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

Koha 3.0 success
by Chadwick, John, DCA 15 Jan '08

15 Jan '08

We got two servers running with Koha 3.0 now. The backend works nicely. Our database admin likes the design and setup and she has been importing MARC records. The only issue we have now is that we can't do a search from the OPAC. The screens display okay, but a search by title or author of materials we have imported are not showing up in search results. John +----------------------------------------------------------------------- -----+ John Chadwick, Ed.D. Information Technology Manager New Mexico State Library 1209 Camino Carlos Rey Santa Fe, NM 87507 Phone: 505-476-9740 Cell: 505-629-8116 Fax: 505-476-9761 john.chadwick(a)state.nm.us http://www.stlib.state.nm.us Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail, including all attachments is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited unless specifically provided under the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and destroy all copies of this message. -- This email has been scanned by the Sybari - Antigen Email System.

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OPAC Log error
by Chadwick, John, DCA 11 Jan '08

11 Jan '08

Here are the errors I am seeing in the OPAC search. [Fri Jan 11 12:50:33 2008] [error] [client 164.64.109.45] [Fri Jan 11 12:50:33 2008] opensearch: Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at /usr/share/koha/opac/cgi-bin/opac/opensearch line 39. [Fri Jan 11 12:50:38 2008] [error] [client 164.64.109.45] [Fri Jan 11 12:50:38 2008] opac-search.pl: Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at /usr/share/koha/lib/C4/Languages.pm line 399., referer: http://164.64.109.235/ +----------------------------------------------------------------------- -----+ John Chadwick, Ed.D. Information Technology Manager New Mexico State Library 1209 Camino Carlos Rey Santa Fe, NM 87507 Phone: 505-476-9740 Cell: 505-629-8116 Fax: 505-476-9761 john.chadwick(a)state.nm.us http://www.stlib.state.nm.us Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail, including all attachments is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited unless specifically provided under the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and destroy all copies of this message. -- This email has been scanned by the Sybari - Antigen Email System.

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Announcing Koha 3.0 (Alpha)
by Joshua Ferraro 11 Jan '08

