January 2008 - Koha-devel - lists.koha-community.org

Status of Debian and Koha
by Vincent Danjean 05 Aug '08

05 Aug '08

Hi, I'm pleased to announce that most of Koha dependencies (as listed in Makefile.PL) are present and up-to-date in Debian. The only exceptions are: * XML::RSS: the package libxml-rss-perl is outdated but its maintainer has just accepted that the package will be maintained by the Debian Perl Group. So it should be ok very soon. * Zebra [and Koha itself]: they will need more work According to a recent post on this list, zebra seems to require a more recent version of ZOOM (or at least of libyaz) than the one currently in Debian: Makefile.PL (from Koha) requires ZOOM >= 1.16 that works with libyaz2 2.1.48. Both ZOOM 1.16 and libyaz2 2.1.48 are on my webpage and in Debian experimental. But newer versions seem to be required. There is good hope here again that we will be able to upload an up-to-date yaz package in a few weeks. Next step: packaging zebra and Koha... Best regards, Vincent -- Vincent Danjean GPG key ID 0x9D025E87 vdanjean(a)debian.org GPG key fingerprint: FC95 08A6 854D DB48 4B9A 8A94 0BF7 7867 9D02 5E87 Unofficial pacakges: http://www-id.imag.fr/~danjean/deb.html#package APT repo: deb http://perso.debian.org/~vdanjean/debian unstable main

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new sysprefs
by Paul POULAIN 20 Feb '08

20 Feb '08

Hello, i'm translating the syspref added this week, and have found some that are only defined, and not used in the code : - WebBasedSelfCheck - staffClientBaseURL - minPasswordLength - noItemTypeImages - noOPACHolds (+ kados said, and he was right, that setting "no" to a "noXXXX" parameter means "XXXX", so we should probably rename this syspref to something "positive") - emailLibrarianWhenHoldIsPlaced - holdCancelLength - libraryAddress - finesMode (this one is used, but only in C4/SIP/Patron.pm, which is, afaik, specific & not production ready - globalDueDate - itemBarcodeInputFilter - singleBranchMode - URLLinkText - noOPACUserLogin (which would be a duplicate of opacuserlogin iiuc + kados said, and he was right, that setting "no" to a "noXXXX" parameter means "XXXX", so we should probably rename this syspref to something "positive") - OPACDisplayExtendedSubInfo - OPACViewOthersSuggestions - OPACURLOpenInNewWindow - OPACUserCSS (what does this one mean ? We already have opacstylesheet, opaccolorstylesheet) - emailPurchaseSuggestions There are so many missing that I just checked my repo was uptodate !!! so, were they here by mistake ? it is some planned features ? something i've missed ? cheers -- Paul POULAIN BibLibre SARL Expert en Logiciels Libres pour l'info-doc Tel : 04 91 31 45 19

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Web installer, database, Darwin (maybe other BSDs?), qx(), mysql
by MJ Ray 16 Feb '08

16 Feb '08

This is just a short note to let the list know that I've found a couple of problems with the installation process which affect at least Darwin, MacOS X installations and I wouldn't be surprised if other BSD-like systems had similar problems. Anyone managed to install successfully on one? 1. MARC::File::XML won't install under sudo perl -MCPAN. The make test step fails. Running as root works. Not sure why this is and I've no plans to debug it further. This had me mystified for far too long. 2. the web installer can't invoke the mysql command-line client. The error is like "sh: line 1: -u: command not found" and appears once for each SQL file. I think this is the portability problem described in man perlop under the qx subheading. It's very similar to a problem in the 2.x installer. Galen has offered a few possible solutions (IPC::Open3, IPC::Cmd), I think I know some other possibles (DBIx modules and so on) and there's the solution I put in place last July that hdl rejected (pure DBI) if we get really stuck. I'll work through them until one works (starting with open3) unless anyone has a quick fix or sees a fatal flaw in any of them. I should have something coded in about 12 hours' time. Hope that helps someone, -- MJ Ray http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html tel:+44-844-4437-237 - Webmaster-developer, statistician, sysadmin, online shop builder, consumer and workers co-operative member http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ - Writing on koha, debian, sat TV, Kewstoke http://mjr.towers.org.uk/

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Re: [Koha] Zebra Indexing Problems
by Joshua Ferraro 05 Feb '08

