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

Koha 20.11.13 released
by Victor Grousset/tuxayo 24 Dec '21

24 Dec '21

Hello! :) The Koha Community is happy to announce the release of Koha 20.11.13 The full release notes can be found at: https://koha-community.org/koha-20-11-13-released/ Debian packages should be available shortly. Thanks to everyone involved :) Cheers, -- Victor Grousset/tuxayo

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Time to translate: string freeze to prepare Koha 19.11.24 has begun
by Wainui Witika-Park 20 Dec '21

20 Dec '21

Hello, String freeze is into effect as of now for the 19.11.x maintenance branch in preparation for the 19.11.24 release. This means it's the right time to head over to the translation platform: https://translate.koha-community.org/projects/ Wainui Witika-Park (she/her)

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Brief Report on KohaCon2021 International Conference held at National Library of Pakistan
by FullStack Solutions 19 Dec '21

19 Dec '21

*Dear International Koha Community * KohaCon2021 International Conference is being held at the National Library of Pakistan from 13 to 18 December 2021. KohaCon is a yearly get together of the Koha Community. The first Koha Conference was held in Paris, France in 2006. This year, with the efforts of the Pakistani Koha Community (especially of its President, Mr. Sher Afzal Khan), Pakistan was voted to host the International Koha Conference. This is a moment of great pride for all Pakistanis, especially for Library Science professionals and academia, as it will not only improve the soft image of Pakistan, but it will also establish its credentials as a leader of the Free Open Source Software (FOSS) movement in the world. The inaugural session started on 13th December with the Recitation of the Holy Quran and National Anthem of Pakistan. The KohaCon2021, being held Hybridly, was attended by a large number of delegates from all over Pakistan and from around the world physically as well as through online mode. Mr. Zakria Qasmi, the Session Secretary, compared the whole event. Mr. Mudassar Mushtaq, the Director Genera*l* of the National Library of Pakistan (NLP), welcomed the delegates and briefed them about the NLP. Thereafter, Mr. Sher Afzal Khan, the Conference Secretary, briefed about the importance of FOSSs, especially Koha, and its pivotal role in modernizing the libraries around the world, especially in the resource constrained developing world. He said that the main purposes of these annual international KohaCons are exchanging experiences in new functionalities; training and bug squashing; promoting collaboration to enhance the use of open source integrated library system (ILS) Koha; and to encourage new developments in Koha. He also said that these conferences play a vital role to enhance regional, national and international cooperation in respect of knowledge and resource sharing. Afterwards, a recorded address of the Conference Chair, Prof. Dr. Khalid Mahmood (Dean, Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of the Punjab, Lahore), was played. He also welcomed the delegates and paid tribute to Mr. Sher Afzal Khan for his tireless efforts in promoting Koha, us, saving millions of rupees that would have been needed to purchase commercial software. He also lauded his efforts to bring KohaCon2021 to Pakistan which will enhance our country’s image and standing in the world. Then, Chief Guest of the inaugural session, Honourable Ali Muhammad Khan (Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, Government of Pakistan), addressed the delegates. He stressed the need to take libraries to the users, especially to the youth, using ICT tools. He summed up his address in a point that “readers are leaders”, by giving his own example and sharing his experiences of libraries. More than 20 national and international researchers, practitioners, academicians, and Library & Information Science professionals presented their research papers; and shared their experiences regarding Koha during the conference. Around 200 people, including Library & Information Science professionals, IT professionals, educationists, dignitaries; and representatives from more than 18 countries including USA, Canada, India, Turkey, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Bangladesh and Cypress, participated in this conference. The closing session of the conference on 15th December also started with the recitation of the Holy Quran by Mr. Zakria Qasmi. The conference report was presented by Mr. Sher Afzal Khan. Thereafter, the guest of honor of the session Mr. Nasir Jamal Khan (Chief Operating Officer, COMSATS Internet Services) announced pro-bono provision of the internet as a gift to the NLP. Engr. Qaiser Nawab, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of “THE '' Society International - Together of Health and Education has participated as a Guest of Honour in the closing ceremony of the 1st ever International Conference “Kohacon21'' with a theme of Digitization of libraries in the developing world happened in Islamabad, Pakistan. In his address, Mr. Nawab urged the youth to take active part in readership for effective leadership to bring sustainability in the world. Today's world is a world of information and knowledge, therefore the young people must