August 2007 - Koha-devel - lists.koha-community.org

UTF-8
by Dorian Meid 03 Dec '07

03 Dec '07

Gentlemen, I have a problem using UTF-8 with Koha. If I import MARC-Data via z3950 special characters are treated differently ÄÜÖäüö works at some pages but not in all. ß dosn't work at any page. This is the ü I get from z3950 and this is the ü which is generated when I type it. These are two different characters. I'm using Koha 2.2.8, MySQL5 and Apache 1.3 on Mac OSX 10.4 with Firefox. I've read the notes on the Wiki and my server, Database and the tables are set to UTF-8. I also set the templates encoding variable and added the encoding to httpd.conf The z3950 server sends data UTF-8 encoded Did I miss something? Dorian Meid

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Code Cleaning : Authorities.
by Henri-Damien LAURENT 13 Sep '07

13 Sep '07

Those first two are the main reason I am writing. Does anyone still use thesaurus.pl ? Considering that now frameworks allow to link Authorities with one another, I think we should drop linker down. One problem is : All linking and hierarchy code is UNIMARC and hardcoded. I would like to allow more versatility on this. But this would require those new system preferences : relation type subfield (UNIMARC 2) relation authnumber subfield (UNIMARC 3) relation authtype subfield (we should agree on using authtypes or authtypecode as value in those subfields) (UNIMARC 5) relation tag (UNIMARC 550) child flag (UNIMARC f) mother flag (UNIMARC "g") Plus would require some little modifications of auth_finder to enable relation Choice. Maybe it could interesting to enable multiple authority link for a field. This would only require to manage a list of authorities to search in. We reviewed the AuthoritiesMARC code with Paul. And thought that unification between Authorities.pm and Biblio.pm was not a worth the work. a) Authorities search is much different from biblio search. b) inner tables differs so that it would oblige us to make heavier functions. So Authorities Will stay as such. While Code cleaning it, some questions remains. GetSummary as well as Buildhererarchies is still quite customer dependant and used for display. But it Hardcodes some HTML preprinting. So that when people want This or that display, one has to modify a C4/AuthoritiesMARC. For instance : One wants that term list are displayed : /Heading/ BT /Broader Term/ NT /Narrower Term/ UF /Used For/ /Comments./ Another wants that term list are displayed : /Heading/ TG /Broader Term/ TS /Narrower Term/ EP /Used For/ Comments : /Comments/. Another wants only Heading$a -- Heading$b -- Heading$z And we have to make little changes to the code and then upgrading process is harder. Solution ? A) Using xslt ? B) using HTML::Template to "simulate xslt" Then ppl would only have to modify template for summary processing "mini" template on each record. C) keeping this as such. This would also be helpful in getting information for search resultlists in biblios more user adapted. Comments welcome. -- Henri-Damien LAURENT

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Koha Database Structure Meeting
by Joshua M. Ferraro 12 Sep '07

12 Sep '07

Hi all, Paul and I have done some cleaning of the kohastructure.sql file for the 3.0 release lately (see the following commitdiffs: http://git.koha.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=Koha;a=commitdiff;h=d60d540d6db582… http://git.koha.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=Koha;a=commitdiff;h=b40c26cffedf10… ). There are still a few remaining issues to clear up so we've decided to hold a meeting strictly about the Koha SQL definition for 3.0. The meeting's open to anyone interested in database design, feel free to join us on August 31st at 16:00 GMT. Here's the time in your area: http://tinyurl.com/2bteuw We'll be meeting on IRC at irc.katipo.co.nz on channel #koha, though you can also reach us via the freenode relay on #koha at freenode. I've put up a meeting agenda, please feel free to add to it: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=meetingnotes07aug31 Cheers, -- Joshua Ferraro SUPPORT 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

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Testing Koha 3
by Bradley Duane Peters 03 Sep '07

03 Sep '07

Hello, I'm aware that Koha 3 is not yet even in beta, but I'd be interested to know whether its at the point were it can be run. I have also looked at the Roadmap on the wiki but at this point I'm not familiar enough with the codebase to interpret that properly. I did the basic checkout from the public Git repository and have been looking at that. It's very possible I've missed it because I'm not very familiar with Koha but I can't find any of the zebra database stuff. In short, is it possible to setup an instance of Koha using the code from the repository? And, if so is there somewhere in particular I should be looking for help? Thanks, Bradley Peters.

