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

Is there an example of an auto install file with ALL variables &default values documented?
by Michael Lake 24 May '05

24 May '05

Hi all Please excuse this re-post. It was made to the koha list last week but no one answered so I thought perhaps it can be answered by a developer although it's a simpe user install question. Repost starts.... I installed koha 2.2.2b and noticed that the installer mentioned that you can create a auto install file. I found a short example in scripts/misc which is probably contributed by Paul POULAIN (from the user and the language setting) and have modified that. However this does not seem to be intended to be a definative example of all the options available but seems to be just what Paul used for his setup. For instance installer.pl in interactive mode asked: SELECT SQL FILE Select a file to append to the Koha DB. enter a number. A detailed explanation of the file will be given if you confirm, the file will be added to the DB 0 => FINISHED 1 => authorities_normal_marc21.txt 2 => stopwords.txt but these are not in the auto_install_file example. Short of looking through Install.pm and working out what the variable names and default values are does a Koha developer have a auto_install_file with all options included as an example? Mike -- Mike Lake Caver, Linux enthusiast and interested in anything technical.

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Koha Website Design
by Russel Garlick 24 May '05

24 May '05

Hi everyone, I just wanted to get my 2 cents worth out there before the IRC meeting tomorrow. First a (re)introduction. Russel Garlick Operations Manager Katipo Communications My day to day work is managing website and web application development projects at Katipo. I was responsible for the current Koha web design which was done 3 years ago. I am not precious about it and agree that an update is required. Ok, in the IRC meeting I mentioned that I have a vested interest in the Koha website. Not because of the design, but because one of my other roles is manning the Katipo stand at the various conferences we attend. The conferences that we choose to have a stand at are carefully chosen. We are trying to target the decision makers at libraries. In New Zealand, these people have normally heard of the Koha project, but dismiss it because they think Koha is "free ware" or "shareware" for small libraries with no money. So we spend a lot of effort trying to convince them that this is not the case. And this is the crux of the matter: the feedback I am getting is that if we want to succeed in this matter then the product and the website need to look more professional. Ok so how to go about this? Firstly I think before we put pen to paper, we need to think about what is the purpose of the Koha website? Who is the target audience and what are they after? I would break it up into two main groups: 1) People looking to procure a library system (The Head Librarian, and their IT Manager or CTO) 2) The Koha Community (all the users, developers and enthusiasts) At the moment it doesn't really cater to either. If we consider the Community for a moment, there are a number of sites, blogs, wikis and other resources that you have all created and maintain. And that is fantastic. I think we should continue to foster this. I really like Slef's idea of a blogger agregator for the Koha site. So we need an element of the Koha site for the Koha Community that is a portal to the rest of the Koha world. The challenge will be to make sure that it is kept up to date (automatic tools like the blog agregator can help with this). Ok back to the People looking to procure a library system - The Head Librarians, their IT Managers or Chief Technical Officers. We need to direct this audience to - "brochure ware" type content that explains the features (with the least amount of technical jargon possible) - to case studies/ white papers so they can read about the success stories. - testimonials so they can see that this is an established product Along with a good demo, support pages etc that we have now. These people are used to spending lots of money on library systems, and will continue to do so. So if we want them to take notice, we need to look professional. I think this has been done well by the following Open Source software sites http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ http://www.oscommerce.com/ http://phpadsnew.com/two/ So that is our challenge, how do we get there? Before we bust straight into design I think we need to sort out the content. Here is a link to the process that we use for building a site. http://www.russandsarah.gen.nz/rants/nr1116971338.html I think we need to sort out a brief and get our architecture sorted. I have put up a site map for the current site as a reference http://www.koha.org/current-map.jpg And I have worked up a draft site map for the new site for discussion http://www.koha.org/koha-sitemap-draft-may05.gif I would like to see fewer links in the top nav (much like the sites i mentioned earlier). Looking forward to the meeting Friday morning (NZ time) Cheers -- Russel Garlick Operations Manager Katipo Communications Ph +64 4 934 1285 Fax +64 4 934 1286 Mob +64 27 537 1377 Web http://www.katipo.co.nz

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Linux Today mention
by Stephen Hedges 24 May '05

24 May '05

I see Koha got a mention in Linux Today: http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2005052200426OSDPPB (I wondered why there was a big spike in traffic on kohadocs yesterday.) -- Stephen Hedges Skemotah Solutions, USA www.skemotah.com -- shedges(a)skemotah.com

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Re: [Koha] Are You A Koha Newbie?
by Russel Garlick 21 May '05

21 May '05

Hi all, I have taken what Joshua wrote and combined it with the existing content on the How Can I Contribute to Koha? http://www.koha.org/contribute/ Cheers Russel Joshua Ferraro wrote: > Hi there, > > If you're just getting started learning about Koha or have been on > this list for a while but haven't really gotten involved too deeply > in Koha, this e-mail is for you. > -- Russel Garlick Operations Manager Katipo Communications Ph 934 1285 Mob 027 537 1377 Web www.katipo.co.nz

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Updates to www.koha.org
by Russel Garlick 20 May '05