equip themselves with modern digital learning tools and open source technologies. Open Source applications provide easy access to the sources of knowledge. He added . Afterwards, Dr. Khalid Mahmood, the conference chair, candidly talked about the history of library automation in Pakistan, especially his own experiences, and the contributions made by Ms. Bushra Almas Jaswal (renowned and seasoned library professional of Pakistan) who was also present as a delegate. He, again, lauded the efforts of Mr. Sher Afzal Khan, and lluded him to Koha which is open source, freely accessible and always ready to help others. Thereafter, the chief guest of the closing session, Honourable Shandana Gulzar Khan (Member of the National Assembly of Pakistan & Chairperson of Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians) addressed the delegates. She also stressed the need to bring libraries to users, especially to women and to the people of far flung areas who cannot access physical libraries. She not only congratulated Mr. Sher Afzal Khan and the organizers of KohaCon2021, but also showed her surprise that such an international event is being organized by a few individuals without any financial support by the government of Pakistan. Then, Mr. Javed Iqbal (Deputy Director, NLP) briefed about the NLP, and talked about the demand of library users to make the NLP a 24/7 library which can be fulfilled if adequate funds and human resources can be provided by the government to the NLP. He also invited all the delegates to visit the NLP and explore its collections. The three-day conference concluded after shields to the guests, organizers, and the delegates. Mr. Sher Afzal Khan the organizer of the conference shared the details of the sessions and highlighted the outcomes of the conference. Mr. Nasir Jamal Khan COO, COMSATS Internet Services during his speech appreciated the organizers and announced to provide complimentary internet service to the National Library of Pakistan. In the end, certificates and shields were distributed among the participants of the conference and a group photograph was taken outside the library building. A two day Hackfest also held as part of KohaCon2021 from 16 to 17 December. The 1 and 2d day was observed as Heckfest day and the two days’ sessions were held at the computer lab of National Library. Different participants of the Kohacon2021 participated in both days. Mr Sher Afzal, President Koha Pakistan and conference chief organizer guided and trained all the participants about the Heackfest. The Koha Wikis, Librarian page, Koha Manuals, Koha translation, Koha newsletter, Bugzilla was introduced and guided with all of the Participants. We are very much thankful to all our sponsors especially Catalyst New Zealand for their great contribution and making this event successful. We are also very much thankful to the organizers , Participants, HODs, LIS community , Guest, Chief Guest and Guest of Honor for participants in the International Conference. The last day of the KohaCon2021 was celebrated as Cultural day but due to the extraordinary moment of the OIC conference in the capital the Cultural day was postponed, however the participants visited and explored the world's second most beautiful capital by their own arrangement. *For complete pictures, information, and other details please visit the following links: * *Conference website*: https://kohacon2021.org/ *Conference Blogs:* https://blog.fullstack.com.pk/international-conference-kohacon-2021/ *Facebook Group page ink:* https://www.facebook.com/groups/965873873493081 <https://www.facebook.com/groups/965873873493081> *Facebook page: Koha Pakistan Community:* https://www.facebook.com/kohacon20pk *Twitter link:* https://twitter.com/KohaPakistan *YouTube Link: *https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD4OZY1NBKPwzUtqqtjy0Kg (All Lectures, PPT will be upload Soon) *Best Regards * *Sher Afzal Khan | President Koha Pakistan| Lead Consultant* *HEC & NUST Approved trainer * *Pioneer Country Ambassador DSpace MIT USA| Successfully done 50 + Modern libraries projects* *Web: www. <http://www.au.edu.pk/library>Kohapaksitan.org | Email: kohapaksitan(a)gmail.com <kohapaksitan(a)gmail.com>* *http://fullstack.com.pk/ <http://fullstack.com.pk/> | http://blog.fullstack.com.pk/ <http://blog.fullstack.com.pk/>*

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Relooking staff interface (BibLibre sponsoring)
by Paul Poulain 18 Dec '21

18 Dec '21

Hello all, The staff interface design is something like 8 years old. It's worth being refreshed. We'd like to sponsor that work, with the idea to have a 22.05 beautiful and modern. With this idea in mind, we are planning to start (in january) a small group, with a designer we have hired. the goal of the group will be to define the global ideas/change we want to implement. Then, our designer will do a "UI kit" proposal. Then (starting in February), we have hired an internship to implement the proposal. Owen is happy to participate, who else would like to join us ? (our meetings will be made through BibLibre bigbluebutton instance, and recorded. Afternoon in Europe, morning in US East coast) Drop me an email -- Paul Poulain, Associé-gérant / co-owner BibLibre, Services en logiciels libres pour les bibliothèques BibLibre, Open Source software and services for libraries