11 Jan '08

Hi folks, I'm happy to announce that a packaged alpha release of Koha 3 is now available. You can download from the usual location: http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00-alpha.tar.gz http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00-alpha.tar.gz.sig You can check the integrity of the package; either by verifying the provided GPG signature (.sig) or by comparing the MD5 checksum: 4fbd715cc6cd197264bba12b53391e42 koha-3.00.00-alpha.tar.gz I've also tagged this in Git as "version 3.00.00 alpha" v3.00.00-alpha This is the first packaged release of Koha 3. Prior to the official stable release of Koha 3.0, software issues, bugs, and unimplemented features must be addressed. These are documented on Koha's Bugzilla: http://bugs.koha.org and organized on the 3.0 RM's QA notes Wiki page: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:qanotes3.0 The release notes for this alpha version are pasted in below, and will also on the koha.org website sometime over the weekend. Cheers, -- Joshua Ferraro Koha 3.0 Release Manager ============================================================================== RELEASE NOTES FOR KOHA 3.0 ALPHA ============================================================================== Koha 3 is the next-generation release of the award-winning Koha open-source integrated library system. You can obtain Koha 3.0 Alpha from the following URL: http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00-alpha.tar.gz These Release Notes cover What's New in Koha 3, information about the new Revision control system (Git), and Version-release process, pointers to Download, Installation, and Upgrade documentation, a brief introduction to the new Templates, a call to Translation and Documentation writers, and finally, Known Issues with this version. ============================================================================== WHAT'S NEW IN KOHA 3? ============================================================================== 1. Zebra plugin - Zebra is a high-performance, general-purpose structured text indexing and retrieval engine. It supports large data sets (tens of millions of records) and includes support for SRU, Z39.50 and several query languages: CCL, CQL, and PQF. For more information about Zebra, please see: http://indexdata.dk/zebra Koha's new search engine, built on top of Zebra, supports features such as relevance ranking, field weighting, truncation, stemming, use of fuzzy operators, language-specific indexing, sorting, etc. Indexes are updated in real-time with circulation transactions, enabling limits by availability and statuses. Faceted refine-by limits are available from both staff and opac interfaces. For libraries that don't want the overhead of maintaing Zebra, Koha 3 ships with a NoZebra option, in which bibliographic and authority data is indexed in the RDBMS. 2. New installer - based on the common Perl module ExtUtils::MakeMaker, the new installer makes it a snap to get Koha running on just about any platform. The installer comes complete with a Developer's Toolkit target ('dev') that can be used to get a development environment linked directly to revision control, to support rapid prototyping and an agile development process. 3. Standard APIs - Koha 3 supports a number of important library search and retrieval standards and microformats, such as SRU/W, Z39.50 (http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/) UnAPI (http://unapi.info/) and COinS/OpenURL (http://ocoins.info; http://www.niso.org/committees/committee_ax.html) Also supported is the popular Internet standard: OpenSearch (http://opensearch.a9.com/) created by Amazon's A9. Records are stored internally in an SGML-like format and can be retrieved in MARCXML, Dublin Core, MODS, RSS, Atom, RDF-DC, SRW-DC, OAI-DC, and EndNote; and the OPAC can be used by citation tools such as Zotero. Creating new export formats is a trivial exercise in writing XSLT; records can be passed through XSLT transformations either directly out of the index, or via a separate parsing function. To retrieve and interact with Circulation and Patron data, Koha 3 includes support for 3M's Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP2), using the OpenNCIP libraries (http://openncip.org) There are also an ever-expanding set of native REST APIs to handle interoperability with external tools such as third-party cataloging clients. These APIs provide authentication as well as add/edit/delete control over bibliographic data within a Koha system. For more information, see: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:web_services Koha 3 also includes pluggable authentication - easy integration with LDAP and Active Directory via the Auth_with_ldap module. The Amazon.com module can be enabled to enrich bibliographic data with jacket covers, professional reviews, ratings and comments from Amazon users, as well as point to 'Similar Items' within the catalog. OCLC's xISBN, and LibraryThing's ThingISBN can likewise be enabled to provide an 'Editions' tab on item detail pages. New with Koha 3 is service throttling for these services, to keep within subscription limits. 4. Cross-platform, multi-RDBMS, Web-server agnostic - Run Koha on the platform of your choice: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris. Koha 3 also includes better support for multi-RDBMS (MySQL 5.0 and PostgreSQL), and runs under Apache2, IIS, or the web server of your choosing. 5. Multi-lingual support - Koha was designed from the ground up for multilingual libraries. Koha 3 can handle Chinese, Japanese, and even right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew with ease (BiDi). Koha's index engine (Zebra) can handle record formats containing any UNICODE compliant script, such as Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese and Korean. Zebra has this support via the ICU libraries created and maintained by IBM. You can translate Koha into your language using the built-in translation tools, or by visiting http://translate.koha.org. 6. New templates - Koha's staff and patron interfaces are developed with a template system that's easy to theme. The default templates are composed of 100% valid XHTML and CSS. Koha aims to meet or exceed U.S. Government Section 508 and W3C's WAI-AA standards for sight and motor impaired individuals. All Javascript usage comes with fallback modes that work in any web browser. 7. Koha 3 has quite a few new modules, as well as enhancements to existing modules, including: news writer, label creator, calendar, OPAC comments, MARC staging and overlay, notices, transaction logs, guided reports with a data dictionary and task scheduler, classification sources/filing rules. ============================================================================== REVISION CONTROL ============================================================================== With Koha 3, we've started using a new distributed revision control system called Git; it's the same system in use by many other projects, including the Linux Kernel. To learn more about how to develop Koha using Git, please see the Wiki page: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:git_usage ============================================================================== VERSION NUMBERING ============================================================================== With Koha 3, version numbering has been changed to use a method similar to Perl's: major.minor[.revision[.build]] * major: one digit * minor: two-digit * revision: two-digit * build: three-digit This alpha release of Koha 3.0 is versioned 3.00.00.041. Every database change or significant enough code change requires an update to the 'build' number, and developers will be able to easily upgrade their systems using the built-in updater. Koha 3.0 Release Schedule: This alpha release of Koha 3.0 will be followed by a beta release on Feb 1, 2008, including fixes to the following components: * General Bugfixing (everyone) * New API for item management (gmcharlt) * MARC21 Authorities (gmcharlt) * Improved I18N/L10N, lang detection (kados) * OPAC Templates re-design (oleonard) * Documentation and Translations (everyone) The final stable release of Koha 3.0 is slated for March 1 2008 and will include bugfixes to 3.0 beta. Subsequent releases of 3.0 will be bugfix releases, and won't include any new features. New features will be available in Koha 3.2 and subsequent releases. ============================================================================== UPGRADING FROM A PREVIOUS VERSION OF KOHA ============================================================================== The upgrade process from a previous version of Koha is documented on the Wiki at the following page: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=22_to_30 ============================================================================== TEMPLATES ============================================================================== You may have heard that the templates for Koha 3 have been re-skinned; there is also the start of a template style guide on the Wiki: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:documentation:templates_style_guide Kudos to Owen Leonard and the Nelsonville Public Library for their contributions! ============================================================================== TRANSLATIONS ============================================================================== Koha 3 alpha (this release) currently has complete translations for en-GB (English) and fr-FR (French). The Koha Team welcomes additional translations; please see http://www.kohadocs.org/usersguide/apb.html for information about translating Koha, and join the koha-translate list to volunteer: http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-translate ============================================================================== DOCUMENTATION ============================================================================== User-contributed documentation for Koha 3 is available on the Koha Wiki (http://wiki.koha.org) The Koha Team welcomes documentation contributions; please join the Koha-devel list to volunteer: http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel ============================================================================== KNOWN ISSUES ============================================================================== Known bugs are documented on the Koha wiki: http://bugs.koha.org and at the 3.0 RM's QA notes Wiki page: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:qanotes3.0