20 May '05

Hi everyone, Notification of some updates to http://www.koha.org HOMEPAGE http://www.koha.org/ I have quickly inserted some links to other Koha websites. I will make these more prominent soon, but at least they are there for the meantime. And before anyone asks, I like to separate links to other websites from the main navigation for a website so that it is clear when you are going to a page off site. So this is why I haven't added these links to the left hand side navigation. FAQ PAGE http://www.koha.org/faq/ This has been updated to look more like an FAQ page and some of the more technical FAQ's have been removed and references made to the FAQ on the Wiki. Some of these were way out of date, so I have just tried to keep the more general, non version specific ones here. INSTALLATION AND SUPPORT http://www.koha.org/installation/ Removed links to outdated manuals and included some information for installing on other platforms. CONTACT US http://www.koha.org/about/contact-us.html Updated with new personnel If you have any contributions or edits please read the Contributing To This Website page http://www.koha.org/about/website.html and then forward them to kohaweb(a)support.katipo.co.nz Have a good weekend, Cheers -- Russel Garlick Operations Manager Katipo Communications Ph 934 1285 Mob 027 537 1377 Web www.katipo.co.nz

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Images in Koha documents
by Stephen Hedges 20 May '05

20 May '05

A couple of questions came up (briefly) in yesterday's IRC meeting about how to insert images into kohadocs, so I thought I'd explain how I've been handling them. First of all, I do all the docs in DocBook xml, almost always as an article. I use XMLMind (http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/) to make the process easier. Then I convert the finished xml source to html and pdf, and store all three versions on kohadocs.org. To get XMLMind to include images in the html files it creates (without paying for the expensive full version of XMLMind), the images have to be in gif format. Getting images into pdf files has been a problem, since I have yet to find a DocBookXML->pdf converter that can handle them. So for Nick's "Koha Architectural Study," for example, I used Scribus to manually create a high-quality pdf file (very time-consuming) and converted all the images to tif format. I use gimp to do all these conversions, and would use svg format instead of tif for the pdf files, except the gimp can't handle that kind of conversion. So that's how I've been doing it. I _welcome_ suggestions for better ways to handle images, particularly for the pdf files. Stephen -- Stephen Hedges Skemotah Solutions, USA www.skemotah.com -- shedges(a)skemotah.com

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Koha.org Website Updating
by Russel Garlick 19 May '05

19 May '05

Hi everyone, If you have updates for the site, whether they be pages of content or sites that you would like us to link to please fire them through to kohaweb(a)support.katipo.co.nz I have put up some notes about editing the website on the site itself http://www.koha.org/about/website.html Great to see so many people at the meeting today. Cheers -- Russel Garlick Operations Manager Katipo Communications Ph +64 4 934 1285 Fax +64 4 934 1286 Mob +64 27 537 1377 Web http://www.katipo.co.nz

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New document on kohadocs
by Stephen Hedges 19 May '05

19 May '05

New on http://www.kohadocs.org -- "A Koha Diary: Implementing Koha at the Nelsonville Public Library" by Stephen Hedges. You can find it in the "General" section. -- Stephen Hedges Skemotah Solutions, USA www.skemotah.com -- shedges(a)skemotah.com

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Search ideas - finally in print
by Rachel Hamilton-Williams 19 May '05

19 May '05

Hi all, I've finally tried to get the search ideas from my head, out onto something like a mockup of a page. http://katipo.co.nz/gallery/koha2-4 The problem it seeks to solve on the search results page is where someone gets too many results to usefully look through, and wants to reduce them. On the details page, it's seeking to help people broaden out their search again, if this isn't quite what they wanted, or if they want to find more titles similar to this one. I was also wanting to be more "explicit" about the author search as well. Look forward to your thoughts Cheers Rachel -- ----------------------------- Rachel Hamilton-Williams General Manager Katipo Communications Ltd Phone: +64-4-934 1285 Mobile: 021 389 128 E-mail: rachel(a)katipo.co.nz Web: www.katipo.co.nz

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newbie questions
by Gavin McCullagh 19 May '05

19 May '05

Hi, I'm just looking at Koha potentially for a library here in our school. Congratulations to all involved and thanks for releasing it under the GPL. I have installed it and am tinkering about. It's on a 400MHz P2 w 128MB RAM running Debian GNU/Linux (sarge) in a MySQL database and I installed the sample data from sampledata-1.2.gz. The sampledata didn't insert entirely perfectly but it seems reasonable for testing. I was wondering about a few things. 1. The major book data seems to be in one table, including authors. I would instinctively have separated the authors into a separate table. Is this just a decision to favour simplicity over normalisation or am I missing something? 2. There are no indexes on the biblio table. Is this deliberate, did I lose something in installation or are we expected to add our own afterward? 3. The doc recommends not using mod_perl. Is this just because it's not tested or is there a more specific reason? I would imagine adding 4. It seems rather slow. Each search request is taking 3-5 seconds. The machine is running my desktop apps but isn't terribly stressed. I've tried using mod_perl and adding indexes but I get the impression that the time is mainly being spent within the perl code itself. Is this normal performance or have i done something wrong? Many thanks again for providing this system under the GPL. Hopefully it will save us a lot of time and effort. Gavin

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