05 Feb '08

Hi Christine, On 1/30/08, Mueller, Christine, DCA <Christine.Mueller(a)state.nm.us> wrote: > > > Environment: Koha 3 Alpha / Ubuntu 7.1.0 / Zebra 2.0.26 / Mac-Tel Hardware / > MARC21 > > No experience with Koha 2.x; our goal is to become familiar with Koha while > waiting for Koha 3 Beta Good plan :-) > Problems with Zebra Indexing: > > > > 1) When biblio and biblioitem deleted from database data remained in > Zebra indexes and search results displayed link to biblio which was no > longer in database, even after indexes rebuilt. – How to prevent? Could you clarify how you deleted data from the database? Did you use the API, or directly query the RDBMS? Do you have the zebraqueue daemon running? > > > 2) Sometimes new biblios would not be indexed for 20-30 minutes and > other times Zebra indexes would need to be rebuilt to force indexing of new > biblios. – Any suggestions for solving delayed indexing problem? Do you have the zebraqueue daemon running? > 3) When Zebra server is restarted Zebra directories are missing and > must be restored. – How can server be restarted without deleting > directories? Hmm ... that's very strange ... which make target did you use? standard, dev? > 4) Today searching no longer works at all. Zebra server was restarted, > missing directories were restored and indexes were rebuilt. Biblios and > biblioitems are still in the database. – Any suggestions for restoring > search function *without* reinstalling Zebra? i think we need to figure out why your zebra directories are disappearing ... > 5) If we want to export the biblios and biblioitems (less than 25 at > this time) in the database to create a backup file in case we need to do a > total reinstall of Koha and Zebra are there any "gotchas" or best practices? The MARC data is stored as a blob in biblioitems, so you could just mysqldump that table ... there are also some utilities in the interface in Tools -> Export Bibliographic and Holdings Data; as well as some command line tools that do the same thing in misc/ directory. So ... we need to figure out why your zebra configuration isn't working well, could you tell us a bit more about your environment? Also, I'd suggest we take this discussion to the koha-devel list where more of the technical questions tend to get hashed out (I've CCed your question to that list). Here's the list info: http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel 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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a charmed letter about characters....
by Ignacio Javier 01 Feb '08

01 Feb '08

Hi all, I'm stuck on a **madness bubble**, in Koha 3 i18n. I've trying to import ISO records that use the upper part of 8 bit ASCII(latin1), and I've found that drives to an important warning: [Thu Jan 31 18:28:46 2008] import.pl: no mapping found for [0xCD] at position 23 in / Manuel Murguía; MURGUÍA, Manuel; g0=ASCII_DEFAULT g1=EXTENDED_LATIN at /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8/MARC/Charset.pm line 210, <fh000011201706011.mrc> line 1. ...that result in not recognition of latin characters when imported Seems that g0 and g1 are reckon OK, the input encoding of the MARC record is in 8-bit ASCII extended, but the imported record is not imported correctly!!! In Koha.pm is the butter: sub FixEncoding { my $marc=shift; my $record = MARC::Record->new_from_usmarc($marc); #HERE<<<******** We are using MARC21. The rare part is the MARC::Charset issue, [0xCD] is latin1 OK, where is the problem? USMARC has not mapping for extended latin 1 chars? What perl module::method should I use for decoding MARC? Thanks in advance! Ignacio Javier Gómez Rodríguez Analista - Programador Tfno: 902905590 - Fax: 981571425 ignacio.gomez(a)coremain.com www.coremain.com

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Reservation
by C W Nel 30 Jan '08

30 Jan '08

Can someone please tell me if a reservation is handled only by biblionumber and not by ISBN at all? Thanks

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Authorities indexing
by Galen Charlton 30 Jan '08

30 Jan '08

Hi, I have been doing some work with the (Zebra) indexing definitions for MARC21 authority records. One of the current problems is that it is impossible to effectively search on the complete heading if subdivisions are present. For example, a topical heading such as 150 $a Medicine $x Ability testing is currently indexed as two separate phrases, "Medicine" and "Ability testing". A search for "medicine ability testing" doesn't work, and searching on the two phrases separately (he,ext=medicine and he,ext="ability testing") would also pick up a "ability testing -- medicine" heading if such existed in the authority file. I have found no way to fix this using Zebra's GRS-1 filter and its elm and melm directives in records.abs. Consequently, I have been working with Zebra's DOM XML filter, which generates index entries by mapping a MARC XML record to index terms via XSLT, and have been able to get much better results. Two patches containing the XSLT can be found at http://manage-gmc.dev.kohalibrary.com/patches/ Since manually maintaining the whole indexing XSL would be rather unwieldy, I've created a concise XML representation of the indexing definitions, authority-koha-indexdefs.xml. This in turn is mapped via the XSL transform koha-indexdefs-to-zebra.xsl to produce the XSL to be used by Zebra, authority-zebra-indexdefs.xsl. I have not yet made a formal schema for the Koha indexing definitions XML, but once its syntax has been extended to cover UNIMARC and bibliographic records, this could be an approach to take to have all Zebra indexing use the DOM XML module. In addition, it opens the possibility of creating code tthat allows users to work with the Zebra indexing definitions from the staff interface -- the definitions could be stored in the database, then serialized to XML and transformed to the Zebra indexing XSLT. Comments requested. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton Koha Application Developer LibLime galen.charlton(a)liblime.com p: 1-888-564-2457 x709