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Translate Koha 3.0 into YOUR language
by Joshua Ferraro 09 Jan '08

09 Jan '08

Hi folks, Now that the alpha release of Koha 3.0 is out, we need to start lining up commitments from folks who want to translate Koha into their language. If you want your translation to be accepted for the 3.0 release, you MUST submit it before February 1st, 2008, which is the date that the Beta is released! Note: even partial submissions will be accepted. So, what is the procedure for submitting a translation? You can, of course, roll your own, but if you want your translation to be included in the main release of Koha 3.0, we'd best have a bit of a formal procedure ... so here's my crack at an overview of the process: 1. Please take a look at http://translate.koha.org. Some translations already exist; please consider taking over an existing translation rather than starting a fresh one, unless the existing one is un-usably poor :-) 2. Please post your intent to translate Koha to the koha-translate list: http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/koha-translate In your email, please specify your Language, Region, and Country (and if your language uses a non-latin script, please also indicate the Script). Koha uses RFC4646 for managing language subtags, so it's important that we know all of those aspects of the language you're providing. It's important that you post your intent, this way we can avoid overlap and perhaps can even do some collaboration. Note: even if you've contributed a contribution previously, please announce your intent so we can have you on record for the 3.0 version. 3. Determine the application you intend to use to do the translation. You have a few options: a. http://translate.koha.org will allow you to add your translations via a web-based interface. If your language, region, country and script are not listed, please email me and I will add them. b. Desktop Application - there are a few: LocFactory Editor (for OSX), POEdit (for Windows), Kbabel (for Linux). If you use a desktop application, please ensure that your encoding is set either UTF-8 or UTF-16, depending on your language's script support in UTF-8. Most languages should use UTF-8. c. Text file -- yes, you can edit POT files directly in a text editor, but please make sure you have the proper encoding as with the Desktop application. 4. Obtain the Translation Files. (doesn't apply if you use translate.koha.org) You need to copy two files from the Koha 3.0 repository, one for the OPAC, and one for the Staff Client: http://git.koha.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=Koha;a=blob_plain;f=misc/translato… http://git.koha.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=Koha;a=blob_plain;f=misc/translato… 5. Naming your files. (doesn't apply if you use translate.koha.org) Starting with Koha 3, we're using RFC4646 language subtag naming conventions, (have a look at http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/ for an intro). RFC4646 has a concept of 'extensions' that Koha uses to tag for the 'theme' (t) 'interface' (i) and 'version' (v). For example, if you're creating a French translation from France, for the staff interface, and version 3.00.00.00, the filename would be: fr-FR-i-staff-t-prog-v-3000000.po 6. If you've used translate.koha.org to submit your translation, when you have finished, the system will have that indicated on the report (100%). Otherwise, you'll have to send the file to us somehow. You can do that via email to the list (in which case i recommend creating an archive of the completed files, rather than sending them through in raw format). Or, if you are reasonable comfortable with the command line, you can submit them via Git as a patch. Here are the basic instructions for how to contribute using Git: http://wiki.koha.org/doku.php?id=en:development:git_usage Translations go in the misc/translator/po file, and should utilize the standard naming conventions. If you have a question, don't hesitate to ask. So ... any takers? Feel free to post on-list or email directly to me, I'll try to coordinate the activity. 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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Koha 3.0 Staff Client Ready for Translation
by Joshua Ferraro 08 Jan '08

