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

Koha Foundation : Librarians comments
by Irma Birchall 05 Apr '06

05 Apr '06

Hi all, As promised, here is a short summary of comments received from a few librarians I spoke with, who have been involved in the evaluation and selection of a new ILS for their library, in the past 5 years. They all mention how challenging and time consuming a task it was. Especially for syndicated libraries. Factors that have been mentioned regarding the adoption of proprietary software over open source ILS are: * Not knowing of the existence of any open source, high-quality ILS. Koha needs marketing! * How could they have determined whether the OS ILS is mature and "business ready" enough for their purposes? * Is there continuum in the quality of the code through all the functionalities? * How can one rate this OS application when no other library in their district or network uses this OSS. * Longevity: Projects backed by commercials companies are seen to have more longevity. * Support: commercial software vendors have support staff dedicated to helping customers solve problems with the product. For busy librarians, this was the main benefit in using proprietary software. * Rapid updates: libraries struggle anyway to keep up with change. Don't open source projects all follow the "Release Early, Release Often" paradigm? Some functions might need upgrading but the rest is just fine. How would that work? * These librarians accept: closed source code, having limited influence over roadmap, high costs, and limitations in functionality. * Traditionally, libraries have depended on proprietary software despite their limitations. There was no quality alternative. * These libraries or their parent organizations have no clear IT strategy regarding the use or non-use of open source application software. Regarding Koha starting a Foundation or perhaps becoming part of an existing one: a few of the thoughts expressed * The response was positive when I mentioned that Koha is now 5! Multilingual and used in libraries around the globe. * They would feel more comfortable adopting an open source product if it had published books/manuals/documentation this would be seen as a strong indicator of the software's level of maturity and adoption. The Foundation could publish these. * How active and lively is the Koha community? Being part of a Foundation could add to the expertise to the Koha community. * Becoming an independent foundation was viewed as a confirmation of professionalism and longevity. Hope that helps, Irma

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Meeting Minutes, etc
by Joshua Ferraro 04 Apr '06

04 Apr '06

Hi all, Below are the meeting minutes for April 03, 2006. Next mtg is on April 10th, 2006 at 19:00 GMT (meeting time adjusted this week for the sake of EU folks). Meeting Minutes for April 03 2006 Present: kados,pierrick,hdl,paul,shedges,tumer,slef,thd Meeting Agenda: http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/koha_wiki/index.php?page=AgendAndNotes06apr03 NEWS AND QUESTIONS We welcomed two new official Koha developers: Pierrick : QA Manager, will be handling Quality Assurance Tumer : Release Assistant, will be helping kados in planning and programming for the 3.0 release New Wiki: wiki.koha.org has been set up, based on dokuwiki. Pierrick volunteered to migrate our data from the old wiki. Slef has editing powers for koha.org now, if you have changes you'd like to suggest send them his way Once the data has been migrated, kados will announce it on koha-devel and ask whether folks would like it styled, etc. Slef will be working on a new blog aggregator site and the url will be blogs.koha.org Pierrick has proposed installing an extension manager so that users can easily upload/download modifications that are not part of the official code base. He suggested one based on PEM, a project he is an active developer of. https://gna.org/projects/pem/ Pierrick will install it and we'll link to it from the main koha site. PERL-ZOOM PLUGIN / KOHA 3.0 plugin development complete, couple of minor things to wrap up tumer has agreed to share his code which includes many nice features related to Zebra that we'll want to include in 3.0: boolean searching password protected edits circulation update to bib records too many other features to mention tumer will send his code to Chris who will integrate into the plugin UNICODE SATUS FOR HEAD kados didn't have a chance to check into this, he'll try to get to it this week. 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

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koha 3.0 installer toughts and suggestions
by Paul POULAIN 04 Apr '06

04 Apr '06

Hi, I was wondering last week why ppl think Koha is so complex to set up working. I think I have found at least one good reason : the installer mixes technical (computer geek) questions and functionnal (librarian) questions. It ask for : mysql password, koha directory, apache user name... questions that a librarian often can't answer. Then, it ask for "MARC flavour", "authority framework", ... questions that a computer guy can't answer either. So, I think that for koha 3.0, we should completly separate both. The functionnal install (marc flavour...) being done in a webbased interface, once koha has been set up by the sysadmin. just my 2cts on this topic -- Paul POULAIN et Henri Damien LAURENT Consultants indépendants en logiciels libres et bibliothéconomie (http://www.koha-fr.org)