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My dev list for 22.05
by Jonathan Druart 17 Dec '21

17 Dec '21

Hello everybody, I have been listing some tasks I would like to work on during the next development cycle. I suggest a give and take approach. Help me on one or more of those topics and I will help you as I can on whichever topic(s) you decide. 1. Add more sample data to misc4dev It can be sometimes painful to recreate some situations when using the data provided by misc4dev. I would like to extend the data set to make some patches easier to test out of the box. We could, for instance, have: - big records - records with many items - records and items with cover images - more acquisition data - etc? Just tell me what kind of data you miss on a regular basis and I will try to add them to misc4dev. If you have such records/data, send them to me for inclusion! 2. Remove item-level_itype We have been discussing this one for a long time already, is it the time to tackle it down? See - https://lists.koha-community.org/pipermail/koha-devel/2015-December/042114.… - Bug 10385 - item-level_itypes checks need to be refactored - Bug 29106 - Can we get rid of Koha::Item->effective_itemtype The work would consist in providing a plan to go ahead then provide a patch. 3. Merge biblio and biblioitem Self-explanatory, merge the 2 tables to remove the unneeded 1-1 relation between them 4. Improve action logs We have had several changes and reports in this area lately. We could improve the way we log changes for easy tracking and comparaison. See - Bug 28714 - Bib record change tracking action log - Bug 29451 - Merging records and authorities - log details for the delete action so it could be recreated - Bug 28692 - Reduce DB action_log table size I think we should add 2 new columns to log before and after the object is updated, serialized in JSON. We could then generate the diff on display. 5. Patron searches (holds and checkouts) Those two patron searches do not use the same code as the other patron searches. We should uniformize them. - Bug 29136 - Patron search on request.pl has performance and display issues - comment 37 of Bug 15812 - Checkout search with too many results (single character search) causes poor performance or timeout There is also bug 29125 (Use Koha::Patron object in C4:Utils::DataTables::Members.pm) that is removing the SQL query to use Koha::Patrons. 5. Async ES indexation Now that we have the task queue we should use it to index the records and don't index them in a synchronous way. Bug 27344 - Implement Elastic's update_index_background using Koha::BackgroundJob If we don't want to use the task queue for that purpose we should provide another solution. To be discussed and implemented (or validate and test the patches that are already on bug 27344) 6. mailman2discourse It seems that people are willing to move from our historical mailing list to something more modern like discourse. I would like to get back to this job, who is willing to help me? 7. Split and shrink git repo I've already done several iterations in this area and I would like to get back to it. However I need someone with good git knowledge to continue and focus on this. 8. Move C4 and Koha to lib We discussed that earlier and I even attached patches to bug 28589. I don't think it's top priority but I can dedicate some hours if some of you think it is a move we must do now. 9. Improve our strings for translators See - Bug 29602 - We must be nicer with translators - Bug 20988 - [OMNIBUS] Internationalization: wrap all translatable text inside t() calls I had to spend some time in the PO when I was releasing 21.11, and really we are not nice with translators. The %s everywhere make things very hard to maintain, read and translate. We should help them, and even if a big move is needed it will be a win in the long term, for us (developers) and for them. There are some other topics I have in mind, but those ones need to be done in small teams as they are quite big. Let me know what you think and if you are willing to give me a hand! And also, what's on your list for 22.05? Cheers, Jonathan

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Time to translate: string freeze to prepare Koha 20.11.13 has begun
by Victor Grousset/tuxayo 17 Dec '21

17 Dec '21

Hi, String freeze is into effect as of now for the 20.11.x maintenance branch. This means it's the right time to head over to the translation platform: https://translate.koha-community.org/projects/ Reminder: if you add or change a translation in version 20.11, then you must also copy it to 21.05 and 21.11. Otherwise your work will be lost for future versions. Happy translating :) -- Victor Grousset/tuxayo

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Call for news - Newsletter December 2021
by Michael Kuhn 13 Dec '21

