[Koha-devel] MARC version, HELP needed [long] and [important]

[paul POULAIN]

Hi guys,

Those who follow the CVS mailing list may have notice a few CVS-commit 
yesterday.  few, but VERY IMPORTANT. They are the 1st commit i made for 
the MARC stuff in koha that make koha USE MARC-DB (or at least begins to...)

If you play sometimes with a cvs version, you MUST follow the following 
upgrade operations :

* install MARC::Record package, from cpan or sourceforge
* OVERWRITE File.pm and USMARC.pm. The original misses 1 functionnality we absolutly need in koha (reading a MARC from a variable, not from a file). Thanks to Steve, who modified MARC::Record.
* modify your DB by adding marcschema.sql tables
* populate new tables by launching fill_usmarc.pl.

If you do it, the old-koha is expected to work as in version 1.2. if you don't, NOTHING WILL WORK, as sql will fail most of time ;-\

* *TEST HELP NEEDED* *
Test this dev version, and notice bugs you should find. 
The rule is quite simple : APPARENTLY, NOTHING HAS CHANGED. If you find something new, it shall be a bug...

If you can test this version and approve it, we could continue the road to MARC-management. If you spend some time on it, pls make a report on this list if you find no bugs, or report bugs on bugs.koha.org (use Version=CVS and assigned to paul.poulain at free.fr)

* *MARC HELP NEEDED* *
the MARC version of koha is supposed to accept any MARC format. Do do this, there is a parameter table that contains the meaning of every tag code.
for instance, there is only a definition of USMARC in english. We need to have some other definitions.
If you want help :
you just have to create a file with some rows :
* the tag number
* the subfield code
* the complete meaning of the tag/subfield. It's usually an excerpt of the xxMARC norma. It's used in the librarian interface.
* the meaning of the tag/subfield, simplified. It's how we could call the tag/subfield for an opac-using person. Not ALL the tag/subfield pairs have to be filled with this value.
* if the tag/subfield is mandatory (0=NO, 1=YES)
* if the tag/subfield is repeatable (0=NO, 1=YES)
Please, create this with a spreadsheet, putting all values of a given tag/subfield on 1 line. Then export it in CSV format. If you prefer, you can directly build a text file, but ALWAYS put the 6 values on the same line, separated by what you want.

sample : 
100;a;"Unified LOC Title (see red book USMARC page 24)";"book title";1;0
100;b;"Unified LOC subtitles";"";0;1
...
(note this example means nothing i think !)


* *DEV HELP NEEDED* *
a LOT of stuff is still to do on MARC-koha.
On the wiki (http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/wiki/index.php?page=ToDoMARC) i made a page with what is still to do, with some ideas about how to do it. If someone wants to give me a hand, it'll be VERY nice.

thanks for your attention.
--
Paul
koha release manager 1.4