the last few years). Could this script and the corresponding templates (under marcimport) be safely removed from HEAD? -- Owen

2 1

Koha localization
by Partha Mukhopadhyay 12 Sep '05

12 Sep '05

Dear friends, Finally I have done koha localization (in Bengali lanuage - an Indian regional language) for both the version Windows and Linux. The procedure I adopted is as follows: 1. I copied npl directory under opac-template in a new folder npl_bengali. 2. Then changed charset=ISO-8859-1 to charset=UTF-8 everywhre it (charset=ISO-8859-1) appeared in .INC file under /include directory. 3. In the system parameter setup I then changed opac theme to npl_bengali (it appeared as an option automatically). 4. Finally used an Unicode compliant virtual keyboard (Avro) to enter query, to enter cataloguing data and to change interface language. 5. It works nicely. I have also tested import and export of koah data (bibliogaphic, members etc.) in mysql directly and found it works correctly. 6. I'm entering data in linux server through windows XP client becaues virtual keyboard is available in windows version only. Possibly in future we'll overcome this limitation also. Thanks a lot to contributors in koha mailing list. Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay Lecturer, Deptt. of Library and Inf. Sc. Vidyasagar University, India -- India.com free e-mail - www.india.com. Check out our value-added Premium features, such as an extra 20MB for mail storage, POP3, e-mail forwarding, and ads-free mailboxes!

1 0

[Fwd: localization]
by Chris Cormack 09 Sep '05

09 Sep '05

Hi Guys Im off today down south to the Lianza Conference, but I thought that Id forward this to the list and hopefully someone, or some people can get back to Michal. Owen, I remember you were interested in Czech I think? Chris -- Chris Cormack Katipo Communications Programmer www.katipo.co.nz 027 4500 789

1 0

New Koha Website Soft Launched Today
by Russel Garlick 08 Sep '05

08 Sep '05

Hi Everyone, We have soft launched the new look koha website this morning kiwi time. I say soft launched, because we are still finishing off content for some hidden sections and we aren't really ready to start crowing about it at the moment, so there will be no press releases etc at this stage. Couple of things We have set up redirects so that existing links to the major sections of the old site still work. e.g www.koha.org/drive -> www.koha.org/showcase Chris has setup cgi::irc that points to #koha-lobby - http://www.koha.org/community/irc.html Any issues with content, please let us know - http://www.koha.org/community/website.html Cheers -- Russel Garlick Operations Manager Katipo Communications Ph: +64 4 934 1285 Fax: +64 4 934 1286 Mob: +64 27 537 1377 Skype: russelgarlick Web http://www.katipo.co.nz

1 0