[Koha-devel] New feature (idea) for Koha 3

[Ernesto Silva]

Hi,
     it's been a while since our (Andrés Tarallo and me) last post to the list, mostly because now we have our own version 
of Koha. We had to make a lot of programming to meet the university requierements, which we think are very specific so we 
haven't submited them to Koha. I can comment on them later if you want.

To the point: the item number 2 "a specific template to show the summary of the biblio in the result list" is a very old 
requierement from our libraries and we are planning to fullfill them, but we are not how to implement them.

I have some comments on this. We have 2 libraries, each with it's own boss and it's been a nightmare for Andrés and I to 
make them coordinate some things, one of the most problematics was the presentation of each itemtype. We completely 
rewrite the "normal" presentation and introduced the "template" concept that Paul mentions. The problem is that WE (the 
programmers) need to modify the templates every time a librarian changes his mind.

What we want to do is create some sort simple "language" and the corresponding interpreter so the librarians can make 
their own modifications, and this would apply to the results list and the normal presentation.
Our librarians and most of south-american librarians are comfortable with MICRO-ISIS, the Unesco cataloging system, and 
MICRO-ISIS already has this functionallity. We could also improve it very easily because in MICRO-ISIS you have a short 
field to define the presentation, so you can't waste any byte and you must write all the "presentation program" in ONE 
long line, not very funny.

If this is possible, the system will have at least a default template for the results list and another for the normal 
presentation. But librarians will be able to define a new pair of templates for each itemtype. If some itemtype does not 
have a defined template then the default is used.

I know the ISBD display and I think your "item 1" is a must, but our Koha version (2.2 based) does not implement any 
"if-then-else" like statement. This kind of decision making is necessary for example when a field doesn't exists and must 
be substituted with some other content. Another issue are the repeated fields, some functionality must be provided to 
display repeated fields like subjects, the ones in the 6XX range, etc.

We don't use the authorities section so I have no specific comments on item 3, but perhaps some of the above may also 
apply to this.

Best regards,
-- 
Ing. Ernesto Silva.
Coordinador de Desarrollo Web y Sistemas Abiertos
Universidad ORT Uruguay.
E-mail: silva at ort.edu.uy
Tel: (+598-2) 902-1505 ext. 206


Paul POULAIN wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> A new feature that could (should ?) be implemented in Koha 3 :
> biblios have the "ISBD" system preference, that contains a personnalised 
>  version of the biblio.
> My libraries reported that it would be nice (better) to have :
> 1- 1 specific "template" for each itemtype
> 2- a specific "template" to show the summary of the biblio in the result 
> list (= having a different template for monographies & serials for example)
> 3- the same thing for authorities. (I must admit that authorities 
> details are really awful, it's almost the raw MARC record)
> 
> Unless someone declares he is already working on this, I'll do it (me or 
> hdl or antoine, depends on who get some time to do this. I think 2 days 
> are needed to do something working well)
> 
> PS : Other ideas in the same area :
> - rewrite the "normal" (=detail.pl), to get rid of non MARC database
> - add a systempreference to enable MARC view or disable it in OPAC.
> 
> Warning : "template" don't mean "HTML::Template", it means something the 
> library can modify
>