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[IMPORTANT] transfer & reserve problem/question (bug ?)
by Paul POULAIN 30 Jan '08

30 Jan '08

Hello world, The status of a book, in the result list of a query is given by the items.onloan (952$q in marc21 if I don't mind). This field let Koha know wether the book is available or issued. If 952$7 -notforloan-, $1 -itemlost-, $0 -wthdrawn is set, the status will be correctly displayed. but what if a book is being transfered and/or reserved. Actually, the book is displayed as "available", which is wrong (unless i've missed some parameter someone will point ;-) ) imo, a book being transfered should display "1 item being transfered from X to Y" (in staff interface) and "Not available" (in opac) a book reserved should be displayed likely. The SAN-OP has this feature in it's specific 3.0 version, running live since 1 year now, and it display those information. How could we reintroduce this behaviour ? the easiest solution would be, in to introduce a test for that in C4/Search.pm/sub searchResults. what do you think of this solution ? Another one would be to have new fields in items table, to store a transfer or a reserve, but I think it's too complex. -- Paul POULAIN BibLibre SARL Expert en Logiciels Libres pour l'info-doc Tel : 04 91 31 45 19

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Circulate by callnumber
by Jose Miguel Parrella Romero 28 Jan '08

28 Jan '08

Greetings, I've been told it's considered near-sacrilegy, but I would like to write a patch for Koha that allows staff to circulate items by callnumber. AFAICT it's only possible to do so using the item barcode, which might be a problem for items migrated from ILS that didn't allow/weren't used to store barcodes for each item, or simply for items that don't have barcodes and circulate. I modified the template and the circulation.pl script in order to handle an additional callnumber variable, and then I went on to modify issuebook and canbookbeissued from Circ2.pm, including the SQL query for the item information. However, I keep getting EXPIRED and NO_MORE_RENEWALS error messages and of course the item does not get circulated. I also think this might not be the right way, and maybe somebody else can provide some pointers on the expected behavior and what you do in these cases. Jose

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Native Koha 3 Support for Win32 Installation Project
by Chris Nighswonger 27 Jan '08

27 Jan '08

Hi all, Some time back in December I started toying with installing Koha 3 on Windows XP using the Koha installer and Strawberry Perl 5.8.8. Several have asked about it so here is the latest. The attached Open Office document gives more grueling details. I made some modifications to Makefile.PL to detect the Win32 platform and went to work installing the required Perl modules. The larger part of them installed fine via cpan, but a half dozen or so did not. With Galen Charlton's help, I have made some progress. There are five (six w/Schedule::AT) modules which are yet to be compiled/installed on Win32 using Strawberry (versions may be bad due to an old copy of Makefile.PL): [Wed Jan 23 06:58:50 2008] Makefile.PL: Warning: prerequisite DBD::mysql 3.0008 not found. [Wed Jan 23 06:58:56 2008] Makefile.PL: Warning: prerequisite MARC::File::XML 0.88 not found. [Wed Jan 23 06:59:11 2008] Makefile.PL: Warning: prerequisite XML::Dumper 0.81 not found. [Wed Jan 23 06:59:11 2008] Makefile.PL: Warning: prerequisite XML::LibXSLT 1.63 not found. [Wed Jan 23 06:59:11 2008] Makefile.PL: Warning: prerequisite XML::RSS 1.31 not found. I *think* that XML::Dumper and XML::RSS will install once XML::LibXSLT is installed. Zebra remains to be installed and tested. The attachements to this email include: 1. A document detailing what I have accomplished so far. 2. Two files references in the document. This is very much a side project for me as I really have no interest in running Koha 3 on Win32 except to say I did it. :-) Any help would be greatly appriciated. Maybe someone out there with a lot of C++ experience can get libxslt working as this is the real blocker right now. Comments and criticisms welcome. Regards, Chris PS. I plan on adding the included summary to the wiki so that anyone can update it as work progresses. -- Chris Nighswonger Faculty Member Network & Systems Director Foundations Bible College & Seminary www.foundations.edu www.fbcradio.org

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