08 Jan '08

Hi all, Just a quick announcement for those of you interested in translating Koha 3.0 into your respective languages, the Staff Client POT file is ready for download and translation. I've created a generic POT that can be used, simply re-name the file to match your locale using RFC4646 conventions. Here's the link: http://git.koha.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=Koha;a=tree;f=misc/translator/po;h… (note that there is already a French translation written) The generic PO is called 'xx-XX-i-staff-prog-v-30000.pot'. You'll want to rename that file to match the language-script-region that you're translating. Starting with Koha 3.0, I'd like to propose a new naming convention for the PO/POT files in Koha that follows RFC4646 (have a look at http://www.w3.org/International/articles/language-tags/ for an intro). We can utilize RFC4646's concept of 'extensions' to tag for the 'theme' (t) and 'interface' (i) and 'version' (v). For example, if you're creating a French translation in France, the filename would be: fr-FR-i-staff-t-prog-v-30000.po Note that FR is a 'region' subtag ... but in some languages, such as Chinese, it's also useful to be able to distinguish between 'script's, such as 'Hans' (Simplified Han) or 'Hant' (Traditional Han). So you might, if you are translating Koha into Chinese, end up with a filename like: zh-Hans-i-staff-t-prog-v-30000.po RFC4646 gives us a lot of flexibility in how we distinguish between various translations. There are two excellent programs for doing your translation, depending on which platform you're running: LocFactory Editor (for OSX) POEdit (for Windows) Of course, you're free to simply use a text editor if that suites you, but please make sure you're in UTF-8 mode. Once you've got your PO file into a state where you're happy with it, you have a number of choies: 1. you can email it to the koha-translate list 2. you can email it to me 3. you can add it to Git yourself In the coming weeks I'll be updating translate.koha.org in preparation for the 3.0 cycle of releases, and improving the documentation on how to internationalize your Koha system, but if you prefer to work with local PO files, I wanted to make sure you had that opportunity. 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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Installer, SAX parser check ?
by Bünzli Daniel 08 Jan '08

08 Jan '08

Le 8 janv. 08 à 08:48, Frédéric DEMIANS a écrit : > Are you sure using XML::LibXML SAX parser? Verify with this script: > > <koha-root>/misc/sax_parser_print.pl > > which should display something like XML::LibXML..... Shouldn't maybe the perl installer check that ? Best, Daniel

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various questions (mainly around zebra config & stuff)
by Paul POULAIN 05 Jan '08