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koha 2.4.0 roadmap
by Paul POULAIN 04 Apr '06

04 Apr '06

Hello everybody, Koha 3.0 is almost here, but Koha stable must not be forgotten. I think 2.4.0 could arrive soon now, unless someone told me that he has urgent bugs to fix. The release notes have been updated on CVS (misc/release_notes/release_notes_2.4.0) Feel free to read & modify them, my english still being not my native language ;-) I'll request french mailing list for some tests on my computer with UNIMARC. If everything goes well, Koha 2.4.0 could reach us just after easter (april, 18th) -- Paul POULAIN et Henri Damien LAURENT Consultants indépendants en logiciels libres et bibliothéconomie (http://www.koha-fr.org)

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MARC Editor Visibility
by Joshua Ferraro 03 Apr '06

03 Apr '06

Hi all, thd and I have introduced some additional complexity into the MARC frameworks that offers a more complete handling of tag and subfield visibility. It's completely backwards-compatible so if you're happy with your current visibility options you don't need to do a thing and everything will behave exactly as it did before. First, I should introduce the problem: with the old scheme, there was a flag (INT(1)) that allowed hiding a subfield in the OPAC. You could also set a subfield to 'ignored' which was used for the special tags/subfields whose values are managed internally (e.g., 090). This would probably have sufficed but for the fact that thd has been working on a complete 'Standard MARC21 Framework'. In testing this framework (which includes 2/3s more fields than 2.2.5's default framework), we discovered that it was unusable due to long page loads (it's really quite a huge form with about 3,500 fields defined). (just to give you an idea of how slow it was, it took about 90 seconds to load a blank 'addbiblio' page and about 2-3 minutes to save a populated record). In addition, there is the problem of usability. With so many tags and subfields on a page it's very difficult to identify the most commonly used fields -- they are lost among the uncommon and rare fields. So we set out designing a 'visibility scheme' with three basic goals: 1. prevent very rare tags/subfields from being loaded into the MARC editor by default, but allow the user to add them if needed (with a page reload) and _definitely_ load them if they already exist in a record (ie, _no_ data lost when using the MARC editor). 2. allow uncommonly used fields to be collapsed and expanded quickly and easily without a page reload. 3. preserve the legacy 'hidden' functionality so the new framework isn't required for the upgrade to 2.2.6. As it turns out, there are quite a few possible visibility conditions that should be properly dealt with in a future version of Koha. Using the current framework's 'hidden' database definition (INT(1)) we can account for up to 19 such conditions (values -9 thru 9). Given that limitation as well as our current time constraint, we identified 17 conditions that will be defined in the new 'Standard MARC21 Framework' plus a 'Flag' condition that can be used to flag subfield definitions that will need to be revised when the framework can handle more conditions (ie, in 3.0). The scheme we devised is the following: ( ! means 'not visible' or in the case of Collapsed 'not Collapsed') -9 => Future use -8 => Flag -7 => OPAC !Intranet !Editor Collapsed -6 => OPAC Intranet !Editor !Collapsed -5 => OPAC Intranet !Editor Collapsed -4 => OPAC !Intranet !Editor !Collapsed -3 => OPAC !Intranet Editor Collapsed -2 => OPAC !Intranet Editor !Collapsed -1 => OPAC Intranet Editor Collapsed 0 => OPAC Intranet Editor !Collapsed 1 => !OPAC Intranet Editor Collapsed 2 => !OPAC !Intranet Editor !Collapsed 3 => !OPAC !Intranet Editor Collapsed 4 => !OPAC Intranet Editor !Collapsed 5 => !OPAC !Intranet !Editor Collapsed 6 => !OPAC Intranet !Editor !Collapsed 7 => !OPAC Intranet !Editor Collapsed 8 => !OPAC !Intranet !Editor !Collapsed 9 => Future use With this scheme, it's quite simple to check for the most important cases: *if (odd) { collapsed } *if (even) { !collapsed } if (>=0) { hidden in OPAC } if ((<=-4)||(>=5)) { not in the editor unless exists or is added} Those four checks take care of all the goals we set out to achieve. Of course, there are finer distinctions to be made, but we'll leave that for a future version. So just to clarify, we've implemented a subset of the scheme we devised -- a subset that doesn't comprimise where it counts (ie there won't be any data loss as with Koha 2.2.5). If you want to try out the new system feel free to use LibLime's demo: http://koha.liblime.com/cgi-bin/koha/acqui.simple/addbiblio.pl You'll notice that some tags (take 040 as an example) are listed but the subfields within them aren't -- simply click on the little + graphic to expand the fields (no page load) Likewise, some very rare tags/subfields don't appear by default. However, if you do a Z3950 search for a record and one contains them they will appear when you import the record (they will also import if they exist in records in the database). 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