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Re: XSS Vulnerabilities in Koha
by Rick Welykochy 31 Aug '07

31 Aug '07

[moved to Koha-devel] ... Chris Cormack wrote: > We did fix this up a while back for the opac, but overtime > vulnerabilities might have crept back in. I'm not too worried about the > intranet side, if someone malicious has access to that, you have bigger > problems than xss :-) But Id certainly like to see patches for the opac. Correct me if I am wrong, but XSS does not require the attacker to have access to your server. Just the ability to carefully construct a URL to that server that allows an attack via a (naive) user on the server, the Intranet in this case. If one is already logged into the Intranet and then is somehow tricked into clicking on a malicious (XSS) link found elsewhere, in an email or on another site, bingo! Gotcha! I certainly do not profess to be an expert in XSS, but I'd imagine that if one was determined enough to get access to the Koha Intranet of a particular library for some nefarious purpose, a cookie theft might be possible. It would be educational to see an XSS in action on Koha, a real world example. Then more eyes could have a look and help with an XSS audit. My brief read on the web about XSS indicates that there are many many varieties of the exploit, so that one would have to keep in mind these many attack vectors while reviewing the sourcecode. And it would seem that many attacks originate in user-supplied form data, so that proper escaping and entity replacement of significant delimiters like < and > are paramount as a first level of defense. Which brings to mind another audit: one for SQL injection attacks. I haven't had a close at the code, but a grep of "->quote(" turns up 102 uses in Koha/2.2.9, which leaves one feeling somewhat confident that the problem has been addressed at one stage. cheers rickw -- _________________________________ Rick Welykochy || Praxis Services I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. -- Mark Twain

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[Fwd: Re: [Koha-devel] how to contribute to Koha]
by Paul POULAIN 31 Aug '07

31 Aug '07

-- Paul POULAIN et Henri Damien LAURENT Consultants indépendants en logiciels libres et bibliothéconomie (http://www.koha-fr.org) Tel : 04 91 31 45 19

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how to contribute to Koha
by samuel desseaux 31 Aug '07

31 Aug '07

Hello! I'm newbie on this list and i would like to contribute to the development of Koha. My name is Samuel (you can say "sam",if you want). I'm 32 years old and i live in North of France. I work in a library and i am in charge of everything concerning computers,IT. At work, i use Horizon of Dynix but i hope that one day, i could use a free software like Koha. So, i'd like to know how i could contrubute. I can coding, debugging,translating,writing documentations ( i don't know in which field there's a lack of contributors). Bye sam

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IMPORTANT Koha 3.0 updatedatase and kohastructure.sql
by Joshua M. Ferraro 31 Aug '07

31 Aug '07

Hi all, For years, we've had trouble maintaining the official Koha SQL definition, it seems like every developer probably has a slightly different definition. This is fine, however, we need to decide on an appropriate process for updating the official kohastructure.sql file that forms the basis for the new Web Installer in Koha 3.0. If you look back through the history of this file: http://cvs.savannah.nongnu.org/viewvc/koha/installer/kohastructure.sql?root… You'll notice vastly different versions ... people seem to just overwrite it with a new def exported in their favorite tool (mysqldump, phpmyadmin, etc.). Recently I had to revert kohastructure.sql in CVS because it patently failed for me ... I noticed that there are some definitions missing as well, and discrepancies between versions w/respect to the constraints. For instance, I asked Paul this afternoon to send me his 3.0 SQL definition, but that didn't include the 'defaultvalue' column in the marc_subfield_structure table, and, as a result, the MARC editor is broken for new installations when using that definition. I'd also like to point out that updatedatabase should start completely blank for 3.0. IMO updatedatabase shouldn't be the upgrade path from 1.x or 2.x to 3.0 ... rather, it should be the upgrade path for 3.0 to 3.2, etc. Other thoughts? I'd like to get feedback from everyone on the best way to maintain kohastructure.sql and updatedatabase, to make sure we always have a known SQL definition and update process. Comments, ideas? Cheers, -- Joshua Ferraro SUPPORT 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

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dummy function for gettext?
by Owen Leonard 31 Aug '07

31 Aug '07

I'm curious about something in the 3.0 templates: <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"> function _(s) { return s } // dummy function for gettext </script> Can anyone tell me what purpose that serves? Thanks, Owen -- Web Developer Nelsonville Public Library http://www.myacpl.org

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Altering Koha
by Roger Horne 28 Aug '07

28 Aug '07

As I understand it, the reason to use templates is so that users can alter the relevant Koha display. I am however finding it very difficult to see how to make one particular change in the current version. As I have said, the library I am concerned with is a professional library, ie similar to a reference library save that the books can be borrowed. The edition of a book is in most cases relevant since the user may well want an old edition rather than the current one - or vice versa ... (I have one old book where the 3rd edition is in my view much better than the 4th which was abbreviated because of post-war paper shortages.) Alternatively he may need to ensure that he has the latest edition. So I would like eg http://radchams.co.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?bib=123 to include a line such as Edition: 17th Ed. I can see how to alter opac-detail.tmpl using something like  ... but I cannot see where or how I would add the appropriate $template->param() command (and what the command would be to get what appears to be 250a). The koha docs are in the main excellent but I cannot see how to do this. Roger -- Roger Horne roger(a)hrothgar.co.uk http://hrothgar.co.uk/YAWS/

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