05 Jan '08

~#perl -e 'print "Hello world\n"; Investigating liblime recent or less recent commits I have some questions : ==== 1 ==== - the koha-conf.xml now contains <listen id="biblioserver" >unix:__ZEBRA_RUN_DIR__/bibliosocket</listen> so, no more tcp@blabla:port iirc, unix sockets are much more faster than tcp. but : - does that means we "loose" the z3950 public server in the process ? - Is it replaced by the SRU/SRW that is just after ? (ie : can we query the SRU/SRW server with PQF queries ?) ==== 2 ==== How to check that the SRU/SRW works fine ? I tried a yaz-client @:9998/Biblios and get : Connecting...error = System (lower-layer) error: Connection refused ==== 3 ==== The opensearch & unapi things uses SRU/SRW, but the port is hardcoded to 9998, were it can be changed in the install process. can we consider that as a bug ? ==== 4 ==== misc/zebraqueue_start.pl & misc/update_items.pl afaik : - zebraqueue_start was written to update the zebra DB when a biblio is updated/added/deleted - update_items was written to update on a daily basis all items that have been updated (to update issuing status of the item) now that zebra is quick, a line is added into zebraqueue and the "position status" of each item is updated everytime zebraqueue_start is run. so do we still need misc/update_items.pl ? ==== 5 ==== It seems that issuing a book results in 2 lines in zebraque. Isn't this a bug ? ==== 6 ==== Now that zebra indexes quickly, do we still need zebraqueue_start ? couldn't we update in real time ? (that wouldn't solve the multiple access problem joshua faced 2 years ago, when updating the DB from 2 processes resulted in a DB crash. But myabe this issue is solved as well now.) ==== 7 ==== couldn't we transform zebraqueue_start to a daemon, and not let is as cronjob ? having to wait for 1mn in the worst case seems very long to most librarians (when they add an authority and have to wait for 1mn to be able to find it in the biblio) would that daemon-ization be a problem for MS-windows servers ? -- Paul POULAIN BibLibre SARL Expert en Logiciels Libres pour l'info-doc Tel : 04 91 31 45 19

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Position announcement: Koha Application Developer
by Joshua Ferraro 05 Jan '08

05 Jan '08

apologies for cross posting. LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions in libraries, is seeking to hire Application Developers and Project Managers to work on development and implementation of the Koha Integrated Library System (http://koha.org) To learn more about the positions, please visit our Careers site: http://liblime.com/about/careers About LibLime LibLime is a company dedicated to providing open-source software solutions to libraries via a service-oriented business model. We're an equal opportunity employer offering excellent compensation packages, including health, dental, paid leave, and a 401(k) retirement plan. If you have the personal and professional skills for this position and want to work in a rapidly growing technology company, we invite you to send your resume to careers(a)liblime.com along with a brief cover letter. Meet us at ALA Midwinter 2008! If you're interested in this position and are attending ALA Midwinter, we'd love to meet you. Send us an email at the address above, or use the Web form to schedule a discussion: http://liblime.com/news-items/events/schedule-meeting -- 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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Item-level hold blocked for checked-out item?
by Owen Leonard 03 Jan '08

03 Jan '08

I noticed a behavior in 3.0 that seems incorrect to me, so I wanted to ask paul and hdl in particular, since this may be a SAN-OP feature: If I'm trying to place a hold on a title which has checked-out items attached to it, I'm blocked from placing an item-level hold on the checked-out items. This seems contrary to the idea of holds--why shouldn't I be able to place the hold and wait until the item is returned for my hold to be fulfilled? A library at NPL would generally be using item-level holds /only/ for items which are checked out--because otherwise they could go to the shelf and find the particular copy they're looking for! This may be another system pref requirement, but I wanted to ask about the motivation behind it first. Thanks, Owen

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Release Date for Koha 3 Alpha
by Joshua Ferraro 03 Jan '08

03 Jan '08

Hi folks, Happy new year everyone! As you may be aware from the huge volume of commits[1], several of the Koha development team members have been grinding away at getting 3.0 ready for general release, and the good news is that we're getting there; Major Kudos to the whole team! So with that in mind, I'd like to schedule an Alpha release of Koha 3 this Friday, January 4th. There are a few remaining acquisition, circulation and serials issues I'd like to get wrapped up before that happens; I'd also like to give the French team enough time to get the fr-FR translation polished up. For now, here's a teaser from the "Release Notes": ----------- This alpha release of Koha 3.0 will be followed by a beta release on Feb 1, 2008, including fixes to the following components: * General Bugfixing (everyone) * New API for item management (gmcharlt) * MARC21 Authorities (gmcharlt) * I18N/L10N, BiDi, lang detection (kados) * OPAC Templates re-design (oleonard) * Documentation and Translations (everyone) The final stable release of Koha 3.0 is slated for March 1 2008 and will include bugfixes to 3.0 beta. Subsequent releases of 3.0 will be bugfix releases, and won't include any new features. New features will be available in Koha 3.2 and subsequent releases. ----------- As always, any questions, comments, feel free to let us know. Cheers, -- Joshua Ferraro Koha 3.0 Release Manager -- 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 [1] http://git.koha.org

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