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Koha Developer Meeting Notes
by Joshua Ferraro 02 Apr '06

02 Apr '06

Hi all, MEETING NOTES FOR MONDAY MAY 3rd (20:00 GMT) Meeting Agenda: http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/koha_wiki/index.php?page=AgendAndNotes06mar27 Present: chris,russ,hdl,paul,owen,thd,kados,slef Discussed UNICODE Status pierrick has been running utf-8 tables with no problems; kados will confirm it works for him as well thd reminded us that uft-8 doesn't work in every browser so we need a solution for such cases Zebra Integration (CQL in Koha) chris has been working on SearchMarc.pm getting the plugin working SearchMarc.pm is a drop in replacement for the SearchMarc.pm in 2.2.x PROG Template status opac PROG templates committed, mostly done, owen will continue to work on improving them RoadMap We need a plan for what we're going to do Developer's Week we need some fancy templates for the conference to demo perl-zoom chris suggested having 2 kohas running on the same machine, one with zebra, one without Program for KohaCon to be developed (done on the wiki already) slef asked why dates for kohacon were chosen for beginning of may: reason was that kados was going to be in Geneva already so it was convenient KohaCon to be announced on lists Problems with koha.org's accessiblity discussed and (hopefully) resolved -- 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

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borrower issues, work made twice
by Pierrick LE GALL 31 Mar '06

31 Mar '06

Hi koha-devel, circ/circulation and members/moremember are both showing a table of the unreturned issue of a borrower. The two page provides the same information, displayed with only very slight differences. I wonder why the same work is made twice. Should we have this table only on circ/circulation? and a link to circ/circulation on members/moremember? The link could give a summary of current issues (eg: "2 issues with 1 overdue"). Bye -- Pierrick LE GALL INEO media system

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fieldsets in templates
by Pierrick LE GALL 31 Mar '06

31 Mar '06

Hi koha-devel, Still working on HEAD templates... Yesterday I made a commit on prog/en/circ/circulation.tmpl to make it comply with TemplateManual guidelines. (another commit to come in the day). To separate informations on the same page, I've used fieldsets. These HTML tag is made to group fields of a form in a logical way. On templates I've read so far, I mainly see multiple forms for each page, so I used one fieldset for each form. I wanted to have your feedback about using fieldsets. Bye -- Pierrick LE GALL INEO media system

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Re: [Koha-devel] Koha Foundation
by COURYHOUSE＠aol.com 30 Mar '06

30 Mar '06

Greetings... I am back! There are lots of computers that get tossed here in the US .. A foundation would allow you to approach companies to set these in far away places and pick up the freight tab as a donation. Intel and other large US companies also donate stuff... Bill and Melissa gates foundation donates stuff... although the thought of them donating boxes to run LINUX on might not seem appropriate... Anyway bottom line... having a foundation or non profit corp. in the US you would be able to offer US companies and US citizens tax incentive for helping.. Sad to say ... most of the time if there is no tax incentive they will do nothing. OK now for the legal parts... > ... If you are going to incorporate in just one country II would incorporate the foundation in what ever country would offer the best donations, as you will have to be incorporated in that country to offer the citizens the tax benefit. The US with the abundance of technology stuff here seems to make sense. But you can also incorporate it in many countries just like you do a corporation for profit. Thanks, Ed Sharpe, Archivist for SMECC See the Museum's Web Site at www.smecc.org We are always looking for items to add to the museum's display and ref. library - please advise if you have anything we can use. Coury House / SMECC 5802 W. Palmaire Ave. Phone 623-435-1522 Glendale Az 85301 USA I also know many libraries in Africa that could be interested by such computers, with Koha (server or client -firefox-) installed.

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No way to reorder catalog search results?
by Kyle Hall 29 Mar '06

29 Mar '06

Hey all, I've been tinkering with the search.marc/search.pl and search.tmpl files because we'd like to add 'sort' links in the table headers for the search results (like the ones used in reserve.tmpl). I noticed the variable $orderby, but it is only used in function findseealso($dbh, @tags). So, as far as I can tell, what I would like to do is not possible without modifying search.pl. Can anyone confirm or refute this for me? Thanks for the help. Kyle IT Tech Crawford County Federated Library System

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