[Koha-devel] Pre-RFC on new discrete calendar

Tue Aug 2 15:59:40 CEST 2016

Hi Katrin!

To cut to the chase: yes, no rule at this moment.  So you'd lose what 
they bring you right now in term of saving time.  They could be added, 
easily, but doing so I would go for rules that apply some localised 
calendar by default, and allows to handle things like Easter, Memorial 
day, Thanksgiving and other floating holidays that represent 2/3 of of 
holidays here and aren't covered with the current rules and need 
editing.  The fixed holidays are covered with 17015 since the days 
created in the future consider the week and the year before, looking for 
holidays.  So I do not believe this way of handling things is a real 
minus versus the old one.  (And we still have some ideas to make it 
smarter before considering a rule system.  )

As for the days in the future, and regular maintenance, I don't have any 
case here where documents have a due date two years in the future.  And 
our UI makes it extremely easy to modify swat of days in one click (and 
some input).

Cheers!

Philippe Blouin,
Responsable du développement informatique

Tél.  : (888) 604-2627
philippe.blouin at inLibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inLibro.com>

inLibro | pour esprit libre | www.inLibro.com <http://www.inLibro.com>
On 08/01/2016 04:57 PM, Katrin Fischer wrote:
> Hi Philippe,
>
> I still got some question marks about this idea... mostly it doesn't 
> feel quite right so far.
>>
>> Let's start with the backend: this is just a simple script that fills 
>> the calendar ahead of time (waaay ahead of time) to allow the user to 
>> modify schedules easily.  1 year is just a hardcoded value, it could 
>> as well be an argument allowing any number of days in the future.  
>> Same for the past: during updatedatabase, this creates one but could 
>> create two years in the past based on the info in the current 
>> calendar tables.  In the end, the point is to have a table entry for 
>> each day, specifying which day it WAS opened (for hourly fine 
>> calculation) and which day it will be opened (for hourly checkout or 
>> just for displaying the library open hours on the OPAC).  Going a 
>> year in the future, things are a bit dumb when creating, but always 
>> replicate the week before, except for items with notes (holiday) that 
>> are fetched on the calendar year a year before.  Then the librarian 
>> has plenty of time to adjust anything.
> I think depending on the notes is not a good idea. You can add notes 
> to every kind of holiday at the moment - so you'd have to take a look 
> at the type of holiday - repeated yearly/weekly and unique. You'd also 
> need to take into account the exceptions to repeated holidays that you 
> can currently define.
>>
>> Which brings us to the UI.  Mine is ugly, but it would be easy to 
>> create a nice one AND SIMPLE one (coding) and powerful one (for 
>> users).  With that simple backend, it's very easy to simply allow 
>> multiple selections in the calendar widget, the modify opening hours, 
>> or holiday close with a note.  Or better: select a week anywhere in 
>> the calendar, then copy that to a given range.  3 days, a month, 3 
>> months...   Very simple in the UI, very few clicks.  Very simple to 
>> code in the backend.
> It sounds like this type of calendar would need more regular 
> maintenance than the current system?
>>
>> So in the end, recovering the original work or Kyle's work or 
>> defining new standard, we have a calendar page with a simple calendar 
>> and below it a few edit box (opening hours, closing, notes, closed 
>> checkbox) and a apply button.  On the right, like right now, we can 
>> display all "special dates", which are the ones with a "note" entry.  
>> In yellow those that are on days still opened, in pink those days 
>> that are marked as closed.  Of course, all UI schemes are very open 
>> to suggestion.  But it would be simple and naturally intuitive.
>
> If I was to make a change to the calendar - would I have to wait for 
> the cronjob/script to run and update the table or would it take effect 
> immediately?
>
> What will happen if a due date or other date is outside of the 
> calendar? I feel like by relying on a fixed date range, we are going 
> to create problems along the road if there is no rule based system as 
> a backup at least.
>
> Katrin
>
>>
>> Philippe Blouin,
>> Responsable du développement informatique
>>
>> Tél.  : (888) 604-2627
>> philippe.blouin at inLibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inLibro.com>
>>
>> inLibro | pour esprit libre | www.inLibro.com <http://www.inLibro.com>
>> On 07/24/2016 04:42 PM, Katrin Fischer wrote:
>>> Hi Philippe,
>>>
>>> thx for trying to get things moving again - I know there are quite a lot
>>> calendar related bugs to be found in bugzilla.
>>>
>>> Can you explain a bit about how this would change the GUI for the users?
>>> Do you have to keep it up to date or does the table get filled
>>> automatically for recurring events?
>>>
>>> I am a bit concerned about the limitation of one year into the past and
>>> one year into the future. What happens if a due date goes beyond that or
>>> an item is overdue before that?
>>>
>>> Katrin
>>>
>>> Am 21.07.2016 um 18:43 schrieb Philippe Blouin:
>>>> Hi!
>>>>
>>>> I'm throwing a line here, and I'd just like to get a feel for the value
>>>> of offering some work to the community.  Mind you, the work is "big" so
>>>> honest responses could save us lot of wasted hours.
>>>>
>>>> We've developed a parallel calendar table to specify each individual day
>>>> if it's opened or not (instead of rules and exception).  We added to it
>>>> the opening hours, and keep a year of them in the past, and a year in
>>>> the future.
>>>> The reasonning being:
>>>> - We need the opening hours.  They need to vary season to seasons.  We
>>>> need them for hourly and minute loans.
>>>> - Exception and holidays and etc... are complicated.  To manage, to
>>>> calculate, to fix.  We need the past info as well, to calculate precisely.
>>>> - Performance.  Calculating with C4/Koha Calendars is sloooooooooow.
>>>> Our little table cut fines.pl calculation times by 97%.  Not a typo.
>>>> Checkout improvement by 30-60% but metric is unreliable so take with
>>>> grain of salt this one.
>>>>
>>>> So before I go and write a wiki RFC, then open bugzillas, make the code
>>>> community acceptable (we're not using Schemas), complete it, write
>>>> tests, etc...  Is there an interest?  Would it answer a need (outside of
>>>> our clients) ?  Maybe a subset?
>>>>
>>>> All comments, suggestions, questions are welcomed.
>>>>
>>>> High regards,
>>>>
>>>> Philippe Blouin,
>>>> Responsable du développement informatique
>>>>
>>>> Tél.  : (888) 604-2627
>>>> philippe.blouin at inLibro.com  <mailto:philippe.blouin at inLibro.com>
>>>>
>>>> inLibro | pour esprit libre |www.inLibro.com  <http://www.inLibro.com>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
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>>
>

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