13 Dec '21

Hi I'm collecting news for the December 2021 Koha Community Newsletter. Please send anything noteworthy to: kohanews (at) gmail (dot) com News criteria: * News items can be of any length. * Images are fine. * Anything and everything Koha. * Submit by the 26th of the month. Text format criteria: * Just structured plain text, or * HTML text to include tables or similar For events: * Consider adding your event to the Koha Community calendar at https://koha-community.org/calendar/ Thank you! Michael Kuhn Editor, Koha Community Newsletter -- Geschäftsführer · Diplombibliothekar BBS, Informatiker eidg. Fachausweis Admin Kuhn GmbH · Pappelstrasse 20 · 4123 Allschwil · Schweiz T 0041 (0)61 261 55 61 · E mik(a)adminkuhn.ch · W www.adminkuhn.ch

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Next dev meeting 8 dec
by Fridolin SOMERS 07 Dec '21

07 Dec '21

Hi, Dev meeting in coming soon : 8 December 2021, 15:00 UTC https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Development_IRC_meeting_8_December_2021 I've written a few points, I hope we will be productive. Like I said, schedule has not changed even if for Pacific users is will be really early in the morning. I'll have a litre of coffee to keep me awake :D Best regards, -- Fridolin SOMERS <fridolin.somers(a)biblibre.com> Software and system maintainer 🦄 BibLibre, France

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Documentation Team - IRC meeting this week and a general update
by David Nind 06 Dec '21

06 Dec '21

Hi everyone. Thanks for those volunteering to be part of the documentation team for the 22.05 release cycle - It's great to have you as part of the team! *Next IRC meeting* I've set up a meeting for the end of this week, 9 December 2021, 16:00 UTC - this will be the first documentation meeting for a while. The agenda is available at https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Documentation_IRC_meeting_2021-12-09 - please add any agenda items for things you would like to discuss. I found it a bit difficult to come up with a time that accommodates most people (from Europe, Canada, USA timezones) from what I know of the time zones team members are in - if having it earlier (or later) would mean that more could make it, I'm happy to change it (as long as I actually wake up!). If this week doesn't suit, I'm happy to move it to next week (although that might clash with any KohaCon 2021 events that are on).. Please let me know if you would like the date or time changed, otherwise I will go ahead with it as it is, and we can adjust the time for future meetings. *General update* Firstly, my apologies for the lack of activity and communication for the last release cycle (21.11) - I was originally going to have plenty of time available to work on the documentation, but unfortunately it didn't work out that way. So for this cycle we have the 21.11 changes to incorporate into the manual as a starting point. To identify what documentation changes are required I have setup a spreadsheet - linked from bug 29473 https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=29473 I'm progressively working my way through the list - there were quite a few architecture and other changes in this release that don't affect the documentation, so it is not as bad as it first appears. I have setup the same spreadsheet for 22.05 on bug 29460 https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=29640 Using a spreadsheet is probably not the best way to manage release documentation tasks, but I hope this will help initially. Other things I've been working on: 1. Tidying up the Documentation Team pages on the wiki linked from https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Koha_Documentation_Team 2. Setting up tasks in Bugzilla for current GitLab issues, projects, and any other tasks I can think of - hopefully I will have this finished by the time of the meeting. 3. Working on my plan to change our approach from a monolith narrative style manual, to a more more modular, topic-based approach - the first step is for me to setup a prototype so you can see what I mean, and for us decide whether this is a better (but more challenging) approach, or not (see the documentation plan for initial details of this). I've talked about this in the past, but not made much actual progress (see my last presentation about this https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TWnsuh2Vts6wJA4PyEKh2Sio0AXaSrYR/view?usp=… ) 4. Thinking about adding a "What's new" section - basically a more "librarian friendly" list of new features, enhancements, and things fixed - that eventually links to the updated section(s) in the manual. I've created bugzilla task https://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=29649 - feel free to comment on whether you think this would be a good idea, or not. Hopefully it will make it easier for Koha Community members to identify what's new in a release, and save some of the work that is repeated by support providers (or at least create a good starting point!). 5. Setup "Office hours" or drop-in session times - this is an experiment to see if it will be useful having a time where you can drop-in and ask any questions, discuss or just cjhat about any issues to do with documentation - we'll see how it goes. For details see https://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Documentation_Team_-_Office_hours That's probably enough for this update - I intend to do a weekly (or perhaps fortnightly) update during the 22.05 release cycle, so let me know if this will be useful and anything you would like to see covered or included. David Nind | david(a)davidnind.com 387 Whartons Road, RD 10D, Oamaru 9492 p. +64 3 4395 306 | m. +64 21 0537 847

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Ignore this test
by Marcel de Rooy 06 Dec '21

06 Dec '21

Just testing if these signatures did not come along now anymore 😉 Have a great day, Koha. Marcel

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